Trackspots!!!

I love these lights. I first started working with these lights back in 98 at the Murray Hill Theatre.

I always wanted my own set. Eventually I did, and had a great time with them, and made a lot of money with them. I've used them in small rooms and big rooms with no problems.

Around a year ago, I sold them to a church in Seattle with hopes of getting something a bit more modern. Long story short, I couldn't, I almost purchased a set of Martin Mania 600's but I couldn't find them at the right price and I as worried that Martin was going to randomly discontinue them and not offer parts.

I turned back to Trackspots. I had one left from my original lot and purchased one more from eBay.

Thanks to Craigslist, I was able to purchase 6 more Trackspots out of a club at an amazing price.

Well, I got them on Christmas eve and started tinkering with them after my family went to bed. Powered all of them up and started making a repair list:
1 blows fuses when it gets power (bad logic board)
5 needed new pan motors
2 had shutter related problems

Since the pan, color, gobo, and shutter motors were the same exact motor model - I stole all the motors out of the fixture with the bad logic board an was able to give each fixture a working pan motor. As for the shutter problems, one was missing a set screw the other needed the shutter to be hammered out. After my parts swapping party was over, I had 5 good working Trackspots with a pile of spare parts giving me a total of 7 moving lights to my name.

Each fixture needed a massive cleaning as they spent all 12 years of their life hanging in a smoke filled club.

I went to High End's forum and followed some pretty detailed cleaning instructions.
Once a day I during my Christmas vacation, I would take one fixture completely apart and gave it a massive cleaning outside.

Trackspot torn apart before cleaning:





After cleaning:




After cleaning I brought each fixture into my dining room and re assembled them:

My son thoroughly enjoyed this part:




Happy Trackspot!



After re-assembly, I let each fixture run on test mode in my laundry room(how cool is that, a test mode on a "cheap" fixture) for several hours. It's pretty funny, when the fixture heats up, it smells lemon fresh thanks to the scrubbing bubbles.



Overall it was a fun experience. Trackspots are old, but well designed, and even now you can get amazing tech support from High End almost 10 years after being discontinued.

Maybe next Christmas I will find some Technobeams out of a club for a good price.