Fairfield Halls in Croydon South London have recently taken possession of a new custom version of the Tecpro communications system. The modifications carried out by Canford in conjunction with our customer enabled important announcements to be heard in designated locations by overriding the speaker status in those zones, even if the speakers are turned down. Crucially this feature had to be remote from the master station.
When upgrading the comms system within the Ashcroft Theatre, part of the Fairfield Halls complex, It was decided that a system was required which was expandable and that could provide an override remote from the fixed master station. Chris Whybrow, their Technical Operations Manager, studied the options open to him and decided upon a customised Tecpro system employing the latest MS741 Master Station and the MS742 Master Station Extender. Both are new developments from Tecpro2.
The MS741 provides two independent circuits, A and B, but when used in conjunction with the MS742 Master Station Extender, as in The Ashcroft, can provide 4 independent circuits by adding circuits C and D via the extender. Whilst any or all of the circuits can be linked, in the Ashcroft, four independent circuits were required, but crucially, each circuit had to have provision for an override function. This enabled all LS211F speaker stations on a given circuit to deliver key messages even if the speaker station’s volumes were set to zero.
The Canford technical team were given the brief and were able to provide the required custom facilities via the 15 pin D type connector on the expansion port on the MS741. A cable ’tail’ was provided and a telephone handset installed. The result is that the announcements can now be made from a location 10m from master station. The work Canford carried out to make this possible only took a matter of a few hours meaning there was no delay in the supply of the equipment to Chris.
Chris then decided to zone the four channels as follows. Channel A is dressing rooms 1 and 2 which can also become the large band room and is in the basement area. Channel B comprises dressing rooms 3 and 4, the crew room, wardrobe and the stage entrance and is in the Lower Ground floor. Channel C has two of the large dressing rooms, 5 and 6, on its circuit whilst the final channel D has the last large dressing room area, 7 and also dressing room 8. Channel C is on Level 1 whilst Channel D covers Level 2.
The Fairfield Halls complex was opened in 1962 and as well as the Ashcroft Theatre features the Arnhem Gallery and a large concert hall. The Ashcroft Theatre is named after Dame Peggy Ashcroft who was born in Croydon.
The Ashcroft presents a wide variety of productions including drama, opera and pantomimes and can also be used as a cinema. The large concert hall has been the location of many notable live recordings especially in the 1970s when amongst the artists to record and issue their concerts there were Family, Wishbone Ash, Mott The Hoople, Free, Caravan, Paul Kossoff, Soft Machine and Kraftwerk, More recently Katie Melua issued a 2 DVD package that included one compete concert recorded there in 2004.