Since the early days in the theatre, when lighting control was first made possible by the use of rheostat dimmers, there had been evolving efforts to elevate light-level management to the maximum effect.

    Early systems involved banks of sliders, bolted to the stage wall, which had to be physically moved across anything up to an 18” travel distance to effect single-channel fades. Later, it was realised that if the dimmers could be controlled from a remote point, the operator could actually face the actors.

    Some beautiful one-off lighting desks were built, based on the Wurlitzer cinema organ, where each key represented a channel of the lighting system and the tabs and bass pedals were used to control levels and effects.

    When the first thyristor dimmer systems were introduced the major advantage was the physical size of the control systems. All the mains electronics could be sited onstage with a low-voltage multicore run back to any convenient point, where a compact, two-preset desk could control everything.

    Then computer technology intervened. A theatrical production of two or three hours’ length would involve hundreds of different lighting cues, comprising anything up to 120 channels of dimming at varying levels and in different combinations. The ‘memory’ desk meant that for the first time a lighting system could be pre-programmed with a series of cues that could be recalled in a desired sequence, using only one or two master faders.

    Pioneering most theatrical control developments was Strand Electric. Strand had introduced the IDM, the world’s first memory lighting board, in 1967 from the need to advance from a three-preset manual fader desk to a means of recording the fader levels and instantly reproducing them in performance. The first installation took place in June 1968 in Schweinfurt, followed by the Budapest Opera... and then the London Coliseum.

    With its push-button IDM/R (for Rocker) variant (and later redesigned MSR system), 20 systems were installed in prestige applications around the world. But by 1971 this design model had spawned the DDM (Digital Dimmer Memory) a system which addressed the IDM’s cumbersome procedure necessary to re-record a modified lighting state.

    The IDM/R, which also retained immediate access to any channel, became the conceptual prototype for the first software computer lighting control. Developed specifically for the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, the DDM immediately became recognised as the major world class memory lighting console.

    Strand’s mass-market seller in the early part of the decade, however, was the MMS (Modular Memory System) which jumped two hurdles in a single stride; it took advantage of low-priced integrated circuit technology and dispensed with a rocker switch per channel in favour of a calculator keypad and wheel, to control up to 480 channels.

    By 1976, the exacting production schedules forecast for London’s National Theatre urged Richard Pilbrow — the NT’s consultant and chairman of Theatre Projects — to develop the concept for a fully-saturated lighting rig, operated by sophisticated, purpose-designed control. Strand’s Lightboard pioneered control of 1,000 channels, total control of lighting intensity, position and colour, latest-takes-precedence (LTP) principles and multiple timed fades.

    Four years later, Strand came out with the first generation of Galaxy controllers, capitalising on modular control and bringing MMS operational philosophy up to date with simple direct control of up to 768 channels, multi-part timed fades, colour VDUs and a host of options, allowing the theatre to construct the ideal control for its facility.

    Galaxy led directly to a smaller, transportable version called the Gemini, but in between, Strand’s best-selling Tempus M24 had also introduced the advantages of memory control to smaller installations. Taking the best functions of its most popular boards, it added speed of operation and simplicity of control to create an international success.

   
ROCK’N’ROLL CONTROL
Whilst many of Strand’s early boards are now looked upon as classics, the requirements for the rock’n’roll director were somewhat different. One of the disadvantages of most memory desks was the lack of manual control should something go wrong, and it was often found necessary to have a ‘pin matrix’ panel as a back-up.

    This was a small board with a grid of holes in which diode pins connected groups of dimmer channels on to a single fader. The disadvantage was that it was almost impossible to recall the channels grouped together at varying light levels (although Avolites offered different coloured pins with various intensity options).

    Nevertheless, the pin matrix was used extensively in rock concert lighting, where the main desire was for masses of lighting flashing on and off at full brightness.

    The pin matrix itself was manufactured by a company called Oxley Developments, and such was the cost of this single most important item, that it established a new benchmark price for that type of board.

    The original pin matrix design had been popularised by the Electrosonic Rockboard — a development of the prototype desk the company had earlier built for the Rolling Stones — and the Alderham Showdesk.

    The portable Rockboard, with its pre-programmed chaser, had been developed as a result of several years’ experience in designing and building custom-made touring systems. The flexible mastering system also made it suitable for theatre and TV productions. With two presets of linear faders for individual dimmer control, the Rockboard initially was available in 24, 36, 48 and 60-channel versions and designed to be used with the company’s Portapak dimmers.

    Each of the five methods of channel control (Presets, Flash Buttons, Pin Matrix, Chaser and Touch Matrix) worked independently of each other on the ‘highest takes precedence’ principle, with the pin matrix allowing direct grouping of channels to 10 independent master faders.

    The matrix board itself was situated under a hinged cover plate housing the faders, and selection of channels to master control was by means of inserting the yellow diode pins into the relevant board hole. Each master fader was also provided with a three-position switch for Blackout, On and Group Flash.

    Early inventors and pioneers, working directly with the more adventurous English ‘prog’ bands such as Yes, ELP, Gentle Giant, Deep Purple and Genesis, who would later bankroll the launch of Vari-Lite, were commissioned to devise new solutions. And again Electrosonic held centre stage.

    One industry legend, Michael Tait, later to form Tait Towers, was building his own consoles for Yes up until around 1974 — when he eventually asked Electrosonic to build him a new desk to keep up with the band’s increasingly demanding show visuals.


TOUR-WORTHY
As a member of The Who’s road crew from 1967 until the mid-’80s, Roger Searle witnessed huge leaps of technological development. Online at TheWho.net, he recalls the band’s purchase of an Electrosonic desk in 1970.

    He writes: “It always went on stage right as we could not run AC power into the audience. At that time we used to hire lamps from a theatre lighting company in London but they could not supply a suitable portable desk.

    “We were put in touch with Electrosonic and basically told them to produce a desk that we could ‘tour’. The desk they produced was a three-preset desk with an electronic cross-fade (i.e. lamp on/lamp off) sequence as well as a mechanical ‘chase’ unit.

    “The outputs were 18 x 15 Amp theatre-style sockets (two per control fader). If memory serves, there was a selector switch on each fader which decided preset master A, B or C.

    “In the early days I used to power this via a 100 Amp, three-phase changeover switch. At a certain part of the show we would throw the switch diverting power from the desk to three 10,000W film lamps arranged across the back of the stage facing the audience. Most venues at this time did not have enough spare power for us to use everything at once so it was one or the other — a bit basic but it worked.

    “We took this desk to the USA in 1971 and on the same tour purchased a load of second-hand Lekos in New York which formed the basis of The Who’s lightshow for some years.”

    Of course, the USA was conducting its own parallel lighting experiments. Random examples include when the late Bill McManus (McManus Enterprises and PeakBeam Systems) asked EDI (Electronics Diversfiied Inc) to modify one of its standard theatre consoles for use on Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play tour in 1973.

    Specified by the legendary lighting designer, it has been suggested that this may have been the first-ever pin matrix console.

    Bob See at US-based See Factor was another pioneer who built his own custom lighting consoles and later came out with the Light Coordinator which could run up to 500 moving lights. He had also been a major customer of the Electrosonic Rockboard.

    Certainly adopting the spirit of American theatre shows, up in north London’s seminal rock venue, the Rainbow Theatre (the former Finsbury Park Astoria), in the early 1970s, Richard Hartman was simultaneously developing his own ‘skunk works’ somewhere backstage. Industry stalwarts fondly remember his many early creations — including a lighting desk commissioned by Genesis lighting operator Adrian Selby.

    Hartman remembers building the desk which although characterised by huge faders was very much to Selby’s design. “I think Adrian was trying to run 120 volt lamps as singles on 240 by only turning them up half way,” he recalls.

    “I know that isn’t right but I couldn’t convince Adrian, and he went through a lot of lamps before realising that the expense just wasn’t worth it and turned to series wiring. I think that is where long travel faders came in.”


BREAKING FROM TRADITION
As sophistication grew, lighting designers developed a growing requirement, not only for lots of chasing effects and flash buttons, but accurate control over subtle lighting cues. It wasn’t long before micro-processing technology intervened — both in the concert touring and discotheque domains.

    The demand for micro-computer technology was to bring down the cost and physical size of memory systems to levels never previously imagined. And at the beginning of 1982, the industry witnessed a breakthrough when a new company called EFS-Celco brought the Gamma 30-, 60- and 90-channel range to the market, combining for the first time the features of the two-preset desk, the memory desk and the rock concert desk and breaking from tradition to offer 10-channel matrix increments.

    The Gamma 300, billed as the first programmable memory desk, had received its first airing earlier at Showlight 81 in Berlin.

    Whereas the Rockboard could provide a single chase or a build-up, with the new Celco board the operator could put in whatever chase they wanted and store real levels.

    The principle worked on the basis that any channel and level set up manually on either preset could be memorised exactly on to a group of master faders, to be recalled later on a single fader. The chaser worked on the principle that every single step in a sequence would be memorised individually, each step comprising any number of channels activated together. Every conceivable chase pattern imaginable could be set up by the operator, memorised, recalled, edited or deleted.

    The 60- and 90-channel versions also offered alpha-numeric displays above each memory master with a separate computer keyboard which was used to ‘write’ a cue above each fader, allowing up to 450 previews of what each fader would bring up.

    As disco was experiencing boom time, EFS-Celco had built in expansion to link with popular controllers. An inlet port allowed any 0-10V signal to override each memory master and so that by connecting the popular and highly-specified four-channel Mode Unit 5 (modified for 0-10V output) or Zero 88’s Lightmaster 611 any channel fo the desk could be grouped into any of 10 faders.

    Thus a 30-channel desk could be converted into six-zone controller, for instance, with 30 lighting circuits that could chase individually (with or without sound activation) or sequence throughout the whole system via the internal chaser. And because every channel and master had an individual flash button the entire system could be played by the operator like a keyboard — an art form that became very en vogue on the continent in the early 1980s.

    But Zero 88 — another pioneering control company with an interest in disco, theatre and studio applications — had pre-empted EFS-Celco with some micro ground-breaking work of its own.

    In May 1980, the company had introduced the MDC (Multi Dimensional Controller), having shown it privately at the Frankfurt Musikmesse the previous month. Peter Brooks, later the association chairman under whom BADEM metamorphosed into PLASA, remarked: “Once we were in the disco boom we concluded that we should get ourselves into microprocessors.”

    And the experience of processor-based products provided the platform to produce, in turn, the lower-cost options of the four-channel Micro 4  — then brought micro-processing technology to the mobile jock with the FX3 and FX4.

    The facilities of built-in strobe control and automatic lightshow control via the indispensible USP of a single ‘Super Auto’ button had created a hard act for Zero 88’s competitors to follow by the end of 1981.

    By the early 1980s, however, the fight for the touring LD’s budget had developed into a duopoly between Celco, and a parallel contender — Avolites. For all Celco’s technological advantage, it was pushed every step of the way by the relatively low-tech, but eminently more rock’n’roll-compatible QM Series from Avolites, which looked physical and industrial — and was accompanied by a modular touring dimmer rack that was second to none.


APPROACHES
We traced the early development of both Celco and Avolites, to illustrate the completely different adoptive approaches of each.

    Back in September 1978, Keith Dale and his partner Tim Bridle were to be found operating the Celestial Lighting Co, a conventional projection lightshow, supporting bands like Pink Fairies and Principal Edwards Magic Theatre at venues like Bromley Tech, frequently working alongside DJs from Gandalf’s Disco.

    In 1974-75, Dale discovered the popular Strand Pattern 23 profile spots and Pattern 123 fresnels which in turn led Celestial to a second-hand Strand Mini 2 — a two preset/two channel board — which they adapted to include flash buttons.

    With his more theatrical set-up now exchanged for two Genie gas hoists — and 32 of LSD’s newly-spun PAR 64 lanterns — in 1978 Dale undertook his first concert tour with Joe Jackson, who was also using the Strand Pattern 23s coloured with Lee gel. But the controller he aspired to at that time was the Electrosonic Rockboard.

    Celestial visited Electrosonic’s HQ in Woolwich, and while they were impressed with the desk design, they baulked at the price — and hence the idea of making their own board was implanted.

    But Celestial was still only a rental company, so Dale and Bridle, joining forces with Gandalf’s Andy Reid, formed Celco (a name patently in the same spirit as Tasco and Showco). Meanwhile, Bernie Richardson, the other partner in Gandalf, went off to join Alderham, run by Showlights owner Eric Pearce.

    Alderham was based in Southwark, sharing the building with Showlights in one half and RDE (Richard Dale Ents) in the other. By the end of the ’70s, they had set up a separate division manufacturing pin matrix consoles and touring dimmer racks. Conceptually, Keith Dale felt at home with Alderham’s board — which came with a 72-way touring rack as opposed to Electrosonic’s six-channel Portapaks.

    Eventually, Alderham couldn’t sustain and when the company folded, Richardson set up EFS with Matt Deakin, the company’s technician, who had recently returned from ELO’s Flying Saucer (Out Of The Blue) tour of 1978.

    Both EFS and Celco were trading out of Bromley and Dale remembers that the first product EFS showed them was the EFS-240A, which was their first pin matrix console.

    Celco bought every item that EFS made, for its rental stock — bar one console, which it sold to Zenith Lighting.

    At the start of the ’80s, Deakin and Richardson were ready to replace the pin matrix with a microprocessor, which would provide channels at levels and a chase that was continuous.

    “Microprocessor technology was just coming into vogue and at that stage they were bread-boarding it,” says Dale. “But in 1981 we were sharing the same premises and it just made sense to merge into EFS-Celco.”

    Gamma became the third generation desk for Deakin and Richardson (after the Alderham and 240A). But while they knew they were on to a technological winner, Keith Dale never really liked the colour or the style; in fact Supermick’s laconic Irishman, Peter Clarke, likened it to a Chad Valley creation.

    Cerebrum Lighting was appointed as exclusive distributor and John Lethbridge threw the company’s full weight behind a proper marketing campaign.

    Then, in 1983-84, Zero 88 came out with the modular Eclipse which had one important advantage over the Gamma in that the memory could be modified (it had to be replotted on the Gamma). And while it wasn’t marketed into rock’n’roll applications it noticeably started to impact on Gamma sales.

    So in 1984 Celco responded with the Series II, in which the memories could be modified — with a row of rotary knobs for output limits. The potentiometer on the final output was the result of Playlight asking Celco to make this mod for the BBC — which it then incorporated into the standard design.

    Aesthetically, the Series II was more rock’n’roll-friendly, with padded armrests, an illuminating perspex strip down the middle, electro-illuminescent panels and Schadow flash buttons. But though Celco moved the spec and styling up it still didn’t appeal to the rock sensibilities in the way that Avolites did.

    In fact, Tasco’s Joe Browne once summed it up most eloquently when he remarked, with disarming candour: “Your consoles look like shit.” Celco’s response to the flat-bed Series II this time was to rake it, add a leather armrest and wood finish, and increase the retail price.

    In 1986, Celco also took back its marketing from Cerebrum, created a new image and launched the Gold which at last gave the brand the rock’n’roll standard it had been seeking. Using more metallic paint, and with a keyboard in the drawer, Gold helped Celco to dominate the rock’n’roll market for a time.

    “I can’t think of many tours from 1986 onwards — from the Stones, Prince, Bowie and Madonna, to Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra and Siouxsie & The Banshees — that didn’t have one Gold or, as fashion dictated, two linked together,” says Keith Dale.

    The initial 90-channel Gold was soon complemented by a ‘special edition’ 60-channel version, and in 1987 supply couldn’t keep up with demand. But by then Avolites had been firmly on the map for several years.


FROM WEST LONDON...
TO THE WORLD
The roots of Avolites Production Company Ltd can be traced back to February 1976 when Ian Walley started trading in a railway arch in Hammersmith. Some 18 months later he moved to Shepherds Bush and then Broomfield Road, Ealing, where full manufacturing commenced in 1978.

    Walley was known as ‘Avo’, because of the old Model 8 Avometer he carried round with him, and that’s how the company name came into being. The other major influence was Paul Ollett, who was initially backgrounded in TFA Electrosound, and carried on working with TFA while engaged on the initial Avolites projects. Ollett later joined full time as a director, alongside fellow board members, Clive Standley and Murray Thomas.

    During 1974 and 1975, Walley was working on the road for Scope International lighting equipment hire as an electrician, a rigger and also as lighting designer for Barclay James Harvest, Caravan and others. He quickly became frustrated with almost daily having to repair the antiquated lighting equipment typically in use on the road at that time.

    He was quite sure that he could design and manufacture a more reliable system and was convinced that the lighting rig of the future had to be not only totally reliable but also, importantly, much faster to set up.

    During discussions with Barclay James Harvest’s management, Walley secured an assurance that if he created his own lighting business and a completely new lighting system, the band would use his own company — Avolites — for their future tours; thus the company’s immediate income was secured, with its promise of system reliability and speed of set-up.

    Walley’s first rig comprised two trusses — a 40’ and a 30’ — manufactured by the aforementioned Richard Hartman, and their own Dematrix console and dimming rack — plus a multipinned ‘Twofer’ box to series connect the 110 volt PAR 64 lamps.

    Meanwhile, Avolites was pioneering technologies of its own. It was the first company to use multipin connectors for signal inputs and dimming channel outputs in the industry — at first with Harting Electroflec connectors and later Socapex; in fact it became the first UK importer of Socapex.

    The original rack designers were Ian Walley, Paul Ollett and Murray Thomas. And once Avolites started using this equipment on the Barclay James Harvest tour, other companies quickly became aware of its reliability and fast set-up time — and the demand was rapidly created by word of mouth.

    Avolites then had to face the decision that confronted many similar outfits in the pioneering days of rock’n’roll production: whether it could cease being a touring production company and concentrate exclusively on manufacture.

    The firm grasped the nettle and introduced its first fully-modular 19” rack design, based on eight-channel modules and supplied to Kadek Vision at Shepperton Studios.

    By early 1984, Avolites was in full flight, producing the 8100 series 84-channel pin matrix analogue console, with flash buttons on every channel, which toured with the Rolling Stones.

    Fired by this success, the following year Avo turned to process-controlled desks with the QM500, the company’s first single-processor memory console, notably used on The Jacksons’ 1984 Victory tour.

    Rugged and physical, it was perceived by those who hadn’t dived headlong down the microprocessor route as the original industry standard rock’n’roll touring board. The Rolacue 30 and 60 would soon follow.

    In the mid-’80s, most LDs were faced with two very contrasting options: Celco’s powerful, electronic console in basic packaging, or Avo’s liveried QM500, a rugged and classic piece of furniture. Though lacking the same degree of intelligence as the Celco, it indirectly provided the route map to their next destination, the sophisticated control desk for Peter Stringfellow’s Hippodrome venue — the subject of a forthcoming chapter.

    Though both Celco and Avolites were later subject to respective corporate takeovers, which temporarily put their brakes on their rate of progress, back in 1985 you paid your money and you took your chance.
TPi

Acknowledgements:
Paul Pelletier’s Lighting Console Gallery at
www.pbase.com/paulpelletier; Bob Simpson; Mats Karlson; Zero 88; Keith Dale; TheWho.net; Strand Archive; Avolites.com; ‘Concert Lighting: Techniques, Art and Business’ by James L. Moody.