Reading has its discount shopping outlets, Hershey its Chocolate World attraction. But for dedicated fans of pop music and high-tech stage production, the places you'd really want to visit (if only you could) would be the factories buzzing in another little Lancaster County town.

Welcome to Lititz (pop. 15,000-plus), the concert production capital of the world.

Yeah, for real.

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR: First stop has to be at the huge, loud and highly active enterprise called Tait Towers, the fantasy factory where many of the biggest, wildest stages and show effects are built for touring acts that include the Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, Tina Turner, Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen.

On a recent visit to the operation, company president James "Winky" Fairorth let this special guest ride up and down on one of the five synchronized elevators the Spice Girls used to make a big entrance on their recent tour. (The experience gave me new respect for the dames; I felt woozy, and I wasn't even wearing 5-inch heels.)

Also at Tait, lucky me got to play roadie, wheeling around sections of Bruce Spring-steen's stage, surprisingly easy thanks to Tait design innovations (more on that later). And I scampered on the thrust balcony of a strikingly modern, three-story-high, stainless-steel set that Cher is gracing for her long-run engagement at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which opened last night.

I also got to gawk at a Tait-executed backdrop that appears in the new Rolling Stones concert film and at nifty gags they've built, such as the water cannon Ozzy Osbourne used a couple tours back to blast his fans with water and paper.

Next tour stop, across the street, was Atomic Design, a "stage design and scenic softgoods" company that creates stuff like the curtains that drape the Cher stage, a backdrop for Panic! at the Disco or the wall of artfully shaped white panels the Eagles project images on during their show.

The high point here was ducking into a casbah-themed tent Atomic decorated for the Police to hang out in backstage during their outdoor shows this summer.

At the third and final stop - all of a block away - we got to worship at the mother of all concert sound production companies, Clair Brothers Audio Enterprises, which is (or soon will be) pumping up the volume for the touring likes of Oz Fest, Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z, Mariah Carey, Fall Out Boy, Motley Crue and so many more.

"We're into the peak concert touring season now. So we've probably got 50 to 60 shows out every night. I frankly can't keep track," said Barry Clair, one of two second-generation Clairs - the other is Barry's cousin, Troy - now steering the operations.

One recent gig Barry Clair did mention: Clair Brothers powered up the pope at Yankee Stadium.

And most every night, their permanent installation Audio Systems division is strutting its stuff with that beloved Clair Brothers sound at the "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Saturday Night Live" TV studios, at concert venues such as Philly's World Cafe Live and Washington, D.C.'s, Kennedy Center, and at many a sound-conscious house of worship, hotel and restaurant.

At Clair Brothers, lucky me got to put my hands on the latest and greatest in computerized sound mixing boards imported from Europe.

"Nobody's asked for them yet, but we've always got to stay one step ahead of the curve," said a Clair engineer testing one of the boards.

I also got to weigh the comparative merits of two new speaker designs built in-house (one was brighter, the other a little smoother) and blasting Sting's music at deafening levels.

And I got to admire a piece of Clair Brothers history: a speaker cabinet they built for Elvis Presley that was one of the first that could be suspended over a stage. Before that, boxy concert speakers were always plopped on the stage, saving time and money but sacrificing sonic clarity.

TOWN HISTORY: Barry Clair's dad, Roy, and uncle, Gene Clair, started putting Lititz on the concert-production map in the mid-1960s, when both were attending local colleges.

The sound freaks' dad had bought them a fancy speaker and amplifier rig to play around with that the bros put to work during a Franklin & Marshall College concert starring Dionne Warwick, when the system rented for the show proved defective.