Pin Patch Pins

[IRW]

Hey folks,As I'm sure many other people are at the moment, I'm having a good tidy up, and I've come across this little tub in an old toolbox that's been lurking at the back of a cupboard for probably about 15 years!

 

I know they were orginally for a lighting desk which I have long since parted company with, although I never used the pins myself, partly because I had no idea what to do with them (at the time, we had no manual for the desk, and I wasn't quite as clued up as I am now!). To be fair, the desk didn't have any sort of ID on it, and may well have been built by someone for all I know!

Anyway, if they are of any use to anybody, please drop me a message! Or, if you can just shed some light on the system they were for, I'd be interested to read about how I could have used them! They seem to have an array of different diodes inside them.http://www.irwdesign.com/br/pinpatchpins.JPG

 

Edited to add:For reference, they're about 40mm long in total, and the open one in the middle is a bog standard 1N4148 diode.

 

Aha! Found a picture of the desk...this was after I re-'fur'bed it...from what I recall, the big blue panel was originally black, and the blue furry bit was a black leather kind of thing.

http://www.irwdesign.com/br/lxdesk2.JPG

 

I think the pin patch was something to do with the yellow faders at the bottom right (submasters?). The pin patch itself is the white/orange matrix.

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by IRW

[sandall]

Back in the 1970s I built a 16-group, 2-preset "wing" for a Strand 3-preset LC (saturable-reactor) desk, using diode pin-panel matrices, with different-length pins to select which fader on the main desk you took your level from, & a "blackout" matrix, using another pin-panel ("blackout" with saturable reactors was only a fast fade, so the matrix let you "kill" the channels while the reactors discharged). The "wing" layout was based on the BBC vision mixers of the time & the PCBs were designed by the late lamented Frank Wood. I suspect this may have been the first use of diode-pin matrices in a lighting desk, at least in the UK. The blue desk looks like one of the many all-very-similar 3-preset desk designs that appeared in the 1980s, modified to pick either the red or green fader levels onto the 10 subs.

 

The dimmers & desk were eventually replaced (on a too good to refuse leasing deal) by Strand Permus dimmers & a Duet memory desk, which was so prone to crashing that we had to have a spare on permanent standby. Being early DOS it didn't have an "are you sure?" prompt when saving onto floppy, & the M>D & D>M buttons were side by side, so it was incredibly easy to wipe the show you had just spent hours creating.

 

The old system was bought by a theatre in Hull, & went off on the back of a lorry. I'd love to know what happened to it.

[Shez]

At my old university theatre, there used to be a rather vintage Thorn brand desk that used patch pins like these. Three preset banks of crescent faders which could be assigned to submasters by three sets of correspondingly coloured pins in the matrix. Crude of course by today's standards but remarkably flexible if you planning your "programming".

[timsabre]

 

The old system was bought by a theatre in Hull, & went off on the back of a lorry. I'd love to know what happened to it.

 

Do you know which theatre? The Gulbenkian Theatre at Hull Uni is the only one I know of round here which still had a Duet in the late 90's - it eventually got replaced with an Ion and knowing the uni they'd just have scrapped the Duet.

[sandall]

Do you know which theatre?

Not sure if there's anyone still around who would know about the LCs. I don't know where the Permus dimmers went either (unless ETC took them in P/E), but I suspect the Duets were thrown, hard, into a skip.

[BobJ]

Wow, seeing these I thought they looked like the plugs used on the big patch board for the BerkeyColortran “CRD” line of Dimmers and Controllers (Circa 1975).

Looking very closely it looks like there may be a small cap inside each plug to prevent arcing when plugged into the high voltage socket.

[david.elsbury]

Wow, seeing these I thought they looked like the plugs used on the big patch board for the BerkeyColortran “CRD” line of Dimmers and Controllers (Circa 1975).

Looking very closely it looks like there may be a small cap inside each plug to prevent arcing when plugged into the high voltage socket.

arent pin patches specifically ELV- like; 0-10v?

No doubt your US experience is different because they like to do things their own way. Or, you’re talking about a much physically larger product?