BIRMGINGHAM, U.K. – When Paul Duffy and his then-partner set up Pacific Sound & Light at Rich Bitch Studios in Birmingham, the idea was to gain a slice of the impending new millennium celebration business. Fast forward a decade, and his business has diversified from rentals to installation, and from concert work to corporate and theatre tours.
It was when Pacific found themselves contracted to provide sound and lighting production on The Drifters theatre tour – where they were expected to turn the venue into an authentic 1970s disco environment, using mirror balls, that they realized their stock of premium grade moving lights didn't contain one feature they needed.
"We needed something specific, because our existing 250W fixtures didn't contain an iris, and in certain applications (with raked seating) we were blinding the audience sweeping downstage off the rear truss once they hit the mirrorballs," Duffy noted.
Tony Bailey from MilTec visited Pacific last year and showed Paul the unit at the time. Subsequently, MilTec provided demo units for evaluation. "We put them against our other units and they were every bit as powerful – but with the additional motorized zoom and iris, it was exactly what we wanted, and MilTec have been great to work with, providing all the back-up."
The XL250 features a 14°-22° motorised zoom and iris as well as seven interchangeable, indexing rotating glass gobos, ten interchangeable static gobos and a three-way rotating prism, with 12 interchangeable colors.
Now that the band is recreating the original 1970s disco vibe, featuring three 12-inch mirrorballs that can be brought into play independently or collectively, the six PR Lighting moving heads (accompanied by some LED lighting) provide all the versatility that is needed.
"We can focus the heads direct on the footprint of the mirror ball and control the beams exactly where we want them to hit, with no light spillage whatsoever. We can also simply iris down the lighting, put a prism in and get three separate gobo FX and iris chases. It gives us a few more options and we bought these fixtures precisely with that in mind."
According to Paul Duffy, the XL250s are run off an Avolites Pearl Expert and offer fast movement, excellent color saturation and output and they are easy to rig.
"The XL 250s also provide a great color spread when you zoom out – the beam is wider than on our other fixtures and this makes them ideal as conventional washlights for our corporate work."
For more information, www.pr-lighting.com.
