Stage Light 300: a restoration and video presentation, which marks the end of an era
I wanted to make a proper video for the Stage Light 300, which probably is the first moving light I’ve seen back then, on the ClayPaky brochures. I think it deserved a proper ‘presentation’! Stage Light was popular here in Greece. It was the smallest fixture of that era, often combined with the larger Stage Scans and Stage Zooms in the music venues.
The 4rth Stage Light 300
This particular Stage Light in this video is the fourth to join my collection. I have wanted to make them four for years, as they can better share a show with other fixtures. The fixture was abandoned for more than 10 years. All the original ‘faulty’ parts were repairable. One of the dimmer’s flag stepper motors was stiff, and the main motor driver PCB was not operating properly.
Easy Fix
The stepper motor’s stiffness was caused by dry lubrication on both bearings. Motors controlling such effects with limited range, tend to be stiff. Cleaning and lubricating the bearings, connecting the motor in my test PCB, and letting it fast rotate for a couple of minutes, made it like new again. From my experience with restorations all these years, if the rotor is still properly magnetised, the motor can be ‘serviced’ and put back into action for many years more.
The motor driver PCB had one of the stepper motor drivers upside down, which caused the paired motor driver to fail and the rest drivers to not work properly. Replacing both ICs, solved the general problem. Thankfully no other component was affected by the reversed position of the motor controller.
The fixture that marks the End of an Era in my life | a personal confession
Making this short and easy restoration and recording these videos was melancholic. This is the last restoration I performed in my beloved attic, my mancave, and ‘temple’ for the last 23 years, as 2025 will be a year of change. I plan to move out to the Czech Republic and live with my partner, with whom we have a long-term relationship.
I need this major change in my life, so for more than 10 years now I have experienced how different daily life can be, in a healthier environment, than the overcrowded Athens where I grew up and lived half of my life. Trips to my partner, six months living abroad, solo trips for explorations, and travelling with work gave me so much inspiration and a deep desire to change the quality of my everyday life.
For a person who enjoys so much being alone, I was lucky enough to have a partner from a different culture, but with the same state of mind as my own. This is the major reason we managed to keep such a relationship for so many years, and every time we are together, we have many common things and activities we can do together, while we give each other the space to be lonely and focus on our serenity, work, hobbies, anything. Admiration for each other is another ingredient that kept us close.
In the past years, the intense travelling, the restorations of fixtures I desired, cycling and generally, the balance between work-life quality in my country, have kept my mind at peace. However, the long ‘Pause’ Covid caused in the world, everyone’s plans, and I reaching my forties, caused the urge to change the quality of my everyday life, to grow too much. Life in Greece is going from bad to worse, as we lost everything that gave us solace in the overcrowded city.
Our beautiful forests, surrounding the city, places where we were cycling, which made us forget we live in a large city, now are long gone, destroyed within the last 3 years. During and after the Covid era, more people moved to Athens, making travelling from and to our jobs, and commuting across the city an unbearable waste of time. The cost of life is increasing at a constant higher rate, while our health care and education systems are collapsing. I despise the political system of this country, which has proved what I always believed since my teenage years, of who really are the people here, and what is the real essence of their hearts. As you are younger, you have hopes that the new generations will make a difference, but in our case, we are going backwards and not forward. It is so frustrating to see people getting pride in a country in which they made a mess with the political choices and disrespect to its heritage, the environment, their children, and history. I have reached the limits of my patience, goodwill, and effort to fight for a better future, and working environment while trying to survive mentally, all the scandals flooding this country.
Even if Greece was tempting for my partner, to come and live here, since there is sea all around Athens, there are many reasons why this would be unpractical for us. If I lived on an island, things would have been majorly different. Being on a Cycladic island, like Antiparos for example, my half-hometown is like being in a cut-off paradise, which separates you from the negativity and the chaos of the world. I strongly believe that this is one of the reasons Greeks do not take politics seriously, as those who live in the countryside or on islands, cannot comprehend totally what is happening, or the consequences of their choices by voting, or just declining their right to participate in this event for democracy. It's a different world.
On the contrary, in central Europe, I found a mentality that suits perfectly my philosophy for a way of life. Traveling across the Czech Republic, I’ve seen the harmony of the villages, and cities, respecting nature and the environment. I have been in technical universities, and I wish I could have studied there. Seeing people enjoying exercising outdoors, alone, with their kids, groups of friends lying on the grass at the parks, listening to music, playing games and talking with each other.
The same in Germany and Switzerland, where I have experienced wonderful exploration moments. Czechia is even more ‘silent’ to my taste of people’s behaviour, of course, always compared with the Greeks. I love the fact that I can enjoy a walk, a ride with a train, a run, a cycling ride in peace, and a clean environment, in every city, things I cannot have here anymore. I feel very blessed and lucky in this life, which offered such experiences, like telling me “You can choose where you want to live. You can spend your life living this way, but check out this way as well”.
Sometimes I wish my beloved hobby was collecting something smaller, that I could fit in a suitcase, which would spare me the stress of moving, and I would just take it, and go and live in any type of place! But I am a ‘home bug’, I like having a steady base and travelling around. Moving my lights will be a psychologically stressful process, as I want them to be safe. I have found and collected them across Europe, they have already travelled a lot, and now they will have to move one last time. Nowadays, I have started preparing the fixtures I do not use often, so my little studio is in a mess.
There will be a long pause for restorations, but I have left some work to do in the Czech Republic, like the second Golden Scan HPE which has awaited its restoration for six years, since I got it. Of course, I cannot stop what I love to do the most. It is not always enough to work with my old lights, program and enjoy them live, as I love the satisfaction of the process of restoring an old and tired light to its previous glory. I hope in the future, I will have the opportunity to salvage more of the masterpieces of that era and travel to the neighbouring countries to get them. This is another beautiful part of this process, which I have made in the past on a smaller scale of course.
In the meantime, I hope you find success and enjoyment in our projects, whether they involve restorations, programming, or lighting design. See you in the next blog post or video!
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