Martin Pal 1200

[dwh]

Hello! I've been offered some Martin Pal 1200s for a fair price, but I don't know much about them... Can I get some general opinions? Don't suppose anyone has any demo videos kicking about? Martin do their wonderful thing of deleting old products from their site (or maybe never having them) so the best I've found is a danish (danish? Maybe, maybe not) overview and spec... They seem to be massive things, using a fair few DMX channels, generally going for lots of money... Standard scanners? Or something special about them? We mainly do smallish scale plays, and a few concerts/gigs/discos... Worth getting proper moving heads, or will a few scanners suffice?

 

Cheers!

-dan

[niclights]

From what I remember these are, as you say, HUGE. They were pretty much a flagship model and about as good as moving-mirror ever got with all the features - CMY colour mixing, remote focus, zoom, colour temp filters, wash (frost) etc etc. But the big feature of this fixture was remote framing via four motorised sliders giving very accurate beam shaping, similar to that of a zoom profile such as the Source Four.

 

I don't remember ever seeing one of these. They were expensive and specialised so I guess quite rare. They are certainly full-featured and bright at 1200W, but this comes at the expense of being very heavy - 55/61kg depending on model and that's a lot of moving parts that could go wrong (Martin products not exactly known for reliability ) They will also require an enourmous number of control channels as you point out. This is certainly not a 'normal' scanner!

 

Looking at your application I would say you would regret buying these. Too heavy, too awkward to rig and overly complicated. I would look at using moving-head 575W units. One of the big bonuses of moving-yokes is that you can easily sit them on the deck rather than always have to worry about hanging. Scanners almost always have to be hung & at 60kilos the PAL won't be much fun.

 

Anyhoo. A quick look at the Google tells me Martin do keep all the info:

 

Manual

DMX channels/values

Dimensions

[woody74]

I'll second that they are heavy, and not entirely spectacular (but decent for music acts). And if Martin doesn't support them anymore, you might end up having one unit just as your spare parts fixture.

 

-w

[zonino]

martin don't actually delete them off the site, they just take them off the main page!

 

here be the link: PAL 1200

[Modge]

Bugs have a number of these and a whole load more for spares. To add to what others have said they're actually best for TV studio's and being installed (I am told - passing on second hand info here) They are the original pig to move and rig. Other down sides is sounding like heavy machine gun fire when you get them strobing quickly. From memory they take 24 control channels but at least 8 of these are to control the shutters others have spoken of - each end of 4 shutters moves each end separately. On the upside they have huge mirrors and range of motion (and actaully effective angle), along with as also said being ridiculously feature rich. Also they are pretty easy to work on, all be it you'll get a lot of practice.

[dwh]

Cheers guys! Think I'll try and go for a lovely MAC 550 or similar then... Now, to wait for funds... *yawn*

[Jonny DMX]

VERY Big!!! Very Heavy!!!! you've made the right choise there. their well featured with about as much as you could ask for from a moving light including shutters and CYM. the Avo personalities also pre mix the CYM into LEE filter numbers for you which might save you some time. However as far as light output goes, a Mac 250+ is brighter than the 1200 from the Pal! Also the fragile mirrors are very expensive to replace.

 

You would do well to steer well clear of these and go for something a bit more modern. I have only ever used them from the ground as they have been too heavy to rig as you need custom mounting brackets.