Graeme Sewell, director of Vortex Lighting Ltd, says: "We are proud to be the first company in the UK to have the new Martin Laser available for hire." Vortex had been contemplating the purchase of a Laser for at least a couple of years but took the decision to wait until the technology had developed before investing.
Sewell says: "There are quite a number of products on the market now and a few of them have some good features, but we wanted a quality piece of kit from a respected manufacturer with all the relevant safety features and approvals and when the Martin Laser came along it ticked all the right boxes.
"It is also reassuring to know that this product is made in Europe and comes with a 2 year / 3000 hour warranty! We have been a Martin dealer for more than twelve years and our hire stock covers the range from the latest MAC 250s right up to MAC 2000s so it made good sense to add the Martin Laser to the fleet." The Laser was operated by the head of technical operations at The Sage Gateshead, Chris Durant.
The Laser was occasionally overlaid on images projected by a Barco R12+ (powered by a 2200W xenon lamp), and Sewell says that it cut through beautifully even though it drew just 0.7 Amps. He says: "It is just so easy to rig and it uses so little power you could actually run it off the cigarette lighter in a car - via an inverter of course!
"The Martin unit is full colour RGB, not just boring single colour like in the old days, and the blue in particular is so deep and rich it is probably the best I've seen from a Laser. Add to that the fact that you can upload 432 cues or animations into the Laser itself from your laptop, (either using custom images or some of the large selection provided in the Martin software), and then trigger them via any DMX controller and you start to believe what Martin say about 'Laser made easy!'."
(Chris Henry)
