Classic Gear Live was at stand A78 at this year’s PLASA Show, September 3-5 at London’s Olympia and provided a unique opportunity to get hands on with some of the lighting and audio products that have shaped our industry, from the 1973 Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon PA to the pioneering Vari-Lite Artisan console and VL2 and VL4 moving lights that featured in the band’s shows a generation later; from the unique cutaway lighting fixtures that graced Strand Electric’s famous West End showroom for years to the prototype and unique rep version of CCT’s Silhouette spotlight that shook up the fixture market; from the MMS memory lighting control that introduced the level wheel to the world to the custom mixing console that brought Cadac into the world of theatre.
But equipment is nothing without people, so Classic Gear Live also offered a remarkable opportunity not just to see these remarkable products, but also to meet some of the people who made, sold or made remarkable use of them.
The presentations included:
Sunday, September 2:
12pm: Jon Primrose of the Theatrecrafts/Strand Archive website, on preserving the past one scanned document at a time!
1pm: Andrew Voller, lighting designer, programmer and for many years Vari-Lite’s Artisan training manager, talking about – and winding back time by demonstrating – the Artisan, VL2 and VL4.
2.30pm: John Wright, who built the very first prototype of the console, talking about Strand’s MMS, a remarkable modular memory lighting control that is a memory control without being a computer control!
Monday, September 3:
11.30am: Don Hindle, who was managing director of CCT Lighting as they shook up lighting with their versatile Silhouette and Minuette fixtures, talking about the innovations which took CCT from being a rental company supplying small theatres in south London to a manufacturer whose products could be (and in fact, still are!) found in theatres around the world.
12.15pm: Paul Johnson from the Historic Stage Lighting Collective, talking about their work preserving and documenting generations of lighting equipment – and attempting to re-discover such unique lighting arts as Fred Bentham’s Colour Music.
1pm: Alan Luxford, who joined Strand Electric as a trainee in 1967 and only retired last year, talking about the cutaway Patt 23 and Patt 264 fixtures, which he looked after when running their demo theatre, and the MMS console, the first of which he helped install in 1973.
2.30pm: John Wright, another chance to hear about his involvement in creating MMS and then making and supporting the generations of consoles that followed.
Tuesday, September 4:
11.30am: John Wright, a repeat performance on the history of the MMS console for those not at the show on Sunday or Monday.
12pm: Dik Welland who as senior service engineer at Vari-Lite Europe during the 1980s prepared and repaired Artisan consoles before they went out on some of the biggest shows in the world, talking about Vari-Lite’s revolutionary products, which are still unique in many ways.
2.30pm: Don Hindle, - another chance to hear about the history of the Silhouette and CCT Lighting, for those not able to be there on Monday.
These will not be formal talks or presentations, but rather a chance to meet, to chat and to hear the stories of these remarkable products.
Also on hand throughout the show was Chris Hewitt of CH Vintage Audio, who spoke about the audio equipment on the stand which encompassed equipment used by Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, David Bowie and The Beatles and much more besides, and Rob Halliday who’s been writing LSi magazine’s Classic Gear column for more than sixteen years now and has spoken about some of these classics at previous PLASA Shows.
Products on display included:
- The PA system from Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon tour – playing live at certain times during the show.
- Also with a strong Pink Floyd connection, the remarkable Vari-Lite Artisan control console, along with the VL2 and VL4 moving lights that defined the modern era of automated lighting.
- The Midas mixing console from Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, celebrating its 50th anniversary.
- The Altec monitor speakers from Studio 2 at Abbey Road, used to mix over 90% of the Beatle’s tracks.
- Equipment from David Bowie’s 1973 Ziggy Stardust tour, fifty years on.
- From the world of theatre, Strand’s MMS memory lighting control, also launched in 1973, a pioneering memory control system – and the first to incorporate the now-familiar level wheel.
- Also from 1973, CCT’s pioneering Silhouette spotlight
- From a decade before that, the still-unique Strand Patt 264 bi-focal spotlight.
- From 1983, the first theatre mixing desk created by Cadac, who would go on to dominate the field for more than two decades. Custom produced to fit in a tiny control space for one particular show, it went from sketched design to finished product in just four weeks!
- And the product that is arguably the classic of classics, Strand’s Patt 23 baby spotlight, launched seventy years ago this year.
Rob Halliday’s ongoing Classic Gear column in LSI takes a light-hearted, nostalgic look at the products that have shaped our industry from throughout its history.