Posts by jimmy

Vying for attention? I’m pretty glad we installed a ramp in the loading dockhere at CX HQ, because it made getting the Vi7000 into our building a lot easier than it otherwise would be. Further helping the processalong was the modular nature of the Vi7000 – ours arrived in three distinct pieces. We reviewed the Vi3000 some months…

Real freedom of speech ClearCom would have to be regarded as one of the main big players in the comms industry, and with a comprehensive array of product spanning wired and wireless pointto- point and partyline systems, it’s little wonder. The FreeSpeak platform has been around for long enough that it was time for an…

LED Blinder The humble audience blinder has been a mainstay of concert production since forever. Commonly found on front trusses, rear trusses, and scattered around stages, the tungsten blinder has certainly found a place in the world. But it’s not without some problems… A standard Molefay Duet uses a pair of 650W 120V Par 36…

Compact hybrid fixture It’s no secret I have a lot of time for Clay Paky. I love how well the company does optics, and the Mythos is perhaps one of their neatest achievements yet. It’s a compact fixture with a 1,500 hour, 470W discharge lamp. Luminous flux is stated at 23,000lm, native colour temperature is…

Lessons learnt Allen & Heath has come a long way in the digital console market since the release of their first effort, the iLive. I was initially skeptical about iLive because I thought it was over-priced and clunky – indeed the first generation console didn’t find widespread market acceptance here in Australia. But since then the company has revised the software several…

Tidy tiny analogue I was recently asked by a friend for a recommendation on a small format analogue console which sounds decent. Mackie was not only among the brands which sprang to mind, it was the first. Small format analogue is kind of their domain – they’ve been doing it for years and they do it…

Renew, recycle, reuse The success of the Source Four as a luminaire is hard to deny – the modular design of the light source and swappable lens tube have made it a favourite for theatres and venues the world over. PRG now offers a product designed to allow users to make use of their existing…

Shoot your cabling duties down This might be the invention for which the entertainment industry has been waiting, seemingly forever. Now it’s here, and it’s pretty cool. The GaffGun first blipped on the CX radar when videos of the thing began appearing all over our individual social media feeds. Yes, most of our friends are…

Moving head with framing shutters At the time of writing, the PR Lighting XR Series comprised no less than 17 models, ranging from the tiny little XR130 units right up to the XR1000 models. One of which we’re reviewing today – specifically the framing model. The XR1000 Framing has a feature set which is comparable…

Raising the bar    The past few years have seen EAW come up with some very interesting releases with Anya and Otto in their adaptive technology line. Not only do those products sound great and have a lot of internal smarts, they look really cool too. Of course not every application requires systems of such…

More for less We first saw the Si series as we know it in the Compact, then Performer and Expression ranges. The Impact is not so much the latest iteration of the console, but the latest addition to the line. An important distinction is that whereas models such as the Si Compact are available in several…

Rhyme and reason The Robe Strobe certainly has the rhyming part right, but does it have a good reason to exist? It’s by no means the first LED strobe to hit the market, but as we discovered it does have a few features that make it quite unique. The front lens is occupied by 120…