This Strand SP60 lighting desk was rescued from the skip bin at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music a number of years ago by one of our crew; it was the original control desk back when the Conservatorium was at Gardens Point before moving to Southbank. The desk now takes pride and place in our office and has been made into our lunch table.
The SP (Standard Preset) range of preset control desks were available in the 1970’s and came in a number of frame sizes. 60 and 80 channel versions were very popular in medium to large size theatres. The SP60 was a 3 preset desk, with three horizontal rows of faders and associated masters. Each channel could also be switched to either an A or B fader. This feature allowed a single preset state to be split into two groups – handy if mid scene some active channels have to be faded out or brought in. This avoided wasting an entire preset to do a fairly simple operation. Some versions also had a master inhibit fader from a block of channels – often FOH circuits, enabling all FOH channels to be dimmed out – useful if there is a need to quickly light the stage, but not the house tabs. The 80 channel version was bigger in length. One of the snags of increasing the channel count is that the desk becomes wider than arms reach.
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