Spectrum Entertainment Services partnered with Procom Middle East, the authorised Ayrton distributor for the region to increase its Ayrton stock.
The new stock arrived in time for Spectrum Entertainment Services to supply the Scorpions tour dates for the Abu Dhabi leg of their world tour, managed and run by Live Nation Middle East, with lighting design by Manfred Nikitser. The Ayrton-dominant rig included 16 Ayrton Domino LT, 48 Domino Profile, 32 Argo 6 FX, 12 Zonda 9FX and 58 Cobra.
The Domino Profiles and Domino LTs were all rigged above stage, spread across eight 10m long ‘fingers’ raked at different angles from outside to inside. This created an eight by eight matrix of Ayrton Domino above the stage.
The Cobra and Zonda 9 FX fixtures were rigged on ladders on stage left and stage right, flown at an angle parallel to the fingers above stage, with five rungs of ladders per side and a total of six fixtures per rung. The Zonda 9s were rigged on the downstage ladders and utilised as side lighting for the band. The Cobras were rigged on four rungs of ladders per side, positioned from downstage to upstage to create a matrix of 6 by 4 per side.
“Manfred Nikitser used the matrix of Domino and Cobra to create very punchy rock and roll looks, with strong beam work and very sharp gobo effects flying through the audience,” said Spectrum Entertainment Services Lighting Designer, Andre Westraad.
The Argo 6 FXs were used as part of the floor package, out-rigged on 8 truss totems facing the audience each consisting of four Argo 6 FX and topped by a Cobra. “The Argo 6 FX were a great addition to the floor package, they are very bright and the colours were rich and strong,” confirmed Westraad. “All of these fixtures had more than enough output to beam and punch through the brightness of a massive 18m x 9m LED screen situated far upstage. The end result looked amazing. Manfred had no issues with migrating his tour show file to work with the Ayrton dominant rig. All of the lighting looks worked very well and looked amazing in complementing the video content on screen.”
Westraad is happy with Spectrum Entertainment Services’ investment in its new Ayrton fixtures. “Domino is extremely powerful and can achieve very tight, sharp beams. The colours are very bright and vibrant, from saturated colour through to tints and CTO, and we found the framing system very accurate and smooth. Cobra is a great hybrid fixture, extremely bright, with low power consumption and a massive gobo choice for aerial gobos and beams,” Westraad added. “With both Zonda 9 FX and Argo 6 FX, the colours, especially the saturated colours, are very vibrant. The effects zone is amazing, from mapping video content on to the FX zone to the main pixels, to using the built-in macros, they are just great. And Zonda 9 is super bright, even at full zoom.”
“All of the Ayrton fixtures are of extremely good build quality and are easy to setup and configure, but most importantly, they are reliable and can handle all the workload you throw at them,” he concluded.
