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Robin D

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    Amateur theatre practitioner
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    Retired IT consultant with long interest in lighting. Mainly light church concerts and stage school end of term shows. Also a volunteer in local academy assisting in IT lessons and with productions.
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    Robin Derriman

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    East Anglia

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  1. If stage weights are out of budget, you can make your with a few square kids beach buckets, thin strips of timber and bags of postfix cement plus a cheap screw in handle for each weight. Cut the strip of timber to fit the bucket then an offcut of timber screwed to it at least the depth of the lip on the brace. Place in the bottom of the oven with a couple of layers of clingfilm over it. If the bucket has ramparts, cut a sheet of ply to cover them. Next cut some strips or squares of timber slightly longer but at least two knuckle widths of the handle size and at least as deep as the handle once fitted. . Cast the concrete, then insert the top squares of timber such that the concrete comes above the final handle height. Allow to set. and turn out, Drill the finished item to fit the handle. Do it properly and they will stack, albeit not as tidily as the proper stage weights. Did this for an Amdram group near where we lived years ago, but can't find the photo's. If I remember rightly, it cost us a bucket per weight as we ended up cutting the bucket away.
  2. And of course privacy and GDPR (video is data) needs consideration. Make sure the University hierarchy are aware of what is planned. I don't think it will be an issue as the policies and procures to be followed should already be in place. If it's to be put onto social media, any performance of copywrite material must explicitly allow recording and sharing. That also includes rehearsals.
  3. The Behringer C2 are cracking little units at the price. Put them up against some Rode M3's in a venue and no-one in the tech team, yet no-one, (except the Op on the desk) could tell any difference in sound quality. Very sensitive to noise coming up a stand though. easier to hang if you can.
  4. Was there line of sight from the mic to the receiver? Or did the audience act as a barrier? Has similar with some Trantec units and had to move the receiver rack to solve it. Yes phones are an issue. Ask that they turn them off. Not all will but 200+ looking for a signal, and a lot probably looking for WiFi will create a lot of RFI. Not everyone will do as you ask, but many will if you point out that it's not the most modern of equipment you are using and by leaving them on, they may well spoil their child's performance. Had another issue when going back to a venue where all had worked seamlessly on a prior occasion to find I had placed the racks within a few feet of a newly installed WiFi access point.
  5. If you can find one in bone china, it will be much stronger than normal china and less likely to break if dropped, although it might chip. Almost any charity shop/car boot/ antiques shop will have a choice. The other option, is to put a suitable rug down where the china is likely to be knocked so it has a soft landing. The problem with melamine ones is they do not 'sound right', and the chink of a cup meeting the saucer, is part of the atmosphere. (NB: The sound can be sucessfully mic'd with a carefully placed boundary or lavaliere if its a big venue.
  6. Just to update this. A call to Monacor in Germany gave me the current UK distributor who are Epic Audio. https://epicaudio.co.uk/. Neil there has proved very helpful in arranging a return to their workshop via a more local distributor. I am still chasing the church warden with the other questions, but it looks like a resolution may be on the way. Will try to remember to update as and when the matter concludes.
  7. I will endeavour to find out more. 👍
  8. Hi @sunray and thanks. What is the device you have pictured please? Some sort mains filter?
  9. Thank you @bruce. I have not t witnessed the crack. No fluorescent tubes. Nothing with motors. The organ is out of use as they don't have anyone to place it, the bells are hand pulled (by a prize winning team), heating is by tubes under the pews. Lighting is all incandescent (or candles). Heating is always turned off before the service starts I am told. It's an 8th Century church updated in Victorian crimes. Nothing appears to have changed recently. The power is the same supply to the whole village, so while I may be on a different phase, it's actually been reliable since the substation was upgraded about about a decade ago. The lace was rewired less than 20 years ago. There is only the one set of sub plus pillar. Everything stays connected all the time. I suspect a problem with the internal PSU, but it could be many things. Ian reports that there is no pattern in terms of how long it's been on. I guess I will have to find time to go down to have a play to see if I can recreate the problem.
  10. Our village church purchased one of the from a dealer who no longer exists a few year back. Perhaps 6-8 years. I am not an attendee but know the church warden well and have previously done sound and lights for concerts. Now it emitting a loud crack every so often. I suggested he contact the UK agent, no response received, or Monacor on Germany, also zero response. He rang Germany and no answer. Does anyone know anything about the company or have a current contact, or know anyone likely to undertake a repair please? Monacor Active Speaker System. model C-RAY/8 number 25.5630, Maker, Monacor International. Germany. Google shows the UK distributor as 'permanently closed'. The main website is still up and running. If I need to I will dismantle it myself, but have a lot on at the moment so would rather not. Thanks in anticipation. Robin
  11. I have some LEDJ 9hex10 that have been faultless. (Fingers crossed).
  12. I had similar in our local church (Dating to the 8th century) for a funeral of a village and church stalwart that was being streamed for overseas family. Someone else was handling the video, I just had to give him, and those sitting in the overspill marquee outside, the audio feed. The vicar wanted to move about so radio mic was the obvious answer. All worked great until they turned the organ on (a very old electric organ in a beautiful walnut cabinet). Terrible interference as soon as the vicar walked anywhere near the organ which is placed to one side of the aisle. Given the timescale... the coffin was already being carried in lead by the vicar. It was a couple of quickly placed Behringer C2 cardiods (No sneering please, they are cracking little units and great value for money.) plugged straight into the desk. I had taken them down to the church as originally told they would have a choir, but that didn't happen so I hadn't rigged them. Fortunately I had already run in a convenient snake from near the alter for the pulpit mic, through the priest door, back in through a tower window to the desk otherwise I would have been well and truly stuffed. Proves the old adage that you can test things in isolation, but environmental factors can still get in the way!
  13. Robin D

    Jester ml

    Does that mean I operate at the level of an 11 year-old????? 🤣🤣
  14. Robin D

    Jester ml

    Far from it Edward. I think you make many valid points. There was one other thing that I remember after posting. If I remember correctly, I think your support people said I could do it with an FLX but not the FLX(S) being the ability to exclude things from a DBO. There was a need to ensure that a couple of blues above the stage stayed on at all times for safety and also because one of the kids was terrified of complete dark and had a meltdown!. Even on my very, very old 70's Colortran 2 preset desk I could set independents that were then excluded from the master fader or DBO. I may have misremembered or misunderstood the absence of the feature. I had the drama teacher, Head of Drama and Deputy Principal breathing down my neck and was getting close to panic myself by then! 😘
  15. Robin D

    Jester ml

    And there is the rub. Your average school teacher understood the fader per channel concept. They do not understand more modern concepts such as I faced at zero notice with the FLX (S) that the school had been persuaded to buy from a supplier who was less than keen to assist. They got the call to help before I did. If you actually have the someone to use it, you also need Time Knowledge of what's in the rig and to have it properly patched, a clear understanding from the Director of the actual lighting requirements. In my experience, rarely do one out of three see the light of day and the call for help always goes out far too late. The keen student, (or even someone like me with limited experience on the modern stuff, but then I am advancing in years!), is never going to do a great job. I know that, but then you have generally a large group of children keen as mustard to perform, tickets sold to parents and a rapidly approaching first night, what do you do. The school I was referring too, I ended up teaching the Head of Performing Arts the fundamentals of DMX, as well as how sound gets to and from the stage to the sound mixer through a stage box! Now it's dead easy to knock the teachers and those that allow these situations to occur, but surely desks could be designed to be more intuitive thus reducing the learning curve? As said earlier I am certain the FLX is a cracking little desk but faced with the late hour, the lack of working knowledge of the desk by me, (but I had more idea than anyone else.)! It's also easy to criticise the silly old codgers like me who live in the dark ages. Maybe I should have kept up to date as an amateur, but with generally two 'stage/dance school type shows' a year using mainly my own gear for the last couple of decades years,, why would I a) invest £000's in a new desk, or b) invest in training on any number of modern desks I might just be called upon to assist with at very short notice? My background is electronics and IT consultancy but have been retired for several years. I also agree, it's not 1995, or even 1965 (with 2 x Junior 8's)! Sooner or later, something of the modern technology needs to be simplified or schools are going to stop doing shows and that will be a real travesty. The only thing anyone in the school knew how to do with the FLX was to use the colour picker to change the scene colour. Training certain teachers will help, but teachers move on, and is the incoming person going to get training on the equipment? You all know the answer to that. It's a huge challenge but one that system designers could really assist with if they stepped back from their own knowledge base and really put their minds to it. The alternatives of hiring in a LD and operator are just not going to happen whatever the purists here might thing should happen. I sometimes wonder if I should have persevered with the FLX, but driving home that evening having been thrown out by the caretaker who wanted to go home, I knew that with a hour or two next day before the opening matinee for local feeder primary schools, I could put a half decent light show on using the Smartfade sate in my garage. Rightly or wrongly, that's what I did. None of this helps the OP. I felt that adding my ten penneth worth was the right thing to do, but again, if anyone thinks that was wrong, I apologise.
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