Junior8

Interesting thought. When Furse were dominating the schools market they introduced a patch panel using Bulgin plugs that went alongside their modular dimmerstrip product. Prior to that their small resistance boards - a rather less well built version of the Junior 8 - used normal 5A as did Strand. In my experience in the 1960s and early 70s in schools these boards were always hard wired into a local fused breaker and it wasn't until the modular thyristor product came along that any thought was given to having them served by local plugs and sockets for mains input. I think it was the portability that led to the change. Funnily enough I don't think the unshielded plugtops were ever seen as a risk per se since in those days pupils were very rarely allowed anywhere near the equipment but you are right about the pre-rubber versions. What worried the local electrical inspector here was the increasing freedom of schools through the devolving of budgets to them to buy their own lanterns without his supervision and the increasing availability of reasonably cheap 1KW lanterns as opposed to the previous typical 500W which had almost automatically given some protection against overloading small basic systems. Interestingly when Pulsar did a 6 way with IEC sockets it was not recommended in my area due to the need to re-wire any 5A patch panels. BTW when specifying a new studio theatre as late as 1990 I was looked at very askance for demanding 15A as standard in a school instalation.

This whole installation looks odd. Quite why they selected Wallpacks which needed a hard wired patch panel - using 5A IEC sockets moreover - when there were better solutions available off the shelf is a mystery. I wonder who's used T&E into the industrial types which should maybe have something a bit more up to the job than a cooker switch with no protection. Then to carve up the side panel of the bottom wallpack to install the three analogue control sockets makes no sense.

 

The OP may be able to get it all working but it will still look and indeed be a bit of a lash-up.

If they are prepared to pay this worker to waste their time and the venue's money in this way and you are a a volunteer helper leave them to it. They won't implement anything you suggest anyway in all probability.

So have I got this right. All three wallpacks are working but only two appear to have power feeds through industrial types one labelled 1-4 the other 5-8? Is the other plugged into the twin gang 13A flying lead on the floor?

Right then. Take the balcony seats between the organ wall and the first aisle out of use for audience and rig stands and lanterns there when required. Hire them in, run the tails to the control point. Job done. It's be a lot simpler without the organ!

You have a very difficult job on here. Looking at the rake of the balcony I can't see the side walls being of any real use to you except at the very top - even then you will have problems, and going on to the ceiling seems replete with access problems. Many years ago the solution would probably have been to hang a grid of acting area floods above the stage area pointing straight down supplemented by a few spots in an housing on the balcony front just in front of where the picture is taken from. Though I don't think, sorry Don, McCandless' method is any use except in pointing out the desirable angles here, a scale elevation plan both from side to side and front to rear has to be the starting point. Remember to add a line above the backs of the balcony seats to represent the heads of the audience. You will in all likelihood find the optimal positions are on a sky hook in some impossible location. It's a lovely space but you can call it a theatre as much as you like - it isn't one. It's an old church being used as a theatre. In reality I think any solution will probably have to involve the balcony fronts in some way unless you can install some bars hanging longitudinally along the line of the ceiling just where it curves up to that recess.

 

I remember dealing with a combo who is no longer about who did the Green Ginger and Zero 88 combos. We did use them a lot because they were local-ish to us in the south.

 

It was also the same company who did a Zero 88 level 12 and anytronics 4 channel in my local working mens club ** laughs out loud **

 

I last bought any GG dimmers off John Coe it must be around the time they and was it Genlyte were sold to Eurolight who I think John moved to - or he may have been on his own at the time. I think he was for a while. I specified a Sirius 24 and a Level 12 but all these years later I have no recollection of whether GG ever made any controls of their own. Did they?

 

 

 

First of all I think the Level 12 has been modified. If I recall aright they came from the factory with one 8 pin locking din per 6 channels. Pins 1-6 channels 7 +20v 8 common return. I can think of one particular firm which supplied a lot of schools with Green Ginger/Zero 88 combinations at that time but usually using the GG standard 6 channel 12 way pack. As the three dimmer packs are fed by 2 16 amp industrial types I wonder if the two which must be paired are the two which don't work. Sorry I don't see any alternative here to disconnecting the 240v, prising the cupboard off the wall and simply taking everything apart and starting from scratch. I suspect the 6 pin leads might be 1-4 channels 5 +20v 6 common return. I agree Micropack 2. Micropack 1 did not have channel fuses on front panel if I remember correctly.

Remember the WEM stuff well. My first system - 40w, 2 Shure 515 High impedance mics, and 2 4X12" columns. 1973 - I think and my school caretaker lost the mains cable. I bodged it feeding in a piece of cable through the line output jack socket. Still in use in 1995 when I did a little job there. In 76 we had Slade with 1 WEM 100W mixer/amp and two or three 100W slaves in old beer crates with a pair of 4X12" on each amp. We thought that mega loud.

 

Very easy to lose the mains cable - 13A to Bulgin iirc. They did a really neat PA where the columns (4x12 inch high) split in half and then clipped together grille to grille for transport. 100w mixer amp and slave did seem mega loud though personally I thought the sound was better when they'd been running for around an hour. During my college years I think the biggest sound system brought along was by Emperor Rosko when he was running his roadshow - all by Orange ??metamp??. Most bands on the non-uni circuit turned up with 100W PA and backline and one roadie/driver..

Dunno about that one, but Charlie Watkins claimed he used 1500W for "Stones in the Park" in 1969, with a quarter of a million audience in Hyde Park

 

The PA system was supplied by Watkins Electric Music, who already handled amplification at previous Hyde Park shows. Company founder Charlie Watkins recalls it was the largest PA he had assembled to that point and, unable to provide enough gear himself, he was forced to borrow extras from other groups, later saying, "I didn't have many columns, but I wanted to put 1500W up. I borrowed some from T-Rex. They all chipped in — that's what we used to do."

 

I have a feeling that Charlie Watkins claimed that the wall of sound he put together about 1969 was a first for that power.

Youngsters watch and wonder my age yes it was that long ago.

Don't forget you'll also need the correct spigot adaptors to mount lanterns on them. The one shown is the Ref 626 - beware there was a 'junior' version Ref 627 which was only approved for use with the 23,45,123, 137 and 60 as I recall. If the sliding collar has gone missing they might not be fully reliable in extension.

 

So question to freelancers is:

Do you provide your own T&C's

Do you just put up and shutup to keep the work?

Or do you negotiate terms that are mutually agreeable (in my experience anyone clients doing the T&C's thing are big enough that they see freelancers as a commodity, and the chain of 'admin people' doesn't provide a very good medium for negotiation).

 

 

Preferably the last but sometimes you have to accept a standard contract with a customer, but in that case it scan still be the subject of horse trading. In my case they are generally buying a deadline critical end product. In those circumstances I would not accept any request to inform them of how when and where I was doing the work what expenses I was incurring and how I charged them. In the nice little job I referred to the manager, through an underling, wanted to know how I was charging time. I gave them an example of a day when I was working on behalf of three separate clients in London, Brighton and Chichester. They didn't seem to understand that someone had to pay for all that time and travel but it was entirely up to me how I allocated it. As long as they got the product that was all that should concern them. They did not agree despite the contact so I walked away - always include a get out clause if you can in anything longer term than one job. It might not be surprising to hear that the two business clients couldn't give a monkeys it was a local authority client who wanted to micro-manage.

1st off, How do you deal with it, when someone sends you a T&C's document that tells you what you can and can't bill on, what your responsibility are (yet does not mention a specific contract or engagement for details) etcetc that certainly goes against your own T&C of business? And largely sounds like an internal document for employees

 

 

You have to reject it. The customer cannot dictate how you charge and cannot dictate how you do the work within reason. I once had to terminate quite a nice little contract after the manager at the client changed and started to question the invoices wanting to know individual details of a job that had been let to me at a fixed price for the final product. They should not know and do not need to know what you are billing for or indeed what your profit added to that is. I only ever take on work at a fixed price all inclusive and the invoice simply bills that fixed price. The contract simply details what I am contracted to provide, when, and for how much - in a bit more detail of course. If you accept and sign detailed T&Cs which make you seem treated as a quasi employee you do run the risk of ending up with you employment status at least being questioned.

It also doesn't cover this either, as it is not a consumer transaction, but a business one. Interestingly the argument here is that often equipment is eminently for for purpose, but the people running it aren't. I really cannot see any judge determining that a sophisticated, expensive, professional quality installation is not fit for purpose because the opening staff are not competent? Why would anyone think that this kind of kit should be capable of running itself?

 

 

Quite right. I had forgotten that charities and non-profits were counted as businesses

 

 

 

 

It's even worse really I was in a church the other week where two members of some committee were in the course of being bamboozled into buying a totally over specified instalation in a space that really didn't need anything at all. I could hear their conversation everywhere in the space! In these cases I always advise, if asked, to divide the sum quoted by the number of hours a week it was in use and see if the answer looked ludicrous over a five year period. It usually does. Churches have better things to spend three figures on.

 

Actually I'm with Paul on this. On the way out of the church I was visiting I said to my wife something along the lines of: thirty years ago if they were determined to buy something I'd have supplied them with an nice three channel Eagle 30 watt amp, two column speakers with maybe 5 small elipticals in each and some mic points in the pulpit, on the lectern and by the altar. Goose necks on the first two and a desk stand for the latter. It'd probably still be happily working now.

 

At my own church each Sunday I sit near a cabinet with four radio mic recievers, (only one is ever used) a goodness knows how many ways graphic equalizer, I suspect about 200W of amplification all fed to a number of cabinets around the church including places where nobody repeat nobody ever sits or has done in living memory! The only grosser waste of money was the pipe organ installed twenty years ago that needed £10,000 spent on it last year as it needed 'servicing'.

 

As Leslie Evershed Martin said when building the CFT 'It's terribly easy to spend other people's money'

And only seven years later https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-plans-for-radiohead-stage-that-collapsed-had-sloppy-mistakes/

Get the supplier back. Remember the equipment was sold under the sale of goods act.It must therefore be fit for purpose.

When I finished college in 1975 I could earn more as an unskilled worker in a rural local factory than most jobs were offering in The Stage and for a fixed 37.5 hour week with all overtime paid at time and a half. Fifteen years later at a receiving house near here it was only the weekly get out money that squared the circle for a number of the staff sorry I mean the two technical staff. But it's not just technicians. A student I taught later, a good mover and singer who worked pretty regularly, gave up theatrical work after one tour when she realised working in a solicitors office down the road was a better economic proposition. On Kerry's final point I am very glad that back them, wanting to get married, I stopped taking The Stage saw sense and settled for a regular pensionable job. I got the same enjoyment from the technical work I did as an amateur or on the side.

 

Nothing to my mind has really changed.

 

Well apart from one thing. I fear that given the age of the majority of technical staff Kerry outlines the very maximum salary offered to such workers will probably be £1 below the level at which they have to start repaying student loans - £364 a week or about £9 an hour.

hire can be a real problem for education. They have a very odd funding culture

 

Well agreed but hire was never a problem for us as a) we had clever heads and b) we used the school funds reimbursed from ticket sales if necessary.

 

Mind you I had a very strict personal rule about equipment purchase. If it was likely to be idle for 38 out of a 40 week academic year we simply didn't buy it and made do with what we had. In schools it doesn't matter - not really. This is why for a new studio theatre in 1992 the only lighting I bought new was 4 Starlette Fresnels. The rest was Strand and Furse kit from existing instals - none of which had done more than, I estimate, three months work in 38 years. In one cupboard I found a package of Cinemoid, dispatched from King Street in 1962, unopened!

 

 

 

In this situation I would always hire. The trouble with sound outside is it is so unpredictable and unique. I can recall situations where it has been dire in the actual concert area but perfect 200 yards down the road. And there is also the issue of nuisance. A couple of years ago a Vintage event including music took place at a historic property three miles north of here as the crow flies and I was thoroughly enjoying the entertainment in my garden! Due to the prevailing winds and the nature of the surrounding landscape the sound was crystal clear. WE simply can't give you advice - you need to get someone who has the experience to some and look and try things out.

 

By the way it is easy to equip yourself with the simple knowledge to know what a rig of equipment is likely to draw in terms of current and so be able to estimate the electrical feed infrastructure for a temporary instal. If you can't do that and are talking about cables getting hot from experience then the others are right. Stop now.

the trouble here is that the land concerned has signs up saying things like 'Waveney district Council - no ball games" yet East Suffolk, who are the latest incarnation of Waveney say they don't own it and suffolk county Council do. they refute this, as Wveney have their signs up. Land registry jokingly suggested that if I fenced it off at my expense and nobody complained for a few years, it would become mine - and it's HUGE. I'm after them paying for the paintwork repair on my van when a tree fell on it. So there's no invoice, sadly.

 

I like the idea of inheriting the land though.

 

Sadly the simplest way to start to investigate this is not available with East Suffolk as they do not have a search documents facility on their website. With councils that do - usually in the Council Democracy section - putting the name of the open space in the search box and simply seeing if it comes up in any meeting papers might be a start. Suffolk County Council does have such a page https://committeemin...uk/Default.aspx but it depends on just how well it works. My very strong suspicion however is that if Waveney put the signs up it was theirs. It could be however that they manage it on behalf of someone else - and that might even be a parish council. If you did make it look as if you were starting to fence it off you can bet the legitimate owner would be there pdq!

Councils have always been notoriously bad payers but it has worsened greatly since so many of them outsourced their back office work to the likes of Capita. It rook me so long to be paid for a consultancy job with a London authority ten years ago I decided I would never do any council work again. And that was before the staff in general became so demoralised that now they simply don't care.

If you allow any credit this is invariably going to arise to a greater of lesser extent. It all depends on how long you are prepared to be an interest free banker to the slow paying clients. Leaving aside the accounting package a spreadsheet simply showing the total invoices at any day/week against the income for that day/week against the cash in hand at bank will tell you the cashflow situation at a glance. You don't need the detail on this just the totals. If you than ask the question if I wanted to close the business this month what hit would I take if 25/50/75% of the creditors wouldn't or couldn't pay you'll know the horrible truth. I know it sounds crude but the plain fact is that many one man bands are 'buying' work without realising it and even at low interest rates every day late the subsidy comes off the bottom line.

Look here https://www.tracytools.com/taps-and-dies/BSW-taps-dies