J Pearce

To be clear, I'm talking about speaker grill foam (which I believe is what the OP is talking about), the discussion has since drifted across to cone surround foams.
Yes, we keep a few rolls of thin and thick speaker grill foam in stock and replace grill foam as needed.

Speaker foam often disintegrates with age. Refoamed a load of our stock last summer, got more to do this summer. Not impossible that it's beetle/moth I guess, but it does also just fall apart into crumbs by itself.

I can think of a few potential approaches, all improved by flown speakers rather than on sticks.

Are all the seats facing the stage in one line, or are you setup on 3 sides?

If I were feeling fancy I might even be tempted by a split rig with one system for speech and another for music.

(I often find a system designed for high intelligibility gives a lacklustre un-enveloping sound for music)

That's pretty neat, and I don't think it introduces any significant hazards - perhaps if overtightened the plastic could crack which unloads the halfcoupler which could open, but realistically with sensible use I can't see it being likely, and I'd hope safety bonds are in use in any case.

Doughty make a commercial product for the same problem - http://www.doughty-engineering.co.uk/cgi-bin/trolleyed_public.cgi?action=showprod_T85850

Canford have a good range from Wharton (which I seem to remember is what is inside the Stage Electrics prompt desks). Might also be worth asking GDS if they could mount one of their clocks into a 1U or 2U plate.

At the cheaper end I'd agree with Stuart91 - find a nice surface mounting unit and mount it on a panel.

[edit to add]

I've seen a few of these mounted in prompt desks (Symphony Hall and some ICC spaces), but not sure whether they have a UK dealer.

Aside from the risks of crossplugging, any cuelight system that runs LEDs at low voltage ought to be ok on CAT5/6/7 cabling. The older signal lamp units are probably too high a current.

As Hippy has posted above there are some nice IP cuelight solutions, and a well designed network ought to work happily without need for frequent fault finding.

I'm a big fan of PZMs/boundary mics for general pickup. Usually an odd number to give me a mic DSC where actors often end up to say important things. I find I get a cleaner sound than from rifle/shotgun mics, and they're less obtrusive. Sitting them on a thin bit of foam can help with transmitted noise, but footsteps that are audible to the human ear will unsuprisingly also be picked up the mics.

You'll want to fader chase to follow the active mic, or look at mic auto-mixers like the Dan Dugan stuff or the functionality built into Behringer/Midas mixers, which can work quite well at this sort of thing but can also get confused by noise that isn't dialogue. Simply throwing 5 mics live at 3dB off feedback isn't going to help you.

It is also worth taking time to ensure a quiet stage, strong arm the lampies away from the latest blue LED mounted to a 747 turbofan, and persuade the carpenters to add extra bracing and deadening to any platforms to avoid resonance.

Hanging mics work well for recording/relay etc. but are rarely useful for reinforcement unless you can get them to only just above head height, by which time you've usually upset 3 other departments.

You can run an external PSU with the Altair basestation if needed. You'll need to change the switch on the back of the Altair to 'slave' instead of 'master' so that only one of the PSUs has a termination in circuit.

By the time they've been posted, cleaned, repaired, retreated with fire retardant, and returned you may well be at the point of buying new ones. Repairs of anything larger than a very small tear rarely look good, especially in the twill fabric that schools usually end up with rather than serge.

I'd talk to all the usual drape suppliers, JC Joel, Blackout, Whaleys, JD McDougalls etc. Or take an alternative approach and look at other industries who can handle large panels of fabric.

My biggest concern with specifying and installing this sort of thing is that if it doesn’t work/breaks and isn’t fixable you’re into a whole world of rewiring.

At least 100V is a standard where you can change/upgrade various components and know they’ll work interchangeably.

For the scenarios this product professes to be ideal, I suspect you’d be better served with distributed amplifiers with CAT6 between them, you could feed analogue audio (with DC power too) or network audio over the CAT6, and it’d be much better future-proofed. There are even POE speakers that work well for paging/BGM type work, and use a standard structured cabling that is easy to reuse/upgrade etc.

To follow up - I'm actually now advertising the Deputy post, as my previous excellent Deputy has taken up touring again. It's paid at £30,521.40, based on 39hrs a week annualised, with TMA outs paid as extras. The hourly is just over £15/hr.

The XL4 left last year, to a good home wanting to refurb it and feed it multitracks on occasion. Still got plenty of other old stuff kicking about, but the XL4 was taking up a lot more space than we could justify. We did power it up one last time before it departed, having located 6 sturdy crew to be able to lift it and tip it. It told us to call Midas service dept - we were rather tempted to!

That's a very odd system and if we had anything like a functioning trading standards system it wouldn't be for sale.

PMR is in 446MHz, so they wouldn't fall under PMR.
PMSE might issue a spot frequency license, but you'd need to ask. We have some spot frequencies in the 500MHz band at work. I think they probably cost similar to the purchase cost of the unit you link to, which is nearly always the result of buying cheap gear - it costs more to run.

Do you know that they actually run on those frequencies, or are you trusting the labelling on a bit of kit already known to be of somewhat suspect origin? I have a cheap(ish) spectrum analyser that is handy for this sort of thing.

Pallet shipping can work well. Lots of couriers aren't used to handling our sort of loads, so either arrange loading/unloading at either end or standardise and put it all on pallets. Also, design your set construction with transport in mind.

Do continue to ask around, as you may find someone willing to van share - but as cautioned above, don't be tempted to overload a van, there are 'rolling weighbridges' on multiple routes between London and Edinburgh.

For what a MAC600 did, you'd probably do just as well to remove most of the innards inside the head, mount a RGBW LED PAR at the front where the lens used to be and use the mover shell as a cheap version of an Apollo RightArm.

Bonus points for a zoomable LED PAR.

Goodness, I hadn't heard. A lovely chap with a big grin and a mischevious streak on the few shows I worked with him. Sending love to all who knew him.

Artistic License also have some options, which I've only seen at a tradeshow, but looked good.
At the upper end of the price bracket ETC have what was GDS's system.

Cat5 cable is explicitly stated as compliant in the DMX specification. Adapters can work well, and can offer multiple universes over 1 cable. There is an ESTA standard pinout which should offer cross compatibility, and has been designed to offer some protection from mis-plugging.

Also worth noting that often cable routing dictates splitter use long before fixture limits - i.e. doing a send and a return off a bar is more work (and points of failure) than just using 1 splitter output per bar. 

32 devices per RS485 line. A proper active splitter generates a new RS485 line, so you can start counting again. So an 8 way splitter could happily feed over 200 devices.

6 hours ago, GR1 said:

I was surprised to look at the advert for deputy head of sound at Brum Rep and the hourly pay was only a quid over the minimum wage.

If this is remotely recent then I’m afraid you’ve misinterpreted the advert or misremembered the rate.

Our casuals are currently on Birmingham Living Wage (£10.90/hr, full BECTU terms), so above minimum wage - pay review is being voted on presently, and hopefully that rate will come up again.

Our senior techs are a jump up from that (39hrs/wk annualised hours but G/O pay and other BECTU terms).
Our deputies are a jump up again, and the HoDs (that’d be me for sound at Birmingham Rep) are another jump up.

I wouldn’t want to quote a figure right now in public, but the Deputy HoD is certainly some distance above £11.42/hr.

I’d love our salaries to be higher, but I must correct plainly wrong statements before rumours grow. 

Birmingham Rep have a vacancy for a Senior Sound Technician. This role sits within a team of HoD, Deputy HoD, Senior Tech, and casual sound/video techs. 

Lots of produced work, some visiting work, some one-nighters, a few conferences and events. 39hrs a week annualised, salary £25,274.96 (pending annual review, so likely to go up a little), 20 days paid holiday, plus bank holidays. BECTU terms for ‘get-out’ payments, missed breaks and meal allowances.

Lots of shiny toys, some less shiny toys, and a few affectionately maintained museum pieces.

Quote

The Senior Sound Technician role is integral to the effective running of the department. Reporting to the Head of Sound, the Senior Technician will provide technical services, install, operate and maintain staging & technical equipment (primarily sound & video but not excluding stage and lighting) for The Rep productions, visiting companies and conferences as required.

Closes 2nd May midday. Apply here.

Probably worth adding that I usually have a system processor betwixt desk and amps, so do my attenuation there, or at the D-A converter coming out of the processor.

I've seen trucks built in such a way that you unplug the battery from the truck and plug it into the charger - which removes any possibility of a helpful SM or stage crew type misunderstanding or forgetting the switches.

You've got everything there really.

Per system
1 wireless DMX transmitter (might need to be SACN if you're doing large amounts of pixels)

Per truck:
1 battery, sized to meet your needs (don't forget longer tech days, 2 show days, notes calls before shows etc.) If you can it's usually helpful to oversize the battery as it improves battery life. 
1 good battery charger (get a smart charger not an old fashioned single current charger).
1 DMX receiver and dimmer/pixel controlller - these can be had as a combined unit.
Power distribution and fusing - useful to add a switch to disconnect the load overnight so you don't drain your battery just running the drivers etc. Becomes more significant with pixel tape which can have a significant quiescent current. 12V batteries can provide a very very large current capable of starting fires, so an inline fuse is a sensible control measure.

It can be helpful to disconnect the load during charging, but it shouldn't be essential. Be aware that voltage can rise as high as 14V during charging, so check what your devices can tolerate. However, if you've added the off switch described above, you can just flick that over.

The drivers can be hired, you might struggle to hire the batteries and cabling bits as these tend to be specific to each production.