Owner-operated
Max Troyer takes the booking and Max Troyer works the show. You are not getting a name off a roster you have never spoken to.
Gobo Studios · a DBA of Monterey Skates LLC · Monterey, CA · (831) 264-8797 · gobostudios.com
DJ · Lighting · Audio · Karaoke — Monterey and the Central Coast
A dance nobody leaves early.
Gobo Studios runs the music, the lights, the sound, and the karaoke for school dances, company parties, and private events across the Central Coast. Owner-operated out of Monterey, and built for the big room — a gym with four hundred teenagers in it, and a rig sized to fill it.
Or call (831) 264-8797.
Who we work for
Pick the room you are trying to fill.
Three kinds of night, three different jobs. The gear overlaps. The plan does not.
Schools
Prom, homecoming, winter formal, grad night, rallies. Clean edits only, a do-not-play list you write, and an administrator who can stop the music from where they are standing. We speak fluent purchase order and W-9.
Corporate
Holiday parties, awards nights, team events, conference receptions. Speech first: a mic that works, a lectern feed, and background music that lets people talk. Then the room turns over and the lights come up.
Private parties
Birthdays, anniversaries, graduation parties, and karaoke parties. Your timeline, your must-play list, your family’s music. We show up early and we stay until it is packed out.
Straight answers
Four things worth knowing before you call.
Monterey based
Monterey Peninsula, Salinas Valley, Santa Cruz County, and out along the Central Coast from there. Local means we can walk your room before the date.
Lighting is included
Every DJ package comes with a lighting rig, sized to your crowd and your room. It is not an upsell and it is not a separate line on the quote.
The library is bought
Every track is purchased or comes from a professional pool subscription. Karaoke tracks come from licensed commercial catalogues. No rips, no YouTube audio.
What we bring
Four services. Usually booked together.
Book the whole night or one piece of it. Most events take the DJ and the lights together, then add sound reinforcement or karaoke depending on the room.
DJ
A real DJ reading a real room. Beat-matched transitions, a request line that does not hijack the floor, and a do-not-play list we actually follow. Redundant laptop, backup controller, and music on local drives so a dead venue Wi-Fi never stops the night.
Lighting
Moving heads, wash bars, and pars on DMX, plus a hazer when the room can take it. The rig runs off SceneRig — our own software — so the colour changes land on the beat instead of near it. Same rig, dialled down, does a corporate room without turning it into a club.
Audio
Powered tops on stands, subs when the room needs low end, wired and wireless mics, and a lectern feed for the person giving the speech. We sound-check before doors, not during them.
Karaoke
Guests scan a QR code, browse the songbook on their phone, and queue a song. No paper slips, no shouting over the speakers. Fair rotation means everyone sings before anyone sings twice, and the screen shows who is up next.
Why there is software on a DJ site
We run the shows. That is why the tools work.
Every product below started as a problem on a Friday night. The lighting engine exists because the rig needed to hit on the beat and nothing off the shelf would talk to VirtualDJ. The karaoke system exists because a paper rotation list falls apart by the third singer. The gear tracker exists because a fleet of rental skates does not maintain itself.
None of it was built from a spec in an office. It was built between sets, taken back to the venue the same week, and fixed where it broke. That is also the argument for hiring us: the person running your night is the person who writes the software other DJs use.
The software
Four tools, built at our own events.
All four run on one Gobo Studios account. Subscriptions, billing, and login live in one place.
KaraokeFlow
From freeSingers scan a QR code and request from their phone. Round-robin rotation keeps it fair. The kiosk screen shows who is singing and who is next, and the song auto-queues in VirtualDJ or the built-in player with the singer’s name attached.
SceneRig
Nineteen generative scenes, sixteen stackable effects, and thirteen DMX patterns pushed live to pars, wash bars, and moving heads. Beat phase comes from the deck itself, not a microphone, so the lights stay locked when the DJ pitch-bends.
GearMaintain
Scan an RFID tag to check equipment out and scan it back to check it in. Usage rolls up until an item trips its deep-check interval and gets flagged. Web dashboard plus iOS and Android apps. Built for skates; it does not care whether the item is a skate, a ski, a bowling shoe, or a bike.
VDJ REST API
FreeDrops into VirtualDJ’s plugin folder and serves deck status, playback control, library search, and live audio levels as JSON on localhost:8082. macOS and Windows. No Pro licence needed. It is the plumbing under SceneRig and KaraokeFlow, and it is there for anyone building against VirtualDJ.
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Send the date
Two minutes on the form: date, venue, rough headcount, and what you need. If the date is already taken you find out immediately instead of waiting on a reply.
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You get a written quote
A flat price with the gear list on it, so you can hand it to whoever approves spending. Nothing is a surprise line item on the night.
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We look at the room
By phone for a room we know, in person for one we do not. What we are checking: where power is, how the load-in door works, ceiling height for the lighting, and where the DJ table can go without cutting the room in half.
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We build the night
You tell us the timeline, the must-play list, the do-not-play list, and every announcement that has to happen. Schools set the content rules and we work inside them. The lighting scenes get matched to the room before we get there, not during your first song.
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Show day
We arrive 90 minutes before doors and sound-check before them, not during them. During the night you have one person to talk to, and if the room turns a direction nobody planned for, the plan changes with it. We pack out ourselves.
The work
Beams, not stock photos.
Everything here is our own rig at our own events. If you want to see what a specific room looks like lit — a gym, a hall, a tent — ask and we will send shots of that kind of room.
Photos are being added. In the meantime, call (831) 264-8797 and we will send shots of a room like yours.
Service area
Monterey, and a good way past it.
We are based in Monterey and most of our nights are within an hour of it. Farther out is fine — travel shows up as its own line on the quote so you can see exactly what it costs before you agree to it.
Somewhere not on this list? Ask. The answer is usually yes.
Next step
Have a date in mind?
Send it over and find out in one message whether it is open. Give us the date, the venue, and roughly how many people, and you get a straight answer back — not a brochure.
Gobo Studios, Monterey, California. A DBA of Monterey Skates LLC.