Perth’s Astor Theatre is one very busy music venue in fact, according to Tim Bradsmith of Showgrinder Productions, it is officially Australia’s busiest music venue.
Tim’s company recently redesigned and installed a new lighting system into the venue including eight Martin RUSH MH1 super bright LED profile moving heads.
“I am so impressed by the RUSH MH1 and they are perfect for this install,” he remarked. “We put them up against the MAC700 and they were an easy 20% brighter. The gobos are sharper, the colours are sharper …. they are amazing.”
ShowPro product in the rig include six Quad 18, four Quad 18 Tour Pro and four LED Profile 15/30s, the latter described as ‘the most magic thing ever’ by Tim.
“I’ve had lighting designers come through who think they know everything and I turn on the LED Profiles for half an hour, then walk up and physically remove the iris with my fingers and they’re like ‘dude!” laughed Tim. “They are lovely and warm, you cannot tell the difference to non-LED model. I’ve been doing this work for 35 years and if you can pick the difference, I’ll give you $500.”
A couple of Clay Paky Stormy Strobes have been added to the venue and again Tim is very impressed.
“It’s great to be able to easily pick any colour I want and they are so silent,” he added. “There’s no tick-tick-tick through any of the amplifiers. Actually, the whole rig is silent. There are no cooling fans kicking in during intimate moments in the shows.”
As well as their noiseless operation, Tim is a great fan of the eco-friendliness of LED products and the fact that they produce no heat to compete with the air conditioning.
“The supply from the Show Technology team in Perth has been seamless and I’m sure the backup will be great too,” he concluded.
