What is a gold cue?

derekleffew

Resident Curmudgeon
Senior Team
Premium Member
And where/when might one find or use one?
 
I feel like I should know this but I just can’t think of it. I look forward to seeing the answer in a week.
 
Hint - (on 2nd thought, too revealing)...

Maybe related to "golden hour", maybe not... ;)
 
Okay, it's been a week. The only person on CB I know who knows this is @STEVETERRY , although @ship and @JChenault probably should. Several others by their profiles. One kinda has to be over sixty--there's a big clue.
 
Are we opening this up now?

Additional hint: golden years.
 
A billiards table perhaps...
"Now friends, let me tell you what I mean
You got one, two, three, four, five, six pockets in a table
Pockets that mark the difference between a gentleman and a bum
With a capital "B" and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!"
 
I can't recall @SteveB ever writing about encountering a Kliegl Anything. Lucky fella.
 
I can't recall @SteveB ever writing about encountering a Kliegl Anything. Lucky fella.

Well, OK then. I worked a tiny little PAC in Mamaromeck, NY in the late 70's, all Kliegl ellipsoidals, plus a few of their 6" fresnels that used an odd sized lense. The ellipsodals were their first model that had the FEL lamp, though I think the fresnel also used an FEL. Step lenses, whatever their version of a 6x12 was. I also encountered many Kliegls at SUNY Purchase as a student. Having used them prior I was like the ONLY person who knew anything about them. Kliegl had won the contract for units and controls for 3 theaters, so they had a boat load of Kliegl units I recall, plus a few Performance computers. Only good thing about a Kliegl ellipsoidal was it weighed less than a 360Q as it was sheet metal vs. forged aluminum. The original Purchase theater D was a Ward Leonard install and to meet the specifications, which called for sheet metal Kliegl units, WL had Altman provide a lot of 360Q ellipsoidals made of sheet metal. I had never seen that and never saw it any where else.
 
Golden cue - the last cue of the show or the last cue of ones career.
 
It was the Gold button as I recall. It was like a hidden function button, you pressed it in conjunction with another button, it changed the function of the primary button.
Not exactly. What you're describing I first encountered on the Prestige--a "Function" key and F1>F8 keys that changed purpose depending on what one was doing. Performer was not near as sophisticated as that.

On Performer the gold key was used to assign and execute specific cues on specific faders. Once recorded, a "gold cue" was played back by holding the gold button and pressing a number 0-9. Thus ten "master" cues. Gold one, gold two, even gold zero. Around 1988 came a software update that allowed 34 gold cues (gold 00 thru gold 33). Since we're now dealing with two digits, One pressed and held the gold key while also pressing the first digit. Then let go of everything and press the second digit to execute.

Why fuss with gold cues at all? Usually it was to have the main cuestack on the X fader and subroutines (chases) on the Y fader, and have them start/stop simultaneously. On the Expression series, the feature was known as "AutoLoad."

I contend, without any proof whatsoever, that all this came about because Morpheus Lights chose to use a Performer to run their early moving lights, PanaSpots and PanaBeams. The control eventually morphed into the PanCommand system.
 
I contend, without any proof whatsoever, that all this came about because Morpheus Lights chose to use a Performer to run their early moving lights, PanaSpots and PanaBeams. The control eventually morphed into the PanCommand system.
Atlas may shrug, but Morpheus morphs.

"... to sleep, perchance to dream..."
 
Fascinating Derek, I never played with a Performance. I only recall what folks told me about how it functioned. I don't recall anything like this on the larger Performer desk. But then I lived on a Multi-Q for a few years and cannot recall much about programming that either. I do remember the "Load Disk" and "Save to Disk" on Multi-Q where right next to each other, neither did a "are you sure" and you could royally dump a show if you didn't pay attention. Had a console op. do that to Tom Skelton once.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back