Stuart91

4 hours ago, Tif_AC said:

Ideally mating it to a panel connector then using a strap wrench, that should get it off...

This is what I ended up doing with some and it eventually worked. Was a complete PITA though, enough that I'd try to avoid Tourmate connections in future. 

I remember some exhibited a specialist tool at Plasa (possibly the last year it was at Earl's Court, so going back a bit). It looked neat but was quite expensive for one specific task. 

13 minutes ago, sandall said:

My problem with the Notepad & F1 is the crappy little 3-pin power connector - had (loud) disasters on both when the 0v pin lost contact.

I agree that the connector is rubbish. If the unit is being permanently installed, it's possible to just wire the PSU in directly. That's what I did with an SX20 that did about 5yrs heavy service in a rack mount case without any problems. 

11 hours ago, adam2 said:

consider cheap industrial halogen floodlights as used on building sites.

I was asked to quote to light a boxing show in a hotel ballroom. Priced it up using a bunch of nice LED cyc floods with barndoors, rigged from some bars in the ceiling. 

Never heard a thing back from the prospective customers. After the event I found photos on social media, and it turned out that they had bought some building site floods, complete with yellow tripod stands, and stuck one behind each corner of the ring. 

To be fair, the photos didn't look terrible, and as Adam says it would work OK if rigged from suitable positions. If there's more than minimal budget, I'd suggest using the 300w version and putting more of them up. More sources of light means the shadows are less obvious (especially on camera) and since the bulb life isn't spectacular you're less likely to have an obvious dark patch if one were to give up during the show. 

1 hour ago, stevep said:

the audience can often include kids which can add an extra level of random behaviour 

I've not covered many wrestling shows, but "random" is an accurate description. On the first event, one of the headline competitors rode a Harley into the room. Hadn't been so much as mentioned to us beforehand, first I knew of it was when I heard the engine fire up. I don't think the venue were very happy...

On another event, the promoters brought a set of ladders for hanging their branding around the venue. They were then used for a "ladder bout" and got broken in the process. Cue much head-scratching at the end of the gig when they have to figure out how to get it all back down again. 

It may boil down to the conditions of the venue licence, rather than being "law of the land". There might be variance between councils/local authorities. 

(For example, for many years Edinburgh were really tight on electrical safety, whereas Glasgow ignored the electrics but were far more concerned about structural stuff. I always wondered if it was down to whatever accidents had occurred in each place back in the dim and distant past)

1 hour ago, stevep said:

To me it is irrelevant if they are permanent fixtures or not! The chances of a fire during an event is much greater than when a room is unused

I agree. 

I suppose you could argue that a fire is more likely to spread unchecked if the room is empty, but the chances of that initial ignition occurring are far greater with punters in. (Especially if they are idiotic/inebriated...)

Plus, even if they did have an argument here, what happens for a multi-day event? 

We had some cheap and cheerful wireless DMX units that behaved as the OP describes. 

It was usually necessary to turn the transmitter on first, then the receivers. This became a bit of a problem if the transmitter was inadvertently powered down during a show, and you would need to cycle the receivers to regain control. 

Powering up in the order of transmitter, then receiver, then fixtures, might solve the problem. If the units intended as receivers see a DMX signal on the XLR, they automatically start transmitting which causes chaos. 

Ultimately the best solution (which is what we went for) was to replace the wireless DMX units. "Alien" branded ones are still very cheap and don't seem to suffer from the same problems. 

Hi Bruce, 

We bought one back in the autumn. (CQ12T)

You're more than welcome to pop up and have a play with it at some point if that'd be helpful. 

I've not used it much myself, but I'd figured it will be a decent option for small talking-head style gigs where having things like dynamics and variable HPF is handy, but it's hard to justify taking something like an X32 Compact or SQ5. 

My one gripe so far is that it's not desperately quick to navigate, compared to say the SQ series. But that's a limitation of the form factor more than anything. 

I suppose it's more equivalent to something like the QSC TouchMix rather than being a cut-down SQ or QU. I don't think I'd like to do a fast-paced band gig with one, but for small function bands, ceilidh bands, and solo acts doing their own sound, it's a very good option. 

One other variable is that the excellent MixingStation is available for the CQ, which opens up other control possibilities. My plan is to get ours mounted in a briefcase with a small router so that it can get running with iPad control with minimum faff. 

In Glasgow, "football special" trains are still a thing when there are matches (and gigs) on at Hampden Park.

(Train is by far the easiest method of public transport from the city centre)

I'm sure there must be money to be made from running these services, or they'd have been cut long ago. 

Of course, packing supporters into trains like sardines is far more profitable that punters heading to a weekend festival with all their baggage.

Hi Colin, 

I wonder if there's anything else could be interfering with the receivers which is turned on during the service, but not at other times? 

To give you one example, I had a church not too far from you with a Sennheiser G2 receiver which had begun dropping out consistently. It turned out that they had an HDMI splitter sitting directly underneath it, as soon as the splitter was turned off the problem went away. 

Something similar happened at an event where the customer had a Midas MR18 sitting on top of one of our RF racks. The PSU in the mixer was sitting directly beside the front-mounted twig antenna. Moving them apart by a foot or two was enough to make some problems disappear. 

4 hours ago, revbobuk said:

Very first one I ordered arrived with a cracked horn - quite a lot of weight in the magnet assembly. 

We bought a batch of passive ZX1s when the model first came out, and the horns were cracked on most of them. They didn't seem to survive clumsy couriers. They were all replaced under warranty (and I was able to buy them back from a clearance sell-off a few weeks later, at a hefty discount!)

Our solution was to wrap fibreglass around the horn to strengthen it, and add some hard foam behind to provide a bit of support for the magnet. The cabinets survived quite happily for many years after that.

I think later revisions of the model were built a bit more sturdily from the get-go. 

Looks good, and well within our fabrication capabilities. 👍

Tim is correct. The staff are using a phone app to connect to the Casambi units. In theory all the CasDMX modules should connect in a "mesh" arrangement but I suspect the range is too great, so they wander round each cluster setting colours in turn. 

The fixtures are all set to a DMX start address of one, so if the chain is working correctly everything responds together. 

1 minute ago, Bryson said:

For a tiny splitter: Pathway DIN-mount PWREP4

Looks excellent. 

I don't suppose you know if the screw terminals are likely to accept the 1sqMM H07 flex that's been foolishly used in this installation?

This job has bounced back into my court today. 

The contractors removed all of the PI and PO connections. No change to the behaviour of the fixtures. 

I still wonder if we've got a wiring issue on the remaining DMX signal, but the problems when they occur seem to be consistent and repeatable - it doesn't feel to me like a dodgy connection that's coming and going. 

But meanwhile, other fixtures in the installation have started misbehaving (spontaneously) despite their "clusters" having not been touched. 

I think the only thing that will get us a permanent resolution is adding a DMX split to each cluster. Which gives me my next challenge, finding a small DMX splitter with a minimum of four outputs which can ideally be hardwired and as small as possible to fit into the enclosure...

5 minutes ago, boatman said:

One thing to be careful of when storing ali tube vertically is end damage. If the floor is concrete put down some padding (6mm rubber sheet is ideal) otherwise the tube ends will suffer.

Good point. 

If we build a stillage type arrangement it may end up on a mezzanine floor with wood underfoot. But there's plenty concrete elsewhere on the premises and it isn't guaranteed. 

I suspect that with galvanised tube the problem is the tubes chipping the concrete...

14 hours ago, J Pearce said:

We’ve got a nifty frame thing at work that has barbs that allow scaff poles in easily but prevents escaping poles. 
It’s only 20mm box, so if you’ve got a square, a grinder, a welder, and a human who can use those you could easily make something similar.

Sounds great. I don't suppose you have any photos of it? We have all the "ingredients" necessary.

12 hours ago, kerry davies said:

Load straps with hooks work better than chain for vertical tube as long as they are used with a modicum of care. It is often useful (and much safer) if you have a set number of tubes to make a bucket like retainer to put the bottom ends into. 

This touches on my usual problem with any sort of storage solution: if we build for what we have now, we'll inevitably outgrow it. if we build for what we *might* need in the future, Murphy's Law comes into play and we don't buy any more for years with the additional space sitting unused in the meantime. 

I like the idea of something to retain the bottom of the tubes though, even just thin partitions on the floor to stop them sliding around. 

It's the "modicum of care" bit that worries me slightly. Everyone is careful until they're grabbing something in a hurry for a van that needed to be left an hour ago. We used to store deck vertically but gave up on that after someone toppled a few pieces when they moved it in a rush. 

12 hours ago, kerry davies said:

If you can store horizontally then take a wander around a few scaff yards and see how they normally build their own racking out of .... you guessed it... tube and clip.

I was in one of Glasgow's foremost scaff yards the other week (buying the pipe which I now have to store 🤣) and that's exactly how they do it. But we don't really have the horizontal space, I suspect vertical is going to be our only option. 

Thanks, Jon. 

We've certainly got more height than length available. 

I suppose some sort of chain arrangement would work for retention, rather than a solid frame. 

I was wondering if anyone has come up with any neat solutions for storing scaff poles. 

We've recently cut a bunch of different lengths to brace a stage, and they have just come back from the rental and are well and truly in the way. 

The options I've seen in use so far seem to be:

1) Leave them in an ungainly heap leaning against the nearest wall. 

2) Construct some sort of stillage structure to separate them out by length

3) Leave shorter lengths lying on shelves / racking 

Option 1) is pretty much where we're at just now, which isn't going to work. We don't have enough free wall space to line them up in any semblance of order. 

Option 2) seems tempting, but my concern is that we've got quite a few different lengths to accommodate. Plus none of the potential spots for this construction have much headroom above. Our longest (standard) lengths are 3m but that's not far off the height to the ceiling so I can't have, say, a horizontal support 1m from the ground or we won't get past it. 

Option 3) may be easier to implement, but unless I can find some way of clearly labelling each individual length. There's no easy way of telling at a glance what we've got on each shelf...

I'm sure other people will have tackled this before. We're just hitting the point ourselves where we have too many poles and different lengths to continue being disorganised about it. 

Keen to hear any clever techniques, or even if there are proprietary systems out there that I could invest in...

8 hours ago, Robin D said:

To be fair to Z88, the emergency phone walkthrough I received was first class thank you.  

Zero have always been great for this. I was given comprehensive help the Saturday before Christmas one year. Saved me a trip over to a customer (who had made a mistake in their DMX wiring which I couldn't guess over the phone) and I was immensely grateful. 

13 hours ago, pmiller056 said:

In an installation with a mains electrical supply present, I would reasonably expect to find green/yellow coloured cable cores to be used as the safety earth/ground connection and never for any other purpose. 

Hi Peter. 

As others have said, that's a fair point. We also wouldn't expect DMX to be run in H07 rubber flex either.

There may well have been some other instructions / labelling on the cables but they have definitely been cut to suit and there's nothing obvious now. Whilst there is a CE mark on the LED driver, I think we all know what they're worth...

Manuals or instructions have been thin on the ground, and there's been quite a bit of uncertainty about what the PI and PO terminals actually do. 
 

31 minutes ago, sunray said:

as this was originally wired as a DMX product tells me that he MUST HAVE read the MI's otherwise it would have been impossible for him to install it.

Good point, my suspicion is that there have been an incomplete manual, or some verbal instructions issued at the time that were misremembered. 

59 minutes ago, themadhippy said:

wasnt owen fleek by any chance

Similar levels of technical aptitude...

The act that really impressed me was called Bellatrix (I think, memories are hazy). She had some links to Massive Attack. 

Used a cello and vocal mic into the loop pedal and built a delightfully lush, ethereal soundscape out of nothing. 

It was a couple of weeks after the aforementioned train wreck and restored my faith in the technique. 

On 11/3/2023 at 8:50 PM, GOODN537433 said:

Led lamps that fitted generic lanterns (with thier standard bases) gave the same sort of colour and equivalent light output 

A US company made just this, for Par 64s. They could dim from the existing dimmers so no cabling / infrastructure changes required. 

However they ended up being the same cost as a pretty decent LED par, so I suspect most buyers would go down that route, and get colour mixing etc. into the bargain. 

On 11/3/2023 at 11:25 PM, kerry davies said:

I have worked with artistes with "stomp boxes" and tambourine pedals, which can be problematic, 

I've seen the Ed Sheeran style loop pedal approach go very well, and incredibly badly. It needs pinpoint accuracy from the artist. If they're 1/64 of a bar out with their stomp, then eight loops later they are 1/8 of a bar out. 

One unfortunate lad ended up with a sound akin to what you'd get if you threw a band down a long flight of stairs. It was a complete train wreck. 

I can remember an article in one of the trade rags about Mr Sheeran's touring setup. They were building custom stomp boxes for him because he was destroying the standard Korg units by stamping too fast/hard on them. 

2 minutes ago, sunray said:

I'm guessing the installer had no idea what the green/yellows are used for and assumed they are simply 'earth' as so many electricians do.

That's exactly my suspicion too. I've since met the guy, he's a perfectly competent (if grumpy) spark, but has zero experience of DMX or these units.