Business

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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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Bliss is a highly-sophisticated new bar/restaurant in Bournemouth conceived by experienced leisure entrepreneur, Richard Carr’s Future 2000 plc (the team behind the phenomenally successful Slinky dance nights).

Having owned the art deco building in Bournemouth’s town centre for several years, they contracted local interiors company, Design Mode, to convert the bottom two floors of the former Maples department store into the heavily marbellised Bliss, at a cost of £1.25 million. For the sound reinforcement, Future 3000’s head of technical services, Lee Price, stuck with the Martin Audio catalogue, which dominates the company’s other venues, as well as providing the touring sound for Slinky.

One of his prime considerations was the acoustic isolation necessary from the five storeys above the ground floor and basement, which the landlord has converted for student

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Traditional brewers Fuller, Smith & Turner, have entered the burgeoning London leisure suburb of Shoreditch - the trendiest colony in the capital - with their new brand, Katabatic.

With 3,200sq.ft offering a capacity of 480, and a late license inherited from the previous incumbents (Propoganda), this is prime real estate. The late night venue will eventually have cost £1.2 million to develop - a proportion of which has gone on an inspired sound, lighting and vision scheme across the two floors.

As well as offering views of the DJ practicising his craft inside, the exterior design shows off the encased foyer decor of AVR Colourchanger beams refracted from a cluster of tiny mirrorballs, with the campest of light sculptures providing an artistic backdrop. The colour-changing spots from Abstract and Martin Pro, working with the fibre optics, bring Katabatic (a metereological word meanin

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London superclub Fabric has commissioned loudspeaker manufacturers Martin Audio to supply a new sound reinforcement system to be installed into the club’s two famous dance rooms. The upgrade takes place just a year and a half after the club opened. For the main Room One system, designed by Fabric’s technical manager Dave Parry and Martin Audio’s Richie Rowley - in collaboration with the Fabric sound team - eight Martin Audio W8C compact enclosures were specified, formatted in a quad array around the dancefloor and underpinned by eight of Martin’s WSX monster sub bass units. The sound design for Fabric’s Room Two incorporates the flagship products of Martin’s Blackline range - the H2 and H3s. The H3s are placed in a quad array format around the dancefloor, supplemented by a further four bi-amped H2 cabinets providing satellite fill down the length of th

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The management team at Presentation Services Ltd (PSL), has purchased the assets and business of Gearhouse Group PLC’s Southern UK operation, together with the company’s North American operations. These include PSL and PSL Central, Lighting Unlimited, Set & Stage, Proquip, Presentation Graphics, Gearhouse Multimedia, ConferenceCast and Quorom Travel. In the US, both the Los Angeles and Nashville companies have been purchased. The transaction was concluded on Saturday 3 March and equity funding has been secured for the new company through 3i, with Barclays providing debt funding. The new Group is to be called Presentation Services Group Ltd; all of the companies will be relaunched under the PSL name and will continue to focus on the rental, staging, exhibition and concert touring markets. The new management team comprises Gary Davis, Chris Scadding, Darren Glossop, Irene McLea

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Audio rental companies SSE Hire of Birmingham, UK, and Melpomen of Nantes, France, have announced a move to merge, with the formation of the SSE Audio Group. The move comes at a significant time for both companies: SSE are celebrating 25 years in the industry, whilst Melpomen has been operating in the French market for almost 20 years, recently adding office and warehouse facilities in Paris and La Rochelle to the main Nantes-based organisation. John Penn, MD of SSE, told PLASA Media: "We have been actively looking for ways to develop the business. The trend for sound companies is to expand purely by buying more and more stock. However, we have seen a steady decline in the amount of work undertaken by UK rental companies in Europe, through a combination of the strength of sterling and the number of strong European rental companies who provide a good service. As a consequence, we hav

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Italian rock veterans of over 30 years, Pooh have spent the past two months on an arena tour of 19 Italian cities, promoting their new triple-platinum album ‘Cento di queste vite’ (A hundred of these lives). Pooh, one of the few acts which manage to stay on stage for three whole hours, are renowned for the quality of their technical and musical presentation. Staging and lighting for the current tour is looked after by service company Xenon, owned by Renato Neri, who is using a wide array of Clay Paky lighting fixtures for the show, including the new Astroscan projector, launched at PLASA 2000. Neri says: "Astroscan is a spectacular effect that can create soft and relaxing atmospheres or powerful flashes of light. It can be positioned on the stage or up on the trusses, and covers the entire intermediate area thanks to pyramid head which oscillates at the speed and angle d

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US manufacturer Color Kinetics has launched Color Kinetics Japan. The new company is the product of a thriving distribution partnership between Color Kinetics and ALS Inc. In the past year as a Color Kinetics distribution partner, ALS has successfully introduced the Color Kinetics range of digital colour-changing lighting to the Japanese market. The new company will market the full product line throughout Japan whilst also contributing to the development of market-specific technologies. Kiyoshi Otsuki, president of ALS Inc, will become president of Color Kinetics Japan, and the office will officially open on April 1 in Tokyo.

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BAFTA, the British Academy of Film & Television Arts, specified a high level of video production for the Orange British Academy Awards, which was staged before an audience of 1700 people at the Odeon, Leicester Square recently. For the second year running, they turned to Creative Technology, who fielded the latest 3-chip DLP projection and a state-of-the-art modular LED display. Television viewers saw image magnification projected onto an 8 x 8 modular Lighthouse Technologies LVP-102D (10mm pixel pitch) screen to produce picture reinforcement on a 5.12m high and 3.84m wide canvass. Working through production company Initial, Creative Technology was also responsible for the flanking projections onto the walls, situated either side of the main screen. From its hire fleet, the company designated Christie Digital projectors - a pair of 3-chip DLP X6 Roadsters, offering digitally perfect pr

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Eastbourne Council has embarked on a general lighting upgrade effective across the town’s three main theatres, The Congress, Devonshire Park, and The Winter Gardens. Knowing from the outset that Strand was the brand of choice to suit their requirements, the theatres’ technical team approached a number of suppliers before opting for London-based White Light - one of Strand Lighting’s trading partners in the UK. The complete order comprised a total of 80 Cantata fresnels and 16 Alto fresnels, all complete with barndoors and other associated accessories, as well as 18 SL15/32 zoom coolbeam spotlights. The fittings were supplied ready to go by White light which, combined with the company’s service policy, was an important factor in securing the sale.

Douglas Morgan, of the Eastbourne Theatres’ technical team, commented: "We had made an informed decision t

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When Tony Hall of Essential Lighting took the brief for a recent annual sales convention at the Wembley Conference Centre, he was challenged with a large and complex ‘gyroscopic’ revolve that was to be a centrepiece of the show. Whilst a mains feed could be run through the various slip rings, Tony needed to incorporate a minimum of 36 ways of generic control and three ways of dimmed neon in the revolve to dramatically enhance the main reveal sequence and create a variety of looks for the show. Aware of the existence of radio DMX technology but unable to find it anywhere in the UK rental market, Tony called A.C. Lighting to help source the product. The recommendation was to utilise a state-of-the-art RadioDMX system manufactured in the USA. AC Lighting’s Glyn O’Donoghue stated: "Using a RadioDMX system provides a ‘cableless’ transmission that permi

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White Sound’s Josh White’s latest project was a sound upgrade for a new bar/restaurant in the heart of Soho from the owners of the ubiquitous Alphabet bar, for which he turned to the Turbosound TCS range of loudspeakers. White Sound was responsible for the sound system design and install for the Alphabet bar in 1996, and Josh was the obvious choice for Amber’s general manager, Spike Marchant. Amber is a modern styled bar/restaurant set over two floors. The ground floor restaurant features booth seating and required low level and discreet sound reinforcement. For this area, Josh mounted four TCS-20 cabinets on a dropped ceiling raft that runs through the centre of the room. This method ensured the speakers would not be seen - the sound is reflected off the walls into the seating areas.

Downstairs in the basement bar area - which again sports the booth seating, but this

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Color Kinetics has been awarded US Patent 6,166,496 for a method of augmenting a full variety of digital content - including video games, music, movies and even information - with the company's digital lighting technology. This third patent for the company covers systems and methods of combining and decoding lighting control information with an entertainment signal, so that video games, music, movies, and Internet content can directly drive full spectrum digital lighting to enhance that content. The result is a fully immersive experience where light - in an infinite variety of colours and intensities - interacts with sound, video or information to extend the entertainment experience beyond a television, movie screen, computer monitor or speaker system. Color Kinetics is branding this technology combination ‘Surround Light’. Potential applications cited by the company include
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