James Remo

Not really. More “it’s not me, it’s you” to steal the words of Miss Ruby Wood - A bit more certain of the position than an obtuse blanket statement.

LD “I’m definitely sending 100% on ch 501 to that smoke machine” Me “Swisson tells me you ain’t.” LD “Oh... I guess it’s me then” Checks patch “Ahh....” Priceless.

The DMX cat is great for benching fixtures, with its large library and easy to use app. For grabbing a tester to fix an onstage problem the swisson wins out for its ruggedness, simplicity and speed, it’s a one box solution that doesn’t need a phone to connect, or turn arounds to monitor DMX input. They are different tools for different jobs, each with their own specialty. The chauvet rdm2go gets positive feedback from those that have it, however one moan I’ve heard is the rechargeable battery. You can always grab a new pp3 (from the lamp check on your art rack perhaps?) and keep going with the swisson, where as the chauvet needs to be recharged, probably just when you need it most

The Martin glaciator is the only unit that comes to mind that doesn’t use co2 or dry ice. You need to keep an eye on the drip tray for long term use

VME are currently selling off some bits that may be of interest on the popular auction site https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/vme_ltd/m.html?item=283506094855&hash=item420247b307%3Ag%3AMPMAAOSwc4Fc9lY0&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

Jess Glynne is the support on the spice girls shows. Same PA, same stage, same system tech.

It’s not a matter of hope, it’s the job of the system tech to model the venue and use the prediction software to design a rig to suit the venue. System techs on a gig of this scale will be experienced and road proven, so there is your expert. If the sound was good for Jess Glynne then the system tech probably did a good job. Purely speculation here, but it’s more likely that off site monitoring required shading of the array to address noise issues. Mixing a gig of this scale it doesn’t really fall into one person’s lap, it’s a collaborative effort between FOH mixer and system tech, often shackled by a noise control team.

If the anytronics is outside the budget then I expect this is too, but having been rather impressed when I came across it in a theatre in Ireland recently I think it needs a little more exposure. £880 plus vat from canford, but who pays full price ;) https://www.elclighting.com/products/sidekick-too/

I'd argue the better net result point, having toured a setup between arenas and academies, having your followspots from the front truss rather than a balcony gives a lot less spill. The skill of the operator is less important, with colours and fades taken out of their hands, the operator just needs to keep the talent in the centre of the screen. Yes by their nature they are more complicated, yes more expensive, but with your spots and cameras in pre-rig truss and not having to lump three big followspots up to the gods I know what I'd rather take on a tour. Budget allowing, of course

Metronomy (the band) used switchable privacy glass on their keyboard stands, that changed from frosted to clear with the application of power. This could be used to reveal action behind the glass or to project on the frosted surface. Not cheap and not very tour-able, but might fit your bill otherwise Can be seen in this video, near the end

Having used the robe robospots several times on tours I do agree that it’s very useful, however I suggest it is very out of reach for the majority of schools, not just the financial barrier but the infrastructure and ability to hang a 25+ kg mover, when this thread is about some kids going up a tower....

From my rough maths you could hire 5 to 7 traditional followspots for one robo spot system.

Quite right, blackout on movement is set on ch5. Still could be what the issue is.

Sounds like blackout on movement is on. Press menu till you see Pers, hit enter, scroll till you see bl.Co and make sure that is set to OFF

The last time this design went out they used doughty modular frames, now it’s heading to festival season it needs to be refined and faster to deploy. I figured I might find exactly what I envisaged on a shelf somewhere, but I guess the custom fab route wouldn’t be too time consuming, as long as I can prototype and get it signed off within the next month. The zip-clip stuff looks interesting, thanks

Looks good! A lot neater than what I had in mind, I do worry the batten might droop as it’s going to stand off a little, but worth buying a bunch to try out. Anyone else have any suggestions?

The A rig will require roughly 300 of these, whilst the reutlinger is a wonderful unit, and I already own a bunch of the type 80, its massively over engineered for this application, and would blow the budget sky high. A simple clamp made of two plates and a bolt is more what I had in mind, with the plates having a saddle and bump profile for clamping onto the SWR. I've seen the type of unit so I know they exist, akin to half a bike seat mount, about the size of a speaker clamp. The idea is the soft ladders drop directly into road trunks for transport, and a clunky reutlinger would likely damage the diffusers if rattling around in the box on the truck.

Something like the type 25 Bo6 might work, but I'd want to use a larger gauge swr than 2mm for this application. It has to be tour worthy, bumping in and out of festivals all summer

I’m looking for a specific type of wire rope clamp, that could be used to secure a Martin Sceptron to a drop wire, effectively making a ‘soft ladder’ where the sceptron form the rungs of the ladder. Ideally it would clamp onto about an inch of swr, so the units don’t twist downwards under their own weight, and have a hole for an m6 bolt to attach through, as I would like to bolt to the extrusion directly. My internet searches only turn up wire rope grips of various designs, nothing really suitable. Any pointers of more specific search terms or products that might fit the bill? Thanks in advance James

Cheaper than building one? https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F123415221980

Yes, works perfectly fine. In fact early Avolites Pearls only had 2 DMX 5 pin connectors, from which the 4 universes were available, I still have a set of convertors in my tools. Companies like Siyan have 5 core FOH looms, on small jobs you use them without adaptors, on bigger jobs you can get 2(x) universes down the (x) cables in the loom.

Apart from the Martin M-Touch I don't know of another company that lets you use more than one "master" wing. In fact gMa onpc hardware can't be used with their desks, Avo tiger touch wings can't be used with the titan mobile, and the titan mobile wing doesn't work with the titan one dongle. With chamsys you can use the extra wings with both desks and wing systems, and even on their own they unlock the full features of maqic q. I can loose one of my two boxes from my fly system and still have a show (MQ 80 in one box, 2 extra wings and a B4 in another, laptop in carry on)

So this “safety announcement” is basically “don’t force it in the wrong way”??? I’ve seen local crew force speakon and old powercon in the wrong way, yet no announcement about them? I did have a bunch of truecon which worked their way loose in the connectors, but I put that down to poor manufacturing, as once tightened up properly the issue didn’t re-occur, and that was on a 3 month arena tour.

For the record I found a workable solution to the issue I was having, setting an empty channel to blink on and off keeps the DMX frame rate up to 5fps which keeps the cheaper lights from 'dropping' data and glitching.

In Vancouver tonight, ended up with the 1 universe DMX king box that is ok as a DMX input to the resolume servers, but have had a couple of issues using it as an output node (as I am doing today, as the house ArtNet nodes 'could not be reconfigured' to the 2.x.x.x range.. and our setup has fixed ip's and is quite involved with midi triggers over network from ableton machines) with cheaper led fixtures