Shades of Grey

The height of disco lighting school sophistication in the 70s was the Ultra Violet light, the oil wheel and the strobe. We found this from our annual school disco, provided by a Company in Wallsend known as Impulse who also sold gear and had a recording studio. Naturally, us geeky types tried to emulate this.

I got myself a “black light” which could go into a regular lamp socket and took it to Simon Ritter’s Party. I left early (due to too much Lager and Blackcurrant) and found out later that it had exploded after someone called Paul Snaith spat on it.

I bought a couple of oil wheels during my school career, and a couple of small projectors to use them with. For my 18th Birthday, my Mum and dad bought me a zodiac effects wheel as well as a Sinclair Black Watch.

Now a strobe works by producing a very short, bright flash of light from a flash-type tube filled with Xenon gas. A high voltage pulse is applied (generally to a third electrode) which ionises the gas and allows a bright pulse of energy to be discharged through the tube.

(Click the box to fire the Xenon tube) 

My first strobe, however, wasn’t as sophisticated as this. It was advertised as a Pocket Strobe in the back of Practical Electronics but when it turned up, it was a torch with a small circuit to make it flash. Needless to say, as it used a filament lamp, the effect of temporal aliasing was practically non-existent.

My next attempt, was mechanical- an LP with a hole in, fitted in front of a photo-flood and powered by a gramophone turntable motor. This was OK as an effect but tended to melt, or go flying off the spindle and shearing across the forestage scratching the school piano. I did have a number of alternative effects though, including a home made colour wheel. (No precision of colour choice but very freaky).

In due course, I bought a Strobe kit, the “Hy-Light” from an outfit known as the Service Trading Company of Little Newport Street behind the Empire, Leicester Square. This wasn’t particularly bright (4 Joules, or about 100 watts at full speed (Watts = Joules/Second) but was a real strobe and it was enhanced with the addition of extra capacitors, generally salvaged from old florry light fittings. The electronics were fitted into an old tape recorder case and the flash tube was in an old floodlight, eventually upgraded to an old Furse Spotlight which made it a strobe spot and much brighter.

Once I was actually earning, I was working in London and found myself in Little Newport Street. I bought myself a “Super HyLight” kit complete with case, this was 16 Joules and the dog’s bollocks of strobes at the time. I was going to see Lulu in The Sound of Music at the Victoria Palace that night and went back to my hotel after the interval in order to carry on with the Soldering Iron. (I was staying at the Grosvenor Victoria which was very handy.)

I also bought some beefier slide projectors for oil wheel use, first an Aldis Tutor (1000W) then a Rank Aldis Tutor II (250W, but brighter). The Tutor II was the workhorse effects projector of the 80s, whilst the Kodak Carousel was the workhourse AV slide projector (although I never owned a KC).

The Carousel was omnipresent in showbiz for thirty years but it was quietly manufacture discontinued in 2004, having been killed off by digital projectors. It is a bit like Gary Glitter though- forgotten, but not gone.

Strobes are cool, how else can you see this?