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Black Light Provides Grade 1 Service for Historic Town Hall

Scottish lighting specialist Black Light has been at the heart of a major but delicate installation in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire. Rutherglen’s Town Hall is Grade 1 listed, which meant that the £12.5 million refurbishment project had to be undertaken extremely carefully and use some innovative techniques.

As the main sound and lighting contractor for the venue’s Grand Hall, Black Light had to achieve the difficult task of providing a 21st century installation, but work around the stringent restoration requirements of an historic building.

One of the first major hurdles to be overcome was in the Hall’s back wall. For historic reasons, traditional lath and plaster had to be used, the plaster for which takes literally months to dry. This meant that all the cabling had to be installed a year ago in order for the plaster to have time to dry.

Once the plaster dried, the cables would also be inaccessible, so extra capacity had to be built in for any possible future expansion. With that completed, Black Light’s team - led by Paul McGreal - could put in the rest of the installation.

The new stage comprised 30 sections of 2x1m Prolyte StageDEX Top Line. What should have been a straightforward installation was marred by an over-zealous driver dropping one of the pallets, ruining a significant amount of the consignment. However, Black Light and Prolyte pulled out all the stops to rush a replacement order to Rutherglen from Holland. To complement the installation, Black Light supplied a complete Triple E Unitrack system and curtains for stage side and rear.

Prolyte H40V box truss was suspended from six Verlinde Stagemaker hoists above the stage, with lighting fixtures including 24 ETC Source Fours, 24 Selecon 1200 Fresnels, 12 Selecon Pacific profiles and four Selecon Acclaim cyc battens.

To make operation more flexible, a radio control interface was installed for the hoists. “The control system for the hoists was installed in the dimmer room so, given the constraints of the building, the Verlinde radio system gave a lot more flexibility than a conventional multicore control interface,” says Paul McGreal.

Four Prolyte H40L truss ladders were 'dead-hung' across the hall from the building structure at 5, 10, 15 and 20m from the front of stage, using four custom Doughty alloy tube hangers. Each ladder truss supports an internally wired bar and facilities panel complete with emergency lighting, microphone, loudspeaker, A/V, DMX and data points.

In order to run the necessary cabling to the ladders, but without compromising on the visual appearance, the Black Light team inventively sprayed two lengths of thin profile drainpipe silver for the cable drops, to enhance the appearance of the Doughty supports.

Dimming is provided by 48 ways of ETC Sensor and six way Unison systems, with an ETC Emphasis 2D 500 control system, Unison control outstations and LCD Touch Screen Control Panel.

Black Light also provided a full house PA system, comprising four Nexo PS15 mid/high cabinets, two LS1200 subs, two LS-1 PS-15 Mk2 controllers and two Ohm MR-10 stage monitors. Amplification is from three Crown MA3600VZs and a Crown Pulse 2, speaker management from two XTA DP224s, outboard effects by a Yamaha SPX990 and mixed from a Mackie SR24:4 VLZ console. Black Light also supplied Tascam cassette, CD and MiniDisc recorder/players.

“Putting a cutting edge installation in a building that was being restored using much older techniques was a major challenge,” says Paul McGreal. “There were several areas where we had to be ingenious in order to maintain the required infrastructure, yet provide the functionality that the client required. But the finished result looks stunning and works incredibly well. It was a lengthy installation, but we’re really pleased with it.”

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Black Light Provides Grade 1 Service for Historic Town Hall

12th May 2005

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