Legacy Lighting Consoles – Adjective – Computing – Denoting or relating to software or hardware that has been supeceded but is difficult to replace because of its wide use.
Lighting for Public Schools and Community Theatres is always restricted by budgets, but in order to achieve the optimal lighting quality for our productions, we have to buy and use professional lighting products.
We have seen the evolution from shared gymnasiums, to Performing Arts Centres, as the requirements of theatre lighting has expanded from drama to include musicals and dance productions.
Conventional lighting, that uses a tungsten halogen lighting source, in the form of Profiles, Fesnels, Floods and Cyc lights is still a vital element of Public Schools Performing Arts Centres and Community Theatres.
These conventional lights are powered by theatre dimmer racks, which have been controlled by lighting consoles, which have evolved as shown in the examples below.
Jands espII desk was released in 1988 in 24, 36 and 48 channel versions. It was produced until 1992. The espII was updated in 1992, based on the Event Plus hardware and software, in 24, 48 or 60 channels. It could operate as a two preset desk, or in wide mode, has 12 scene faders with 30 scene pages to allow up to 360 scene memories. It has soft patching and can run theatre stacks. It is still in use in a lot of Perth schools.
Jands Event was released in 1991with 24, 36 and 48 channels. The Event Plus was released in 1992 with 48, 60 or 72 channels.
Jands Stage 12 This basic console has two rows of scene faders, a chase function and a Grab feature that allowed the console output to the stage stored in a single memory in the Grab fader to allow a third fixed Preset. They are still being used as a basic lighting desk. It’s successor is the Jands Stage CL which is designed for LED lighting.
Jands Stage CL was released in 2012 as a 12 fader desk designed for LED stage lighting, then after a software upgrade was able to control two pages to make it a 24 fader desk. With a RRP of AUD$1895 it has 4 scenes, 4 chases, a cue list playback (stack) snapshot (Grab) button and uses a simplified Hue and Saturation control of LED colour.
etc SmartFade 1248 has two pages of 24 faders to allow 48 channels. The desk allows soft patching of multiple DMX channels under a single fader. I has a theatre stack and comprehensive memory features. It uses and encoder wheel to access the desk menus. The Next feature is like a Grab feature. The SmartFade 2496 has two pages of 48 faders.
etc SmartFadeML has a single row of 24 faders. The row of faders can be switched over to Scene faders. It is designed to control moving head lights, so has encoder wheels to allow easy control of Pan, Tilt, Gobo wheels. It can control LED’s easily with limited colour select.
Theatrelight Scenemaster 3F is available in 12/24 or 24/48 channel modes. The desk can work in Dual Preset mode, or Wide Mode and Scenes mode. The bottom row of faders switches between Preset, Wide or Scene mode, the top row of faders always stays in Channel mode.
The LSC Maxim has a wide range op configerations, starting with the 24/48 that has the top row of 24 faders set as channel faders and the bottow romw of faders either a second preset, or a wide channel mode, or a scene mode. There is also a one fader Grab memory. With the larger channel size desks, a row of Group faders is included, plus Stack control.
Zero 88 FLX S24 & FLX S 48
