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PCM, Wirral-based European importers and distributors of the CM Lodestar hoist used PLASA 2001 to present its latest cheque to the PSA (Production Services Association) in support of their Welfare and Benevolent Fund. This brought the total now donated by the company to over £17,000. The cheque for £4,020 was presented to the PSA’s Chris Coates by PCM’s John Jones. This instalment results from PCM’s on-going ‘sponsorship’ of the PSA’s Welfare and Benevolent Fund, an initiative launched in February 1999. The deal is linked directly to PCM’s sale of Columbus McKinnon Lodestar hoists: for every Lodestar hoist purchased in the UK through PCM, £10 is donated to the Welfare Fund.

The deal was set up by PCM’s John Jones. Jones sees support of the Fund as part of PCM’s on-going commitment to the entertainment and production industry: &qu

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Phoebus Manufacturing of San Francisco has just completed the restoration and upgrade of the ‘Lindbergh Beacon’ for the newly-restored Los Angles City Hall, coordinating with the landmark building’s grand rededication on Sunday, September 23, 2001. On the strength of a similar installation in the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, Project Restore and the City of Los Angeles chose Phoebus Manufacturing to renovate and refit this famous artefact of the twenties. The Charles Lindbergh Beacon was an aircraft guidance light which sat atop City Hall from 1928 until World War II. The beacon was first illuminated by President Calvin Coolidge who activated the light by pressing a telegraph key from his desk in the White House. The beacon’s light revolved six times a minute and was visible for 60 miles, providing guidance for pilots approaching Los Angeles airport in th
Doughty - Banner - from 6 June 2025

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Tracoman Inc, a Stanton Group subsidiary and a professional lighting industry market leader in North and South America, and Coemar Spa, a world-leading manufacturer of automated lighting fixtures based in Castel Goffredo, Italy, has announced an agreement in principle whereby Tracoman will acquire a controlling interest in Coemar.

Gerald Cohen, CEO of Stanton Group, said: "We recognized the unique and special talents within Coemar early on and have worked diligently since the beginning to get this deal done. Coemar and Tracoman have seen tremendous growth in the past 24 months. The unity of talents and synergy of the combined businesses will help to fuel further growth in the coming years. The extraordinary talents of Coemar’s founder will greatly benefit the combined group in the future."

The agreement will allow the current management of Coemar to run their operatio

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James Thomas Engineering has supplied technical design and procurement company Technovations with an innovative, customised ground support system for The Imagination Theatre at the Legoland Windsor attraction. The system was part of a major refit to prepare the theatre for the upcoming season where it hosts the Life On Mars show, an exciting new multimedia LEGO production.

Technovations’ Graham Owens explains that they turned to James Thomas to help design a unique, multi-purpose, trussing solution to maximise the theatre’s rather unusual space. It was originally an open air theatre and is now enclosed by a tented roof. The trussing system had to accommodate - and be utilisable for - all production elements in the theatre, both stage and auditorium lighting, sound and scenery as well as providing plenty of scope for larger, more complex productions that will be staged in th

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Edinburgh-based Northern Light has been appointed sole agent for the UK for the ELC Lighting product range. Well known since PLASA 1998 for its focusHAND and focusBRAIN HF remote control for DMX equipment, ELC lighting is now producing a full range of DMX accessories including the showSTORE DMX real time recorder/player, the small AC 612 wall mount 12-channel DMX controller, as well as DMX mergers and splitters. John Allen, managing director of Northern Light, comments that ELC is a perfect complement to their product range and to the company’s activities as a major contractor, stockist and distributor of professional equipment for the stage.

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PLASA 2001, the Professional Lighting and Sound Association’s annual entertainment technology showcase, held at Earls Court from 9-12 September, received an overwhelming thumbs up from exhibitors and visitors alike.

Understandably, the horrific events in New York and Washington cast a shadow over the Show, not least because of the large number of American exhibitors and visitors who always support the event. The shock of the news was felt widely across the show floor, but it quickly turned to a resolve to keep the Show open and a determination that business should go ahead as usual.

Attendance figures were boosted 4.5% on last year’s event as 13,373 visitors (subject to ABC audit) attended the spectacular four-day show to witness the unveiling of the industry’s latest innovations. Of these visitors, an amazing 25% were international. Results of an exit survey showed

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Tannoy Professional has presented its ‘Best New Distributor’ Award to Avix Tech, based in Seoul, South Korea. Sean Martin, Tannoy's international sales manager, explained: "Avix's business this last fiscal year has been nothing short of outstanding for a new distributor. We usually allow a couple of years for distributors to settle in, but Avix hit the ground running and has achieved tremendous results in the last 18 months, which is why they have been awarded this accolade. I can only put their success down to Avix's excellent staff training, attention to detail, confidence in the brand, and their sheer enthusiasm to win business. These factors have enabled them to achieve almost 200% of their target, which naturally we are extremely happy about and long may it continue."

Jin Doo Lee from Avix commented: "Just a year doing business with Tannoy has resulted i

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Pro Production 2002 - a new trade show for live event production professionals will take place from January 11-13, 2002 at the San Diego Convention Center, USA. Presented by Timeless Communications Inc, parent company of Pro Lights & Staging News, Pro Production 2002’s tradeshow environment will feature workshops, panel discussions and manufacturer exhibits. Professional production products and services will be centre stage for the three-day event. According to Terry Lowe, president of Timeless Communications, Inc: "The goal is to give live event professionals their own convention. There are many trade shows in the North American market but none of them is solely focused towards the live event production industry. ProProduction 2002 will provide event professionals with their own convention where event technology and issues will be at the forefront."

The conference kick

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Six new products showcased at the Professional Lighting and Sound Association’s (PLASA) annual entertainment and technology show in London this week received top honours in the Show’s prestigious Awards for Product Excellence.

Living up to its reputation as the industry’s premier launch pad, the PLASA Show saw a record 56 technical innovations new to the market this year nominated for the Awards. All entries were featured in the New Technology Gallery, sponsored by Lighting&Sound International, which attracted enormous visitor and exhibitor attention and certainly took centre stage.

The awards were presented for Design Excellence and Technical Innovation in four categories: Lighting; Sound; Audio-Visual and Stage Engineering. The winners were presented with a PLASA Award for Product Excellence trophy, specially designed by DHA Lighting. Talking about the Awards, MD

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Community's CPL family of loudspeakers has grown by two this year, with the new CPL26 and CPL28 having made their industry debuts this month. Featuring IntelliSense driver protection, the duo is built to meet the aesthetic and performance demands of fixed installations ranging from restaurants and nightclubs to auditoriums and houses of worship. The compact, powerful enclosures perform with highly controlled directivity and sensitivity rated at 95dB at one watt/one metre.

Outfitted with a pair of 8" low frequency drivers, the CPL28, like the CPL26 (which houses dual 6.5" woofers), employs a two-way design using Community's UC-1 compression driver coupled with a newly-developed, 120° x 60° high frequency horn which can be rotated 90° to facilitate either vertical or horizontal mounting. While the frequency response of the CPL28 extends from 60 to 18,000Hz, the CPL26 ranges

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Following the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September, and in light of comments received from PLASA members, PLASA has organized an online Book of Condolence for members of the industry to record their respects for the victims of the attacks. The first messages have already been posted and the Book will remain open until the end of September, after which time the contents will be presented to ESTA for their archives.

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The first beneficiary of Light Relief was presented with a copy of CAST Lighting’s WYSICAD by Mark White, ETC’s regional manager for the UK and Ireland, on September 11 on the ETC stand at PLASA 2001. Julian Williams has been in the lighting business in various capacities for over 25 years, but for the past two years treatment for bowel cancer has prevented him from working. Part of his plan to get back into action is to learn how to produce stage lighting plans with AutoCad files and to then offer this as a service.

Tony Gottelier and Rick Fisher, co-founders of Light Relief, arranged for Julian to receive a copy of WYSICAD, the 2D and 3D visualization software program, with the co-operation of ETC and CAST Lighting. Then, when Glyn O’Donoghue, marketing director at AC Lighting, heard about the presentation, he immediately offered Julian a day’s training on the

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‘Ken's Bright Idea’ was the headline in the Evening Standard when Fourth Phase London projected Tory leader hopeful Ken Clarke's telephone number onto the outside of the Conservative Central Office in London's Smith Square. Following problems getting phone numbers to the voters, Ken Clarke's campaign party opted to project his phone number where as many members of the Conservative party as possible would see it. A press gathering was organized at the last minute and the operation was undertaken in true military style.

Fourth Phase London took the phone number to DHA Lighting where the file was modified in Adobe Illustrator, formatted to be run out on a film setter, run out, cut to size and mounted in slide frames. Then on August 22, a generator truck with James Hall and Tim Probert of Fourth Phase on board to operate a 6kW PANI projector, parked outside the Central Office.

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Marquee Audio has carried out a major installation at the Watersmeet Theatre in Rickmansworth. The company was awarded the contract by Three Rivers District Council after successfully tendering for the audio refit. The 481-capacity venue, which was built in the Hertfordshire town 25 years ago, stages a wide range of events, from spoken word, classical, jazz and pantomimes - as well as dinner dances, conferences and films.

The venue’s technical manager David Mead says that the new facilities at the venue, where the floor has a natural rake, will create more entertainment options. "In the past we have always had to sub-hire in equipment for any band requiring a PA."

Mead confirmed that while the old PA system, which had served the venue for 15 years, had been ripped out in favour of a Nexo PS15/LS1200, the existing Soundcraft Spirit Live 16/2 has been retained.

The N

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JBL’s VerTec line array system added power and style to the Miss Moneypenny’s area of the VIP tent at the Ministry of Sound’s mega dance festival - Knebworth 01. The VerTec system was specified by Ministry of Sound production manager Dave Bradshaw and the 12 cabinets were supplied by Liverpool-based Ad Lib Audio.

DJs performing at Moneypenny’s on the night included Jim Shaft Ryan, Anton Debiage, Steve Coogan, Steve Miller and Nic Gillet - joined by thousands of enthusiastic clubbers. Ad Lib also used a dbx Drive Rack speaker management system to control the VerTec rig at Knebworth: they are currently the largest stockist of Drive Rack in the UK. Additionally, there were also two bars in the VIP enclosure, one of which was sponsored by The Blue Zone and also featured a JBL sound system. JBL and The Ministry go back nearly a decade as technical partners. The famo

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The Belgian coastal town of Zeebrugge recently hosted the annual Sand Sculpture Festival, attracting around 45,000 visitors. Every year a special theme is selected to capture the imagination of the 65 artists who design and create the scenes. The team went totally overboard this year and recreated a pre-historic environment with a touch of fun about it on the beach. The whole area is about a 1000sq.m in size, and visitors are free to walk between the dinosaurs.

Deltarent won the contract to provide the sound for the opening, attended by 8,000 people, including all national TV stations, and spec’d the Martin Audio W8 system which they purchased earlier in the year. Inside the exhibition they used the specially-weatherproofed Martin Audio Blackline F12.

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The STLD is running a seminar on the impact of the use of moving lights in television. The decision to run the seminar comes in light of new ITC guidelines, which are likely to be adopted by the BBC, which cover the effects of flashing and moving lights on people with epilepsy and assesses whether programmes are suitable for broadcast.

The seminar, which runs on Monday 24 September at AC Lighting’s new offices in High Wycombe, will feature Professor Graham Harding, an expert in the field of Photosensitive Epilepsy and designer of a flash/pattern analyser that provides an analysis of the effects of television lighting on the viewer. STLD Members are encouraged to take along examples of their work which may have failed under other systems and see if they pass under the new device. The seminar will also discuss the use of monitoring equipment that will affect the way programmes can

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Since the end of 2000, DHA Lighting has been marketing its products direct through stockists in Europe, Scandinavia and Asia. Now with an international network of nearly 30 stockists, illustrating the company's growing international reputation and continuing its impressive rate of worldwide expansion, DHA Lighting's most recently appointed dealers are Audio Light Asia (Singapore) and Bon Studio (Greece). AC Lighting has also been appointed as a DHA stockist.

With a history dating back from the early 1970s, AC is one of the largest distributors of lighting equipment. Based in High Wycombe and Leeds, AC has long been a DHA dealer but will now stock a variety of products. As one of Singapore's leading lighting suppliers, Audio Light Asia has long been aware of DHA's products and services and will now stock a range of DHA gobos, moving effects and the Gecko. One of the largest distributors

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Utopium Lighting was part of a new production team working at the growing Ross International Festival supplying the lighting for 35 artistically diverse shows during August. The festival has grown year on year since it began in 1995 and this year, a giant 30m x 50m clearspan Roder structure was the festival’s main venue. With a capacity of 14,070, over 50,000 people attended the event nestled against the picturesque banks of the River Wye.

Utopium’s managing director Colin Bodenham worked with lighting designer Simon Tutchener, who designed the show and ran the desk for two of the shows - Vanessa Mae and Lulu - with Utopium’s crew adapting the rig to suit the other performances. Heading that crew were Stuart Farrell who ran the desk and Angus Chinn, who managed the power distribution and technical support. The team had their work cut out thanks to the run-rate of fou

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The LDI Show will go ahead as planned from November 2-4 in Orlando. In response to a number of enquiries following the events in New York and Washington, the organizers are keen to reassure people, through a statement posted on their website, that the exhibition will go ahead as usual. "We at LDI would like to express our deepest sympathy to all who are affected by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Our thoughts are with you. We cannot let terrorists bring world business to a halt and we at LDI and Primedia Business Exhibitions feel it is very important that all businesses show their resilience. At this time, we do not foresee major disruptions for a smooth and successful show floor opening on Friday, November 2, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. LDInstitute is still scheduled to open on Monday, October 29."

If any exhibitors or visitors have a

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Grand Central Recording Studios has recently purchased an Audient ASP510 surround sound management system to augment the post production facility based in Soho, London. Clients of this well-known studio consist of major advertising agencies and television production companies. The ASP510 interfaces with a Digidesign Protools and Procontrol system in Studio 3a, the music production suite catering for both stereo and 5.1.

Technical and financial director Ivor Taylor comments: "The ASP510 offers a solution for the problem of surround monitoring for a mixed stereo, surround and 5.1 set up. It is straightforward, easy to understand and well engineered with good back-up from the manufacturer."

Installing the ASP510 into this prestigious studio was also hassle free. "It came straight out of the box and it was all there, no hunting for any other parts or interfaces," Tay

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Specialists in the concert and corporate event markets, sound production company WE Audio, has broken into the theatre world with a new touring soul musical production, headlining Ruby Turner. Called Hold On, the show was written by Kwame Kwei-Armah, directed by Andy Hay and is promoted by Paddy Wilson’s Hold On UK. The sound system has been designed by WE Audio’s Wayne Barker, who has extended his inventory of Turbosound equipment with a major purchase from Shepperton-based Marquee Audio.

Barker, who has systematically built up his Floodlight stock from Marquee, realized that a different approach was needed to crack the intricacies of raucous ensemble sound, which requires speech intelligibility and even coverage, delayed into the rear stalls and upper balcony, with under-balcony infills. And so after deliberation, he invested heavily in Turbosound’s QLight series. H

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The recently expanded Creative Technology has quickly gained official IT and AV supplier status on a number of high profile exhibitions, including the recent Total Publishing 2001 show at Olympia in London. Contracted by organizers Quantum Business Media, Creative Technology supplied a semi-permanent network of PC hardware and iMacs for the Technology Theatre, which was used by numerous exhibitors for training workshops aimed at visitors to the show. Extensive use of sound equipment and IT data presentations were also incorporated for assisted product demonstrations.

Additionally, Creative Technology has gained official show status for numerous ongoing events, spearheaded by CT’s Exhibition Organiser’s account manager Beth Hathaway, recruited earlier this year. Based at CT’s NEC office, Beth covers the whole country and since joining has secured a number of exhibitio

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A former DMC winner and now DJ with Moby, ‘RJ’ visited the PLASA Show to stop by Lamba plc who provide him with his Stanton SK2F mixer and 650L cartridges. During a break from touring RJ, who has been working with Stanton products for the last year or so, explained how he received the phone call from Moby - who had heard a number of RJ’s remixes - and asked him to leave the studio world for a life on the road. "He had another DJ at the time, Spinbad; but he had other commitments and I went straight out to play in front of 70,000 people at Glastonbury, with no soundcheck, before embarking on a world tour."

Three months before everything was confirmed he started putting his rig together. "Equipment wise I had been looking for a pair of turntables with the straight tonearm philosophy since I won the DMC competition back in 1985, while for the mixer I chose

  1. Vari-Lite’s Major Sale Via EML
  2. AETTI-Loughborough Theatre Courses held at PLASA
  3. ESTA: Draft Rigging Standards for Review
  4. Marquee Appointed Crestron Dealer
  5. Ampekko & Blucat Agreement
  6. Vari-Lite Celebrates 20th Anniversary
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