South African based rental companies, Prosound and Gearhouse Splitbeam (Pty) Ltd have successfully worked together on many major international and local touring productions where Splitbeam has skilfully managed the specialist lighting and Prosound the specialist audio. Splitbeam’s primary focus is on lighting for theatre productions and its services have quickly gained traction in the theatre rental market since the company’s launch in February 2010.
This successful history prompted mutual agreements to sell Prosound’s lighting stock to Splitbeam allowing Prosound to focus on their core strengths.
“It made sense to move our lighting stock to Splitbeam in order to continue the obvious synergy between the two companies,” says Mark Malherbe, Prosound Technical Director.
Splitbeam Director, Alistair Kilbee is enthusiastic about the possibilities this new stock offers his company. “We have taken delivery of a substantial amount of ETC desks of all sizes – from 12 channels to 8000 channels. We now have over 400 channels of ETC SmartPack dimming and have almost doubled our ETC source 4 stock, which gives us the largest rental stock holding of ETC Source 4 in the country.”
This additional stockholding means that Splitbeam is now easily able to service two large scale musicals as well as many smaller shows simultaneously, without compromising stock availability for last minute dry hire requests. Their acquisition of both the popular ETC EOS and ION theatre desks offers Lighting Designers their console of choice.
“We also now have 10-15 smaller desks which are ideal for small theatre shows, festivals and school productions. This was an area in our stockholding that was not as comprehensive as I would have liked in the past, but now we can service clients of any size and any budget, even better than before.
“I am really pleased that in the end these fixtures will continue to work in the theatre market, which is what they were purchased for in the first place….. Prosound and I have worked closely on many shows over the years and Mark and myself are still working together on a regular basis. The sale of the Prosound Lighting stock to Splitbeam was a logical choice and we look forward to the two companies continuing to work together into the future” says Kilbee.
