An ongoing technical refurbishment at the Salisbury District Council-owned City Hall, which recently saw motorised hoists and rigging improvements bringing it up to Health & Safety standard, has now seen the venue upgrade to new Strand LD90 digital dimmer racks. While the previous analogue dimmer system sat exposed in the gallery, the conversion of a storage room has provided a dedicated area for the six new racks, which offer 144 channels of 2.5kW dimming (with RCD earth leakage breaker options on the power blocks). At the same time ten Strand SL 15/30 Zooms and eight Strand Cantata F soft-edge fresnel lanterns have been added to the lighting rig.Work at the 953 (seated)-capacity concert venue was carried out by Edinburgh-based Northern Light, who successfully tendered for the specification prepared by technical consultants, Theatretech, and supplied all the Strand equipment. The Scottish company also wired the new DMX network which, according to the theatre¹s senior technician, Phil Manning, was long overdue. The next phase will see an upgrade to the in-house sound system when funds become available.
