J Pearce

Most companies have rightfully moved to white/beige/pink/brown/black. I regularly buy beige, brown, and black as good matches for skin, and have a drawer full of paint pens for getting even closer matching.

It’s also somewhat redundant in the age of led fixtures - it was designed to cool a laser printed acetate gobo enough for it to survive in the gate of a halogen lamped lantern. A Lustr/Ovation/whatever else can take a laser printer acetate natively and give you colour mixing fun too. And you can award yourself some green points for saving a tiny bit of power by using lots of hard to maintain and hard to recycle materials. (I said that last bit out loud again didn’t I?)

There are nicer headsets out there than tecpro. Sennheiser and AudioTechnica both do headsets with mics intended for PA output, and available terminated to jack for heapdhones and xlr for mic. Add a TX and RX and you’re away. One advantage of IEM for foldback is that it opens up talkback as an option.

The panasonic lumix cameras we have at work have a hot shoe adapter to take XLR at line level or mic level with or without phantom power. Works well.

I'd be using a beltpack TX and a beltpack IEM (or camera RX), all set to line level, but there's a cost to that approach.

Normal software or Theatre software? Worth knowing this before you book training.

You're after a "clew plate". Talk to Flints.

Is it a colourspace issue?

We use Fischer Amps chargers and their NiMh batteries. We have 5 of the 16 way chargers, and around 250 batteries (AA and AAA) in our stock. We date mark the batteries into stock, older batteries get shuffled onto non-show-critical jobs, and duff batteries get disposed of. On shows we use coloured dot stickers to denote two sets of batteries. On a matinee day we charge the evening set during the matinee show, which achieves full charge before battery change is due. Tech rehearsal days tend to weed out the dodgy batteries, and they usually fade so needing to do an interval swap would be a flag to take that battery out of circulation. We store our batteries fully charged, but don't leave them on charge. The above is fairly industry standard, though there are other chargers and batteries out there. Re voltage and indicators - some mics can be told they're using NiMh and adjust their indicators accordingly, on others it's just a matter of getting used to interpreting the readout correctly. More modern upmarket transmitters use integrated lithium based batteries that use their own chargers (Axxient, Senn 6000/9000 etc.) and provide very accurate battery life estimations.

X32 Rack with SD card would record direct to SD card, with remote control via OSC. What do you want out of timestamping, just a timestamp of the recording, or printing SMPTE LTC to an audio track?

Or some wedges of foam

You could probably fit any cheap dynamic mic capsule that will physically fit. There’s nothing fancy going on inside the headset, it just holds all the bits in the right place and routes the cabling. But obviously there’s no guarantee on level matching or sound quality.

All depends how long it's lit for per-show. For most cases a 30Ah golf cart battery would be fine. But a 90Ah leisure battery would have some spare and maybe have a happier life. I've actually done this. For real. In an actual show. Several times. It was all fine.

LED is nice, but not really necessary if it becomes complicated. If the truck is a full size car front then it'll easily accommodate a golf cart or leisure battery (and probably benefit from the weight). Add some suitably shaped car headlights from a scrap yard. If you want the lamps to run dimmer wire them in series. Add a crew operated switch. Halogen car headlights are only 55W. A pair is 110W, which is just shy of 10A. You wouldn't need a particularly large battery to run them for an hour.

The Sony and Sennheiser SK6212 packs are ok in wigs too. If you're tight on budget see if anyone's got Sennheiser SK5212 or Shure UR1Ms in stock (with matching receivers) - both significantly smaller than G3/G4/2000 or Trantecs, but somewhat cheaper in price than Axients. As you're in Watford it's probably worth calling Autograph, they're only just down the road from you.

It's harder with bigger packs like G3/G4 or trantecs. Shure Axient ADX1M are perhaps the best thing for the job with recessed mic connector and internal antenna, but not cheap. I've also used Sennheiser's SK6212 and Sony's DWTB03R in wigs. I wouldn't try it with a 2xAA battery mic TX, but I'm sure it has been done. I'd recommend putting the pack in a fabric pouch (I usually use URSA pouches, but you can make something similar inexpensively), this helps with cable management and helps manage sweat ingress. If you can terminate your mic capsules with less cable you'll help matters too. If your mics will take flexible antenna that will help, though do test for rf performance issues and be careful that the antenna doesn't get bundled up in the pouch which will likely affect rf performance. In terms of cables sticking out or getting strained - I usually 'dress' cables coming out of packs with heatshrink or self amalgamating tape such that the cable folds back down. This helps sticky out cables but also massively improves resilience of cables being pulled. Outside of that it's largely in the skill of your wig maker to disguise the lump and manage the weight. Obviously big hairpiece wigs will work better than very naturalistic wigs with centre partings. In terms of other solutions for pack 'mounting', have a look at URSA's range of straps and undergarments-with-mic-pouches-built-in - either as a product or as inspiration for how you can hide a mic pack. Waist straps, thigh straps, chest straps, back of a pair of shorts, under the armpit - there's options, but depends on costume and physical activity. It's worth noting that fitting the capsule to a wig can be a really good solution for getting the mic in the same place every show, even if the pack ends up on the actor's body.

There are various stage boxes you can use with the S21, at various price points. They're probably all more than the equivalent A&H, which makes sense as both Digico and A&H have the same parent company, and Digico is seen as the 'premium' brand. Worth noting that you get 24 local ins on the back.

If anyone has the time to pursue leads, there is still a 520i sat in the LX booth of symphony hall (or was a few months back).

I'd suggest that a X/M32 is probably more fairly compared to the QU than the SQ. If you have the budget for the SQ then it's worth also looking at the Digico S21. I really like the S21 and find it a very powerful platform considering the size and cost. I've not enjoyed a single Presonus desk that I've sat behind.

I was lucky enough to see one of these items being dragged out of a store this week. Sadly I won't make it to PLASA this year, but it's good to see the industry making moves to preserve some of the history of how we got to where we are.

I'd argue that sound and lighting control positions should be subject to DSE assessments, and thus meet the spec as per DSE Regs (1992). We have some of these in our sound control positions (elevation is needed for sightlines), they're quite comfy without being a super padded gaming chair style.

I expect the ATEM unit is unbalanced, and the amp is balanced. This is a good use of a line DA - or using a separate output from the mixer if possible.

What are you sending the split output to? For most normal setups a XLR Y split cable should not affect level, as the destination should have a very high impedance input. Just to check - you've definitely made a parallel split and not somehow created a series split? A line distribution amplifier would solve the problem, but the symptoms you describe suggest that your system has issues that want addressing.

Try it. It works quite well. The natural HF roll-off combats sibilance, and if someone does grab it and go up close it's fine - unlike a fancier miniature lectern mic. Not the prettiest solution, but for simple/cheap/hardwearing it works well.

My go-to lectern mic is a DPA4099 but that's not much cheaper. However - I wonder if Thomann's 4099 alike might work well? If looks aren't important then a SM57 does a good job and is almost unbreakable.