Robe - LEADERBOARD - Feb 2025
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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UK - A large moving light rig was supplied by Norwich-based Viking Stage Lighting for an epic production of Jesus Christ Superstar, staged in Cornwall by Redruth Amateur Operatic Society Trust (RAOST).

The 10-night sold-out production ('amateur' in name only) was staged in a 1,200 capacity big top located in Boscawen Park, Truro, and featured five trucks of staging and equipment, a cast of over 100, a 12-piece semi-pro orchestra with considerable sponsorship and a budget of £120,000.

The event's technical infrastructure - including lighting, sound, staging power and distribution -was all supplied by Viking, who have worked with the Operatic Society on many previous occasions, twice on productions in the same big top.

Lighting designer Ian Leonard utilized over 40 Robe fixture

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UK - Numerous companies in the industry are offering training, but perhaps one of the biggest run-rates goes to Martin UK, which, over the past 12 months, has run over 70 courses - more than a course a week. In that time, the company has trained over 350 people to service, repair, maintain and operate its equipment.

These courses have taken place in a variety of locations, including Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin, as well as at the company's base in Maidstone. The current training programme offers a range of 10 courses, principally covering service and operational skills.

Chris West, Martin UK's head of training, is employed on a full-time basis to organize and run these training courses. When he's not doing that, he's developing new courses to cover the wider variety of educational needs of the company's customers. Over the next year, Ma

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Europe - Arbiter Pro Audio has supplied Liverpool-based Adlib Audio with a large quantity of JBL VerTec line array elements for David Bowie's upcoming 'A Reality' tour. The tour kicks off in Copenhagen in October for a three-month, 14-country European stint.

Adlib won the contract after working with Bowie's FOH engineer Pete Keppler on the Eels this summer. Keppler specified a VerTec system for the tour after using it for the first time at last year's inaugural 'Move' festival in Manchester, which was headlined by Bowie.

Adlib was the first UK hire company to invest in JBL's renowned line array system back in 2001 soon after its launch. Since then, it's been in constant use on a myriad of tours and events around the world. The latest deal, co-ordinated by Arbiter's Karl Bates, sees Adlib supplying 32 VT4889 full-size enclosures, 32 VT4880 subs, 32 4888 medium-sized VerTecs an

Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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Germany - For nine years now, in a factory not far from Leipzig, a company has been developing and producing stage chain hoists and chain hoist controllers that have come to represent the excellence of German manufacturing in theatres and entertainment complexes all over the world.

The ChainMaster story began with a request for help from the theatrical world. The need was for an electric chain hoist conforming to the VBG-70 standard which was in force at the time. (VBG is an accident prevention and insurance organization, and VBG-70 was drawn up to improve standards of safety in venues). At the time, there was no equivalent electric chain hoist system on the market, so ChainMaster's managing director, Frank Hartung, who founded the business along with his wife, Susanne, recalls: "That was all the incentive our team needed to develop the requisite system."

In the spri

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UK - On June 28, Robbie Williams started one of this summer's most anticipated European tours. After skimming round Europe, as part of an 18-date, 10-country tour, he rounded it all off with three headline dates at Knebworth in the UK.

Most of the press surrounding the event focused on the awful travel experiences of many of the thousands of fans who travelled to Knebworth - 375,000 in total across the three shows - ourselves included. And let's face it travel chaos made for good headlines, as did the sheer number of people who were packed into Knebworth Park: this was not an event for anyone with a fear of crowds - 120,000 plus each night - although a large proportion of these stood no chance of actually seeing the star of the show directly.

However, it was the show itself that made the delays, travel headaches, expensive 'pints' of beer and enormous viewing distances worth i

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ETC Halcyon Silent

High End Systems Halcyon Silent builds on ETC’s legacy of fanless automated fixtures by incorporating features from the highly sought-after Halcyon family. Halcyon Silent perfectly balances silent operation with brilliant output of 18,400 lumens and high-impact features. 

For more information visit us at www.etcconnect.com

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UK - In recent years, Orbital has become an increasingly familiar name to readers of L&SI. During that time the company has carved itself a healthy slice of the West End theatre sound rental market (credits include Chicago, Bombay Dreams and the new Rod Stewart Musical Tonight's The Night), championed the introduction of digital mixing technology to that market, committed resources to training and education initiatives and, most recently, introduced a contract maintenance operation which is already doing rather well.

But that's not all. If you work in broadcasting, you might know of Orbital as a specialist provider of broadcast communications systems and expertise. If you're involved with museums, heritage and cultural sites, you may know of the company as a proponent of Sennheiser's guidePORT personal tour guide system: during September Orbital will complete a major guidePORT p

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UK - Here, as promised last month, we round-up some of the main highlights of our industry's contribution to this year's Glastonbury Festival.

- Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage has traditionally been equipped with Turbosound Flashlight systems, but this year, in a major departure for the organizers, SSE Hire provided one of the world's largest Nexo GEO T Tangent Array systems. Nearly 100 GEO T4805 cabinets were used, configured with two far-field arrays of 24 cabinets each (25m offstage each side) and two near-field arrays of 11 cabs flown from SSE's Teepee structures, each about 7m offstage. There was also a centre array of six T4805s for centre image/near-field, and two field delays (eight cabinets each) 130m down-range from the system. Camco Vortex amplifiers powered the whole system. SSE's Chris Beale says they used 12 CD-18 subs per side, plus nine S2 subs under the near-field

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Create new traditions – Cameo P6 - High Output Full-Spectrum Ellipsoidal

Cameo's P6 is a future-proof LED profiler with a powerful 600 W RGBACL engine and 16,000 lumens. It’s an energy-efficient replacement for 2.5 kW halogen profile lights in theatres and venues. With excellent light quality and natural colour rendering, it fits perfectly in theatres, musicals, TV studios, congresses, and live events.

With an LED life of 50,000 hours and low power use, the P6 cuts energy costs and supports the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ goals for climate neutrality by 2050. It also meets updated eco-design rules for lighting.

www.cameolight.com/p6profile

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Switzerland - The 37th Montreux Jazz Festival closed its doors at the end of July with a suitably rousing ZZ Top concert in the Stravinski Hall, the main auditorium in the Congress Centre perched on the Lake Geneva waterfront. It was the culmination of 17 days of music and performance that featured acts from across the musical spectrum performing on a variety of stages, both inside and out.

The Festival drew some top names with 2003 headliners including Radiohead, Yes, Bonnie Raitt, Jethro Tull, Cypress Hill, Morcheeba, Craig David, Herbert Gronemeyer, Stereophonics, George Benson and The Pretenders - plus just about every musical genre you might care to mention.

The production elements of this ambitious schedule were managed by technical co-ordinator Andre Vouilloz, while audio aspects were in the hands of Patrick Vogelsang, MD of Meyer's Swiss distributor Niveau2 and the fes

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UK - Intrigued by the growing discontent in the industry that guerilla projection is causing, L&SI talked to players on both sides of the fence about the pros and cons.

Pod Bluman, well known for his role in several guerilla projects, doesn't regard guerilla projection as an issue, and he's not alone:

"We rarely get more than half a dozen or so onlookers, so there are never any huge crowds leading to problems. Most of the projections are of a corporate advertising nature anyway, so it's very rare to do anything that is truly controversial." It seems that the Police are fairly indifferent to it as well; despite a major security threat closing Parliament Square and Whitehall, Bluman and his team sat on an empty Westminster Bridge merrily projecting onto the Houses of Parliament without any intervention. "I have been searched under the prevention of terrorism act,

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France - As many will be aware, the French summer festival season was hit hard by industrial action. A series of strikes and walk-outs by freelance technicians and performers caused the cancellation of the arts festivals in Avignon and Aix-en-Provence, and the popular Francofolies song festival in La Rochelle, along with long-established dance events in Marseilles and Montpelier.

Activists also halted shooting of the new Jack Nicholson movie in Paris, where riot police also removed demonstrators trying to stop the Rolling Stones concert at the Stade de France.

The catalyst behind the strikes is the French government's decision to change the workings of the unemployment fund for theatre, dance, film and music professionals, which currently takes into account their time-off between shows. The fund is 825 million Euros in deficit and the government is now insisting that benefits

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Singapore - Two events aimed at theatre lighting professionals are taking place at Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay, Singapore, this October. The first Asia Light 2003, a three-day theatre lighting seminar for lighting designers around Asia, will begin on 13 October 2003. The Esplanade Technical Theatre Specialists Programme, an initiative to develop the local theatre industry, also returns on 8 October with a series of theatre lighting workshops.

Professionals from the theatre lighting industry in Asia will now have a platform from which to share information and ideas on their craft, and foster closer networks with other lighting designers when Esplanade presents the first Asia Light 2003, a theatre lighting seminar, from 13 to 15 October.

The facilitator for Asia Light 2003 is Francis Reid, a theatre lighting specialist with over 40 years of experience and author of the indis

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France - Following their show-stopping appearance at the Glastonbury Festival this summer, Radiohead went on to complete the European festival leg of their 'All Hail To The Thief' world tour.

Lighting designer Andi Watson had been keen to develop a concept that was practical to tour for festivals as a 'special', but which could also be incorporated into the lighting rig and visual elements as the tour developed. Originally, he thought in terms of a video-based solution, but this transmuted into the idea of having a row of colour-changing LED battens upstage, capable of producing a variety of spectacular effects, as well as introducing a layer of texturing and depth to the stage.

Watson researched the LED products currently on the market before deciding on the James Thomas Pixelline 1044 batten, of which 48 were rigged vertically, end-to-end on 24 Manfrotto stands. Watson reali

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ETC kicked off the PLASA Show's product launches this morning with a champagne breakfast for members of the press - and what will surely be one of the most-talked about product launches of the PLASA Show. ETC unveiled its Source Four Revolution for the first time - a new moving light with Source Four-quality brightness and cosine distribution, precise imaging, and a 16-36° zoom capability. ETC's QuietDrive makes motors run more effectively, so the Revolution is a uniquely quiet moving light. Revolution's integrated colour scroller means no light leaks or extra cables, and the system includes on-board dimming and globally-compatible electronics. Revolution's base unit provides pan, tilt, beam-edge change, zoom, Internal Media Frame, integrated colour scrolling and two static gobo modules. Four slide-in external modules provide more features, tool-free.

Also new from ETC is a new wall-

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A brand new line of digital accessories - the 'DigiBox' range - has been unveiled by LA Audio. The new range, which includes versatile digital toolboxes, housed in compact aluminium cases, comprises an AES channel divider, AES/SPDIF converter, AES three-way splitter, SPDIF four-way splitter, word clock/super clock generator, word clock/super clock converter and four-way word clock distributor. LA Audio also has its new G400 four-channel frequency-conscious noise gate on display, and the GC400 - a two-channel auto compressor and frequency-conscious noise gate.

Audient is displaying one of the first production units of its brand new eight-channel mic pre-amp, the ASP008. This compact, 1U rack-mount unit features eight mic preamplifiers, developed from the mic-pre design used in the company's ASP8024 recording console and the Aztec Live Performance console. All channels include XLR input

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DiGiCo has introduced the DiGiTRACS at PLASA 2003. This is a dedicated 56-track hard disk multitrack recorder that allows a soundcheck or live performance to be recorded and recalled. It also provides the benefit of an extremely compact show or tour recorder. At the heart of DiGiTRACS is Merging Technologies' Pyramix software and its powerful Mykerinos DSP card.

Designed with simplicity in mind, the DiGiTRACS is built into a rugged 4U 19" rackmount casing with internal cooling, and connects to the FOH D5 Live using two BNC MADI cables. The unit is rackmounted on rails, with a lockable front panel, and slides out for easy access.

400Gb of media storage is provided by a high reliability RAID multiple hard disk array for maximum data security. It also features an 80Gb removable 'caddy' drive for archiving, back-up and post-production data exchange. The front panel provides USBII

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To celebrate the world launch of Meyer Sound's long-awaited UPJ-1P - the compact and cost-effective sister to the world-famous UPA - Autograph Sales has announced a very special PLASA show offer for the first 100 units purchased in the UK.

The UPJ-1P is the first Meyer Sound self-powered loudspeaker system to incorporate VariO technology - a unique system that allows the 80x50 HF horn to be rotated through 90° without compromising the loudspeaker's awesome performance. This allows the UPJ to be a true workhorse - equally suited to main FOH duty, as a front fill, under balconies or even as a monitor wedge.

The UPJ-1P represents a major milestone for Meyer Sound's UK customers; based on the concepts that have made the UPA-1P the most successful self-powered loudspeaker ever, the new addition to the family opens up a world of audio possibilities for rental companies in every market.

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Power Gems, known for its ballast products in the motion picture field, will introduce a high-frequency sine wave 575W ballast with integrated hot re-strike ignitor. The new ballast has fewer parts and generates less heat than conventional systems, even with an active unity power factor correction stage. The new ballast doesn't require fan cooling in usual applications, is lightweight and cheaper to manufacture than its conventional counterparts.

Power Gems conducted a series of tests at Philips in Belgium, which demonstrated that lamps which had operated for 1,000 hours on high frequency sine wave displayed considerably reduced de-vitrification, and appeared almost new. Power Gems see this development as revolutionizing the way we consider discharge luminaires in the future, not only for the moving light industry but for theatre, venue and film applications also, where the ballast now

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Visitors to the High End stand can see the company's High End shows latest Catalyst development, the Catalyst DL1. The original Catalyst combines a media server and moving mirror light with an off-the-shelf video projector: Catalyst DL1 significantly enhances the technology by housing a digital engine in a ruggedized package which has the look and feel of a moving light, yet the versatility of a moving projector. Users are able to take images from DVDs, videos and other types of media and display them with complete control over image size and shape.

To help bridge the video and traditional lighting worlds, Catalyst DL1 incorporates the communications standards of both: VGA, RGBHV and S Video inputs for incorporating movie, film or graphics content, and DMX programming - a lighting communications standard that allows the DL1 to be remotely pointed or focused from any DMX-based control u

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Total Fabrications' 'new wave' is a striking new alternative to traditional aluminium truss and differs dramatically in several exciting ways. Firstly, innovative construction methods allow the use of new materials, including carbon fibre and acrylic. The carbon fibre, in addition to its high strength, can be printed prior to the tube construction, allowing textures, such as wood grain or corporate logos to be integral to the truss members. The acrylic version captures light and can provide dramatic lighting effects.

Secondly, as the structural web is formed from an extrusion, it can be cut into elaborate shapes. new wave comes with the patented OMNI connection system, a fully rotating unisex fork connector, allowing a wide array of reconfigurable two and three-dimensional structures. These can be assembled without the need for expensive custom fabrication. OMNI connectors also behave

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Sunday, 7 September, 10.00am and the 26th PLASA Show has opened its doors to crowds of visitors at London's Earls Court. The new-look PLASA Show, with its stunning central bar and networking area at its heart, offers a wealth of new product innovations from the leading manufacturers and suppliers of professional lighting, audio, staging, audio-visual, communications and display technology. The Show has once again proved its reputation as the international launchpad for new product innovations, with 79 new products nominated for the PLASA Awards for Product Excellence and many, many more new product launches everywhere on the show floor.

We'll be keeping visitors to this website up to date with some of the highlights from London over the next four days, including the announcement of the winners of this year's Awards for Product Excellence on Tuesday evening, and a complete review of the

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Kinesys's Elevation 1+ variable speed controller has proved its worth on the recent Robbie Williams' tour. Existing hoists can be used with the system after a straightforward conversion, and can then be returned to a working inventory as standard fixed-speed hoists running from a traditional motor controller. The addition of an Elevation 1+ controller, however, allows them to become full variable-speed hoists with millimetre positional accuracy. Using CM Lodestar hoists, speeds from 0.5m to 21m per minute are possible, and a variety of other manufacturers' hoists can also be controlled. Lodestar conversions can range from a basic electrical conversion to the inclusion of dual silent brakes and multiple limit switches.

Kinesys - Stand R71

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Astera - Large MPU - June 2025
Sennheiser - MPU - June 2025

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