Cerwin-Vega! has made two significant additions to its Pro series of installation speaker systems. Following the success of the V-152, the Californian-based company has now released the V-252 - a dual 15" two-way, full-range system. It has also revisited those two little digits - 36; drawing on the heritage of the renowned L-36PE and SL-36B, the company has now reinvented its legendary ‘earthquake’ sound in the form of a ‘compact tremor’ - an 18" folded horn known as the LR-36. The V-252’s twin 15" woofers share space with a bi-morph HF driver mounted on a proprietary spherical waveguide horn. Designed as a stand-alone, and producing tremendous bass response, the V-252 does not require bi-amping with a subwoofer. In order to attain a smooth resp

Following the news last week that the Gearhouse Group and a large number of its subsidiary operations have been placed in administrative receivership, Avesco PLC has acquired the Midlands and North divisions of Gearhouse Group PLC for £4 million. We understand that the business and assets acquired include the operations in Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow and at the NEC.

City Theatrical, which won praise last year for its AutoYoke system, has released a number of new products. These include the AutoYoke for PARnel - an automated variable beam spread washlight for use with ETC’s Source Four PARnel. Users can control the width of the beam and drive colour scrollers using remote DMX. A second new product, the Event PAR, is aimed squarely at the trade show market. A 575W MSD or MSR cold restrike lamp is incorporated into a Source Four Par, the result being a bright, high output washlight with a colour temperature of around 5600 degrees K. The third key new product is the Image Multiplexer - a multiprism device that turns any ellipsoidal with a six inch colour frame slot into a multi-image projection device. Also new from the company is the range of SlipWay taping cables and other theatrical accessories.
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Indochine X PixMob Fan Immersion

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's - 40 thousand LED pixels on a ceiling!!! Indochine's whirlwind tour transports fans to another level of the live experience - immersing them from floor to ceiling with PixMob's X4 wristbands, and an LED ceiling made entirely of its NOVA Minis! With the vision of Indochine's creative team, PixMob used its LED fan-technology to turn attendees and venues into an ocean of effects, and a starry sky of LED magic. Très très cool!

Read more about the Indochine tour in the latest issue of LSi

Following an impressive year’s trading, the US operation of OPTI has announced its move to larger premises. Based in Virginia, the business has set up home in a new building which will combine office and storage space and provide scope for future expansion. The new facility will continue to stock the full range of UK-manufactured OPTI Kinetics lighting products, as well as OPTI Trilite for the rental market produced at the company’s plant in Carp, Ontario, Canada. With responsibility for sales, marketing and distribution throughout North, Central and South America, turnover for the year is set to grow by 20 per cent.

Rosco has added 24 new colours to its redesigned e-colour+ range, which has been considerably enhanced with a new design swatchbook, colour guide and poster. The swatchbook includes full SED curves, transmission values, and cross references to filters in other Rosco ranges.

Stockport-based PA specialist Audio Design Services recently announced the death of its chief engineer, David Aldington. Aldington, who died of cancer at the start of February in his mid-50s, was well known to most people in the public address sector because of his professionalism and his commitment to quality, said David Hopkins OBE, chairman and managing director of ADS. Hopkins continued: "David was also well known for his sense of humour, even at times when his failing health could have excused him for being different. To his work colleagues he will be remembered for his courage and determination that was an inspiration to us all . . . a family man first and last, David and his wife May had Angela as their only child and I know that David was totally devoted to his young grandson Jamie, especially as they did so much together. David and I spent time swapping grandchildren storie

Since the Government made the decision to remove preferred bidder status from Legacy plc, the battle for who gets to do what with the Dome has intensified. The Experience consortium, which includes promoter Harvey Goldsmith, has joined forces with the four-company consortium of Quintain, Lend Lease, Stanhope and Grosvenor. The latter has already been in talks with the BBC and the Tussauds Group, which may spur the revival of a 10-year-old plan for a giant theme park at Greenwich, first put forward by Tussauds long before the notion of a Millennium Dome was conceived. Any BBC involvement in the bid could involve turning the Dome into a theme park inspired by classic programmes such as EastEnders and Walking with Dinosaurs. This now places the consortium in a strong position to challenge the rival bid from the Dome’s former chief exec Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, whose bid is centred around

Martin USA has recently moved to new modern headquarters in Sunrise, Florida. The new facility is located in the Sawgrass International Corporate Park - a large, master-planned business park with retail, hotel and recreational facilities. Constructed around an ‘open’ design with plenty of room, the new building is ideal for a staff with a solid teamwork philosophy. At 45,000sq.ft, Martin US’s new office is effectively twice as big as its previous facility and houses a large, dedicated showroom in which to showcase Martin products and conduct Martin University classes.

On February 24th, The Witches of Eastwick closed at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Less than a month later, on 23rd March, the show is to be re-born in a new, more intimate production at the Prince of Wales Theatre. The lighting equipment for Howard Harrison’s Olivier-award nominated lighting design will once again be supplied by White Light, with The Moving Light Company again supplying automated lighting equipment.When The Witches of Eastwick opened at its original home last summer, it contained one of the most complex automated rigs seen in the West End. The new production will feature a scaled-down lighting rig, again featuring ETC Source Fours, Rainbow scrollers, VSFX projection and with the automated rig again including Pirouettes, Digital Light Curtains, Technobeams and Martin MAC300s. Portions of the rig will be supplied anew from White Light, allowing the fit-up

Constella, the established lighting effect design and manufacturing company, has appointed Mark Webb as its sales representative. Webb, formerly with near-neighbour Abstract, will be liaising with the company’s existing dealer network, whilst also looking to recruit new dealers for the company.

Z-Systems has appointed HHB as exclusive UK distributor of its full range of professional audio products. In recent years, Z-Systems has established an enviable reputation for its ‘Detangler’ digital audio patchbays which it manufactures, alongside a comprehensive range of sample rate convertors and multi-channel mastering processors.

The Anima nightclub in Fife, Scotland has a new sound system from RCF, installed by Images of Livingston. After an initial visit to the site, Billy-Ross Sheridan, Images managing director, asked RCF UK if they would travel to Fife and give a system demonstration for the club’s owners. RCF's Steve Coxon made the trip north and presented the Vision PA range of speakers. This did the trick and Images specified a complete RCF sound system, designed with the help of the RCF team. Taking into account the shape of the room and the mezzanine level, achieving the correct sound coverage was a complex process. Images Billy-Ross explains: "We were very impressed by the on-site help we received from the RCF team. With a job like this you need this kind of positive input to ensure the right result." Amplification is from a combination of QSC PLX1202 and PLX 3402 units.

The aim was to

As from March 5, Stage Electrics Bristol has moved its operation to Third Way, Avonmouth, Bristol, BS11 9YL. The move has been made to unify the company’s existing six Bristol premises under one roof. The 100 staff at Bristol now benefit from a staff canteen, on-site parking and air-conditioned workstations, while clients will benefit from a streamlined hire operation. The company’s contact numbers are listed below.

Purchasing Enquiries: +44 (0)1179379580
General Administration: +44 (0)117 982 7282
Customer Enquiries: +44 (0)117 938 4000

Installation and service subcontractor Install recently completed the relocation of its head office. The new premises, situated within three miles of the M6 and located within a newly built business complex, boast an 8,000sq.ft warehouse, an electronics workshop, a purpose-designed training and conference suite, and an extensively equipped office area. The rapid growth of Install over the past year has meant that the premises are not the only part of the company to have expanded. The 12-strong workforce has increased to 22, based both on and off-site. The most recent addition to the team is John Elves who becomes the company’s new general manager.

Carl Rivord, a 20-year veteran of lighting design work and the automated lighting industry returns to TLS Inc as a sales/project manager. Rivord got his start in the lighting industry in the early 1980s doing touring and production work with various companies in the Midwest. He then opened RSM Inc which manufactured, amongst other things, the Beamer - a controllable universal moving mirror attachment for theatrical fixtures - on behalf of Great American Market (GAM) of Hollywood.

Federal Signal has won a £150,000 contract to supply digital Akusta PA equipment for an on-shore oil processing plant in Algeria, operated by Sonatrack Anadarco. The contract, which has been placed by Anadarco’s US engineering contracts Brown and Root, sees Federal providing a range of digital PA equipment for installation at strategic points around the processing plant’s fibre optic-based monitoring network. This latest move follows the recent announcement that the company had won its first contract from Romania’s national oil company Petromar. There the contract was to provide an Akusta-based duplicated PA and general alarm system for an offshore oil facility in the Black Sea.

The Northcott theatre, based in Exeter's university complex, has recently upgraded its sound system. The theatre's sound engineer Jamie Pryke knew that the existing system was past its best and either had the option of short term hire, or start to build a new integrated system. In the end, he opted for a new system and called in Stage Electrics, whose Ian Dixon suggested they listen to the RCF Vision Series. He arranged for RCF to do a demonstration in the theatre and Pryke, with chief electrician Russell Payne, decided they would fit the bill perfectly. Pryke explained: "The RCF people brought the whole of the Vision Range down for us to listen to, once we'd established they could do the job, it was just a matter of planning the way forward. What we have done so far is phase one of the project, which is to have four Vision 121's installed at the stage front. We then plan to add ano

Bose has been appointed an approved supplier of sound systems to Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts following a two-day Techno Forum in Dubai. The Forum was part of a company conference for Le Meridien’s general managers and aimed at introducing the latest technologies to the Group. Bose were among nine companies invited to make a presentation, and as a result, the company’s Wave Radio/CDs and Acoustic Wave Music Systems are now both featured on Le Meridien’s approved product list.

White Light North will be holding a series of Academy Days in March and April, offering theatre lighting professionals a chance to get ‘up close and personal’ with products and personnel from a wide range of manufacturers. The first pair of open days, on March 21st and 22nd, will feature Avolites, Martin Professional, Robert Juliat and Le Mark. Avolites will be showing the Pearl 2000 and Sapphire consoles, the Art touring dimmers, the macro tablet and the Avo Visualiser system, Martin the MAC2000 and the rest of the popular MAC moving light range, and LeMark the GAM range of colour, gobos and effects, including the new FilmFX linear effect for Source Four spotlights. Robert Juliat’s acclaimed range of lanterns and followspots, for which White Light are now the UK distributors, will also be on show. Companies represented at the April open days, on the 10th and 11th of Ap

Crestron’s Isys touch panel control system is breaking new ground in converging audio-visual and information technologies, thanks to its ability to operate any number of devices, and link to multiple control systems around the world via the internet. Building on this platform, Crestron has now introduced the TPS-4500 Advanced Touchpanel Control system. The TPS-4500 offers a 12" diagonal touch-sensitive active matrix SVGA display (800 x 600 pixels) with an ergonomic Soft-Touch adjustable screen tilt (30°-80°) design. Colour control graphics, including 2D and 3D icons, photos and animations, are easy to read, even at extreme viewing angles. In common with other Isys products, users can upgrade its capabilities simply by installing optional expansion cards. For example, by installing the optional TPS-VID expansion card, the TPS-4500 can display full-motion NTSC or PAL video on

Oriel, a designer bar and restaurant, has recently opened in Mere Green, a fashionable suburb of Birmingham. The venue needed to have a sound system that would complement the décor. So owner Ian Sloane contacted 'Lonnie' of 2007 Sound & Light and asked him to design a sound system for Oriel. The brief from the client was simple, says Lonnie: "We don't want to see it."

Once Lonnie had surveyed the venue, he contacted RCF to enquire about their fittings for the Monitor Series speakers. RCF produce a special false ceiling adapter, designed to fit the Monitor 4's, which presents a flush-mounted speaker system. The RCF Monitor speakers deliver a high-quality sound that enhances one of the Midlands’ most stylish venues. The main sound system users a Sony MDS-E11 mini-disc for music. The system in divided into two zones with the rest rooms using 100v line feed to the RCF Spot

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