Each of the 24 Wholehogs that were built was named and numbered individually. This wonderful list has been gathered from posts on the Flying PIg Systems anniversary Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/flyingpigsystems/
#01 'Eeny' (UK Prototype)
Owned by Nick Archdale at Carallon, London, UK #02 'Meeny'
Sold to Meterolites. Sold on around 2005. Unknown location now. #03 'Miny'
Sold to Meterolites, now owned by Nick Archdale at Carallon, London, UK #04 'Mo'
Sold to Light & Sound Design for the Grateful Dead tour, along with #07 Dead
Recently resurfaced after an auction in Kansas City and now owned and being restored by Nick Rockwell, St Louis, Missouri #05 'Spotco'
Sold to Spotco, then sold to Opryland, USA, then sold to TMG Production Services in Nashville. The console was damaged in the Nashville floods of 2010, and was sold to AJ Epstein from salvage. The PC brain was lost in the flood. #06 'Sting'
Sold to US rental firm Upstaging Inc. Used by LD Nick Sholem for Sting's 1993 Ten Summoners Tales tour. Currently at ETC headquarters in Wisconsin. #07 'Dead'
Sold to Light & Sound Design. Used on the Grateful Dead tour along with #04 Mo. The PC brain is now in the possession of Mike Hanson, PRG, California. #08 'Backup'
Sold to Sea World. Unknown location. #09 'May'
Sold to Laser Design. Now believed to be with Steve Irwin, Athens, Ohio, USA #10 'Berlin'
Sold to Blackpool (?) PC brain now in possession of Roni Huber, Switzerland #11 'June'
Alabama theatre console. Owned by Marty Huntoon, Pensacola, Florida (had it since 1993 at Alabama Theatre) #12 'Alabama'
Alabama touring console #13 'Monty'
Sold to Theatre Projects, then Rolling Stones. #14 'Spain'
Sold to Light & Sound Design Ltd in Birmingham, UK. Now believed to be with Steve Irwin, Athens, Ohio, USA #15 'Jostle'
Sold to Peter Gabriel. Now owned by Roni Huber (of Winkler) in Switzerland, using #10 Berlin's PC brain. #16 'Sweet'
Sold to Sogo Butai in Tokyo, Japan. Possibly still with them. #17 'Gripper'
Sold to Aukes Theatertechniek, and still in their posession. #18 'Mince' (shipped 9th August 1993)
Sold to Showtec in Germany. Later owned by Bright in Germany, then sold to Roni Huber. Now in the AED Museum in Belgium. #19 'Nerner'
Sold to Theatre Projects. Currently at Claypaky's Museum of Modern Showlighting at Bergamo in Italy. #20 'Twenty'
Originally sold to Entec, then Chris Wickham Productions. The company was acquired by Chaos Visual Productions in 2009, acquired by PRG in 2015. The desk and PC brain is now owned by PRG's Mike Hanso in California. #21 'Widget'
Originally sold to Theatre Projects and first used on Pink Floyd 1994 The Division Bell Tour. #22 'Lurch'
Originally sold to Theatre Projects, then to AC Inc. #23 'Ninja'
Sold to M B Consultants, then possibly to Japan #24 'Beaky'
Sold to Sogo Butai in Japan.Possibly still in their possession.
Wholehog at FOH on The Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge tour in 1995 (from Flying Pig Systems Facebook group)
By Dave Hill "When I first saw the Wholehog, I didn't think it was as good as the Artisan that I was using then. But the Hog 1 was used to run the back wall of lights on the [Rolling Stones] Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1995, and I quickly realised its capabilities. Bill Surtees did an awesome job with it, and DMX control was starting to make sense too. It allowed me to program when the lights were offline, which was far more preferable to the Vari-Lite control system which was console/light dependent for programming - that caused problems with the storage of data as the shows increased in size." Hill would go on to use the Wholehog 2 on all of his shows throughout the second half of the 90s and the first half of the 00s.
He says of the Hog 2, "I built complete Stadium shows using the overdrive ports for the Rolling Stones and Genesis through this period... Building the Rolling Stones Bridges To Babylon Tour 1998, we used every scrap of memory the desk could deliver - we had to do a RAM clear every hour to keep program space, but we achieved every goal in the programming and it was a brilliant success. By the end of the 90s lights were using more and more DMX channels and it was a sad day when I could no longer use the Hog 2."
Richard Knight (right) with Stan Snape and the Wholehog - probably on Clothes Show Live, 1993.
Lighting programmer Richard Knight was an early Wholehog user. We asked him, "What was the best bit thing about it?"
"The unique innovations. There was a rudimentary Effects Engine (the first in the world, I would think), which as far as I can remember was called Synth Stack. It was only rudimentary in hindsight because it was a vast improvement on having to make absolutely everything involved in a chase yourself. This thing did stuff for you! Select this set of parameters, then that one, then another one, then add another poke at a button and see what occurred! Not right yet? Then tweak it a bit and try again."
"I don't think, in truth, anyone ever became an expert at controlling it (except possibly Nick), but it certainly generated ideas and informed the shape of future Effects Engines. Artificial Assistance had arrived and was here to stay."
"One of the ‘Synth’ effects was ‘Stagger To’ and another was ‘Stagger From’. These were quite literally staggeringly effective effects! Another innovation was that the sequence in which a group was created was reflected in how that group selection responded in a look, which in turn affected the outcome of Synth effects. Most interesting! Lots of potential in that idea... I don’t imagine for one moment that the GrandMA came out of a vacuum."
"There were also (I think perhaps 10) scene buttons above each fader, but they were independent from the playback below. The essential thing was you could make them be any look you wanted. And on a new page they could become something else again."
"The Playbacks had faders, as you’d expect, but the Scenes Buttons above could still have an intensity time programmed in. Conversely, the Playbacks could be ‘Cut’, both forwards and backwards, meaning the programmed time no longer applied. The flexibility this created was incredible." "And the worst thing?"
"It was very heavy, definitely a two-man lift - and better with four! Also, I’ve never liked patching - which I find a complete pain in the neck - and with a Vari*Lite system I didn’t need to do it. But the grinding precision required for that, and also the new notion of deciding which mode was best to use for a particular type of light, was a small price to pay." Pictured is Richard Knight (right) with Stan Snape and the Wholehog - probably on Clothes Show Live, 1993.
Lighting designer Jon Pollak took the Wholehog on the road with Lenny Kravitz’s Are You Gonna Go My Way tour in 1994, with Nook Schoenfeld as operator. The desk was supplied by Meteorlites. He says, "My first impression of the Wholehog was that it had a gear-shift handle on it... SOLD there and then. I used the Wholehog and later the Wholehog 2, on every show I did that had movers on it from then until 2006. What made my job easier? It was ‘these-lights-over-there-in-this-colour-at-these-times - Record’. My favourite memory of that time was Nook Schoenfeld’s ‘Out Loud’ programming technique, and also Mark Ravenhill teaching me how to programme it myself. The worst memory was hearing that they’d discontinued the Hog 2. Build me a Hog 2 again please!" Pictured is Jon in control of a Wholehog 2.
