Cost Price of Historic Strand Control Boards

[willjam39]

Paul,

 

Your explanation of the 3 scenes then A+B added has solved a mystery I've been trying to work out for a while. One venue I go into has an old manual desk which someone has helpfully cleaned number off. It has three banks of faders but two had an extra switch at the end which changed things on that pre-set. They also haver a digital system which if you cause but its not DMX but a strand protocol (luckily my 520 has a socket on the back for it).

[paulears]

You had to carefully how you would do things - and it was often very tricky to do somethings Directors asked for. Strand would often custom build controls so they fitted a room's dimensions - but you'd end up with ergonomic problems - so maybe with a preset desk you'd need to always do some cues manually on a live preset to keep one of the others safe for a cue many numbers away that was too difficult. You'd even have trouble with a very simple cue that required ch1 to go up with channel 60 but ch 30 to go down. I can't speak for others but I'd sometimes tweak cues away from the LD or Director's spec to be able to do it - and even run huge long cables to swap (in my example) ch 60's socket to ch 2's socket, so could actually do the cue. Daft things really. I always wanted a pin patch.

[Junior8]

Even with 24 ways it could be awkward and what you often wanted was the ability to park dimmers at a level while you cleared a preset down - a feature that was available on advanced boards (and even the Junior 8 if you tolerated the flicker and were willing to cross plug!) but not the simpler ones. The hardest thing to make some directors understand was that if a cue was impossible at rehearsal there was no way it was going to work on the night. Edited February 9, 2021 by Junior8

[ianknight]

As Gareth says, all the Strand systems were bespoke in terms of many options

 

Often it would be number of memories/control channels (Duet/Gemini)

 

For the larger desks MMS (Modular Memory System, the clue's in the name), Compact (mni MMS), and Galaxy you could have range of different module that were added to the chassis.

 

As you can see a fully loaded system would be enormous and of course, once you had selected the modules, once it was built that was it. To add the fun, no screen with information on it until Duet/Gemini/Galaxy and that was pretty useless

 

I'd defend the desks though, we could achieve a lot on them with a skilled board op and designer who knew the desk with split fades and so on. We were one of, if not the first to use VL5s on a theatre desk (Gemini 2) in the mid 90's on Aspects of Love. It was what the desk was designed to do but using Move fades and so on we got the show without too much pain. People nowadays seem to think all lighting pre moving lights was a marmalade sludge that was either on or off, which is very far from the truth!

 

In truth, from a conversation I had with a Strand Field Engineer in the 90's - you could never have a fully loaded system apparently. The College Theatre in Coventry (now The Albany) when I was Chief LX bought some MMS spares from The Albery including a switch mode PSU rack to replace the old Belix transformer power rack - I expressed an interest in fully loading the desk using the parts we had (which were originally The Belgrades desk) and The Albery parts inlcuding the tape drive.

 

The engineer showed me the engineering equivalent of your cards (I'm guessing) which detailed the buss loading and PSU loading for the modules & it transpired that the Belix power crate was the limiter and so you couldn't do things like a tape drive, remote control, double density memory, twin channel controls in the same rack because there would never be enough power. He was certainly adamant that even with the configuration we ended up with - we could't run the tape drive as we'd have to unplug the memory module and VDU module to operate it, he took it away with him for a wee stash of spare parts that "fell out" of his kit :P

 

Interestingly, Strand never fitted the switch mode power crate to older Belix systems - we were the only system to do it because they knew we couldn't afford a newer desk. The upgrade served for another two years before some money was found to buy a spanking new Strand 430 (which is still doing service with a small amateur group in Coventry - at least it was!).

[sandall]

I always wanted a pin patch.

I extended the life of our 3-preset JP desk for several years by adding a couple of pin-patches (1 for faders, 1 for blackouts) & a home-made fader wing. Then Strand made an offer we couldn't refuse on a Duet & Permus(?) dimmers. Apart from the lack of faders for busking & the constant crashing (in the end we got a spare to keep on standby), the real killer was that the M>D (memory to disc) & D>M (disk to memory) buttons were right next to each other, with no "Are you sure?" prompt, which led to a lot of just-plotted shows getting wiped!!

[gareth]

Proximity of Disc>Mem and Mem>Disc buttons on Strand systems of 70s/80s vintage is no doubt something that's been the ruination of many a lighting session. I always made very, very sure I was hitting the right one, but that brief passing moment of sphincter-clenching paranoia is something that young programmers of today will never experience!