Holiday Gifts for Your Crew: Why Tour Managers Are Giving Studio Chairs

Every tour has a short list of people who make the show happen night after night and rarely get thanked for it. The FOH engineer who mixed 80 shows on 80 different floors. The monitor engineer who kept the band happy from side stage. The lighting director, the production manager, the tech who rebuilt the stage left rig in a parking lot at 2am.

When the tour wraps or the holidays come around, tour managers and artists look for a crew gift that says thank you and actually gets used. More and more, that gift is a chair: the one thing every engineer sits in for longer than any other piece of gear they own.

Why a Chair Beats Another Hoodie

Crew gifts tend to fall into two buckets: things people wear once and things they use every day. Tour jackets, bottles and engraved road cases are nice. But most engineers and techs spend more hours in a chair than anywhere else: at FOH during the show, at the desk during prep, and in their home studio between runs.

A chair built for that work is a gift they'll notice every single day for years. It's also the kind of thing most crew members would never buy for themselves, which is exactly what makes a good gift.

Why Engineers Ask for Stealth

Stealth started at the mixing console. The patented ZenWave seat pivots as you lean in to make a move, so your lower back keeps its natural curve, and the Free-Float backrest follows you when you sit back to listen. That forward lean is how FOH engineers, monitor engineers and lighting programmers actually work, and it's the position most office and gaming chairs stop supporting.

Stealth chairs have worked FOH and monitor world on tours for John Fogerty, Rascal Flatts, The Band Perry, Hunter Hayes and LeAnn Rimes. They're made in Centennial, Colorado, rated for 400 lbs, and backed by a 5-year warranty with every part replaceable. For the full story on the road, read what touring FOH engineers actually use.

Matching the Chair to the Person

A chair only works as a gift if it fits. The good news is that sizing is simple, and you usually know enough about your crew to get it right.

Not sure about someone? If they're close to either line, size up to the Pro. You can also have each person take our 60-second fit quiz without spoiling the surprise, or call us and we'll help you sort the list.

Gifting a Whole Crew

If you're buying for more than a couple of people, don't check out one chair at a time. Stealth offers special pricing on group purchases, and our team will help you match every name on the list to the right model. You can mix Standard, Pro, Executive and Performer models in a single order.

A few things that make crew gifting go smoothly:

• Start with a list. Names, rough height and weight, and what each person does (FOH, monitors, lighting, backline, band). That's everything we need to recommend a model.
• Think about where it will live. A chair headed for someone's home studio may want the standard 2" casters. A chair that will ride in the truck should have 4" TourMax casters for cable ramps and stage decking.
• Order early for the holidays. Chairs ship from Nashville, TN or Centennial, CO within 48 business hours, but carriers get busy in December. Getting your order in early gives you room to spare.
• Ship to the right place. Most crews are scattered after a tour ends. We can talk through shipping chairs to individual addresses rather than one location.