German rock legends KARAT’s recent acoustic tour featured an old school rock and roll floor package lighting design by LD Michael Kiefert programmed on the latest addition to the Philips Strand Lighting line of consoles, the 500ML.
The band – who formed in 1975 and celebrated their 40th anniversary in 2015 – played such cities as Cottbus, Magdeburg and Wismarin in venues of varying sizes. Kiefert therefore needed a versatile control solution and so turned to the compact and intuitive 500ML, supplied by Philips Entertainment German distributor Feiner Lichttechnik.
“When planning this tour, my main interest was to use a console with the ability to include local venue lights,” explained Kiefert. “With the 500ML I was able to shrink the setup to one single universe, which meant I could use the second universe to accommodate the floor package and swap between the two with a simple finger swipe.”
The 500ML features an eight-inch colour touchscreen allowing for fast set up. In addition, the console provides users with 24 faders that may be used as Master, Sub Master or Playback.
“It is awesome to have so many faders on a console that you can assign cuelist, simple flash actions or specials to,” said Kiefert. “It was really simple to solve any issues that cropped up, no matter if I came across an unknown fixture in a venue’s rig or I needed to rearrange the whole setlist five minutes before a show.”
Kiefert also commented that the 500ML’s small size makes it the ideal console for touring: “The 500ML is so small that it doesn’t affect any size calculations or truck space and so it helps keep costs down. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the console will evolve with new software in the future.”