Classic Gear Live! 2025
First launched at PLASA 2023, our annual shop window for historical and interesting equipment and systems was at the PLASA show at Olympia from 1-3 September 2024. We were at PLASA again this year, from 7-9 September 2025 at Olympia in London, on stand K109 on the upper gallery.
Videos
Video
Andrew Bridge on The Phantom of the Opera
Video: Click on thumbnail
Classic Gear Live - Digital Light Curtain
Video: Click on thumbnail
System CD Lighting Console from the Palace Theatre
Video: Click on thumbnail
The World of Psychedelic Projection
Video: Click on thumbnail
On Display:
Betty - Strand System CD - courtesy Historic Stage Lighting Collective
Thorn Q-File - courtesy Broadcast Engineering Museum
ETC Microvision - courtesy ETC
ETC Obsession 2- courtesy WL
PanCans - courtesy HSLC
Patt 263 cutaway - courtesy HSLC
Altman 360Q - courtesy WL
Source Four - number 5 off the production line - courtesy ETC
GoldenScan - courtesy BHC/WL
PAL1200 - courtesy Martin
VL1 - courtesy PRG
Every issue of LSi ever published - courtesy PLASA
Lighting Plans - courtesy BHC / Theatrecrafts
Drawing board, stencils, pens
Cut-away Verlinde chain hoist - courtesy Chris Higgs
Pitching Digital Light Curtain - courtesy WL
Revox B77 - courtesy Autograph (with provision to record, play and edit tape)
WEM Copicat tape-based echo machine, courtesy Mike Walker/Loh Humm
Steeldeck decking holding it all up!
New for 2025 - The Projection Space
The World of Theatrical and Psychedelic Projection
Through this door you will...
- Be able to see, and if you wish, try your hand at creating, unique live liquid and analogue projected effects on a selection of early Aldis and Optikinetics projectors, to a soundtrack created by Kevin Foakes, author of Wheels of Light.
- Discover the enormous range of moving effects created by Strand from the 1920s onwards - everything from clouds to stars to fish to psychedelia, in many cases, hand-painted.
Unusually, in this day and age, there is no video in this room!
In action: Aldis Tutor, Tutor 2 projectors, Optikinetics GoBoShow and K2 projector - psychedelic projection
Loaned and operated by:
Neil Rice (ex Krishna Lights and Optikinetics co-founder)
Nigel Bailey (ex-Optikinetics R&D)
Gareth Dean and others
Strand effects discs and projectors (including clouds and flames, of course, but also many others - rain, snow, smoke, plants, dots, skeletons.
With thanks to key supporters:
- Autograph
- Steeldeck
- White Light
And huge thanks to those who’ve loaned equipment:
- Historic Stage Lighting Collective (HSLC)
- Technical Theatre Preservation Group (TTPG)
- Broadcast Engineering Museum
- ETC
- PRG
- Martin
- Backstage Heritage Collection
- Theatrecrafts.com
- LSi / PLASA Media