mark_s Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 old dirty masterpieces are a nightmare. Fixed that for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alistermorton Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 That's a result all round. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ocfe Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 Looking at the video's on youtube it looks like Pulsar had a huge in house manufacturing operation back in the 90's complete with spray booths and folding facility. Do they still keep all of their manufacture in house? I wonder how many Masterpiece consoles have been made, from the website it looks like it's still a current product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 Looking at the video's on youtube it looks like Pulsar had a huge in house manufacturing operation back in the 90's complete with spray booths and folding facility. Do they still keep all of their manufacture in house? I wonder how many Masterpiece consoles have been made, from the website it looks like it's still a current product. Pulsar are a mere shadow of their former selves. They no longer make anything in house, they do still sell some of their old product range. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timmeh2 Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 Hi Despite the awfulness of the way that the pig works, it was solidly built and well-constructed. It was about the only place where you'd find solder-plated circuit boards, meaning that they were practically indestructable, and where everyone else used the cheaper plastic ICs, pulsar still went for the ceramic-lead packaging with turned pins, which would have made it the desk of choice if you were under a nuclear attack at the time. The replay unit was a first, no-one had ever thought of making a simple, rack-mounted controller before they did, and the swappable memory cards were a piece of inspired genius, although they were very early flash ram and very prone to breaking. Their dimmers are still widely used, one of my venues has an 18-way box on the wall, and it still works very well. All tbe bestTimmeh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted May 22, 2014 Author Share Posted May 22, 2014 Their website has useful stuff on it but they don't seem to sell direct and a google search brings back a few out if stock dealers and tone of eBay links. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greenalien Posted May 26, 2014 Share Posted May 26, 2014 I think that most non-LED Pulsar kit sold these days is second-hand. Ebay regularly has Masterpiece 108 and 216 desks on offer as well as Replay 216, Replay Units, Screen drivers and of course various dimmer packs. This thriving market speaks volumes for the original build quality of the kit, and there's still plenty of service support available, from Pulsar and others. However, as said previously, since concentrating on LED fixtures, Pulsar seem to have lost interest in the Masterpiece range - they haven't released any updates to the Masterpiece software for over 10 years, and it's still unfinished - despite what Timmeh2 posted earlier, the calendar timer functions have never been implemented, despite the dedicated buttons being there on the Replay 216 and Replay Units! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted May 26, 2014 Author Share Posted May 26, 2014 They've forgotten how to make 12 faders work 18 channels again, but sadly I was too busy to go and help them. Nothing to do with the cheque in the post still not arriving! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junior8 Posted May 26, 2014 Share Posted May 26, 2014 Their dimmers are still widely used, one of my venues has an 18-way box on the wall, and it still works very well. All their kit was built to last and was really astonishing value for what you got. There are a couple of 6 way 5A skt packs working near here that must be 25 years old at least. My only complaint was with the idea of opposing sub-masters on their little two pre-set desks, but that was all. And against what they did offer in a verey completre range it was a trivial beef! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judge Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 They are tough and simple for sure. I used to work with a conference lighting company and we would be able to plug anything into their dimmers and they would work - resistive, inductive, whatever - they would handle stuff that would make grown-up dimmers ill.I just had a look at their website and they are still selling stuff that was designed 30 years ago! And getting away with it. I think they got some good mileage out of that original R&D outlay. A brilliant and possibly unique example of "if it aint broke...." Got to hand to to them and Optikinetics, who will still sell you a Solar 250 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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