Vintage Lighting 1987-ish Article about 300th Light Palette and Strand Filters
- Thread starterderekleffew
- Start date
I've used that console as late as 2002. I cried a tears of joy when the college finally replaced it with the modern ETC EXpress 24/48. It was right there with the sliding patch panel that would love to make pretty light shows when configuring the show's patch, not to mention bite you in the process.
Last edited:
STEVETERRY
Well-Known Member
Thank you @STEVETERRY . I didn't realize "Anne Morris" was our own @avalentino .
I've been doing some more thinking on this...
Nine years to sell 300 units, and it's a market leader and huge success. Today a console with those sales wouldn't make it to a second year, would it?. Yes, it's for Broadway and that's 40 theatres max. Then what? Vegas, Atlantic City, local Performing Arts Centers, cruise ships. How many Light Palettes did Four Star own at one time? And I don't know, but am going to be generous and say that the 300 does not count MiniPalette, MiniLight Palette, or MiniLight Palette2.
I've been doing some more thinking on this...
Nine years to sell 300 units, and it's a market leader and huge success. Today a console with those sales wouldn't make it to a second year, would it?. Yes, it's for Broadway and that's 40 theatres max. Then what? Vegas, Atlantic City, local Performing Arts Centers, cruise ships. How many Light Palettes did Four Star own at one time? And I don't know, but am going to be generous and say that the 300 does not count MiniPalette, MiniLight Palette, or MiniLight Palette2.
Fascinating, as ETC Express was a console I was thinking about, having sold like 14,000 units in the 13 years between 1995 and 2008. But the Light Palette was around $50K and the average Express just under $10K, IIRC.
I'm curious too. Steve, any recollection on what consoles Production Arts owned, and how many?
Errrr. Steve, it's been over 2.5 years!
Malabaristo
Well-Known Member
Man, it took me a couple tries to not read that as 25 years, and was feeling really confused about how it could be anywhere near that long. I'd say 2.5 years is still pretty recent!
STEVETERRY
Well-Known Member
We had many memory consoles: Kliegl Performance, Kliegl Performer I and II, Strand Mini Light Palette, Strand Pro-Palette (a "portable" version of Light Palette--a really unreliable device) , ETC Expression, ETC Idea, ETC Obsession, GAM Access, Compulite Animator, WholeHog 2. We generally bought them in lots of 5. At the peak, there were probably more than 100 memory consoles in active rental. We never owned the standard Light Palette, because Four Star had a somewhat secret exclusive deal with Strand for the New York rental market. Only after Sonny Sonnenfeld became the Strand rep were we able to buy Mini Light Palette and then Pro Palette.
We developed the LP512 card that was a plug-in to the Palette and allowed it to speak DMX512. This was a huge improvement over CD-80 protocol for rental applications.
We also had a painful one year science experiment with five Colortran Prestige 2000's (a poor clone of Light Palette--and the first PC-based console), which we then returned to Colortran and purchased ETC Expressions.
ST
Additions:
I forgot ETC Vision, Microvision, and Microvision FX, all of which were big successes for Production Arts in our Off-Broadway market.
Last edited:
STEVETERRY
Well-Known Member
You sold 2 Prestiges to me, then Ron Brodour got tired of fixing them (I can understand) and I found out that Steve Short at Litetrol would service them. Thus started a lifetime friendship with Steve, so that turned out very well and I have no hard feelings. Our Prestiges did last a while (we never moved them around) even though C-Tran had pulled the plug on software updates. I think we then purchased Expresses from you. Long time ago.
I remember Pro Pallette as essentially a Pallette with no rolling desk, just a basic keyboard with faders and subs, then a stand-alone processor and 2 stand alone monitors. I always thought the Pro Pallette was a Pro-Arts creation., not Strand. Allowed you to put it on tour without needing a giant box to hold the rolling console, just road cases.
@SteveB, perhaps you're also thinking of BASH's Executive Light Palette--a poorly executed version of similar concept.
I never knew of or saw the Bash version, where as I did see the Pro at PA one day.
scparker
Member
Sonny would and could sell just about anything to anyone.
Similar threads
