MX600 lifting winch???

Howdy dudes, this is a serious question that needs some brains coming up with a solution, and the best solution will be manufactured, plus he / she who comes up with the idea can apply for a: You Fixed it For Jim badge! Heh heh, now then, now then! let me just tap the ash of my Cuban!
Okay it's a big grip. We all know how heavy the friggin' MX600's are. The problem is getting them on top of a stack and then back down again. Stacking them on a MX1200 isn't to much hassle, but it's still a two man job, but putting them on top of MX1200's that are already on top of big ole subs isn't just a friggn' nightmare it's downright dangerous. It could topple off if you fuk up in the getting it up there fiasco, or you can easilly strain your back in the process - which is as much fun as when you join a big ole traffic jam on the motorway. And that's just getting the bitch up, getting then down is even worse.
Me, Florian and Heathrow set up a stack a few weeks back, of three MX1200's on two whopping subs, and then three MX600's on top. We had to make a stairway out of tatty cabs to get us in a position to plonk the MX600's on top. It was not fun. But it was worth it as the result was seriously lush. But they're still set up in a chicks ice cream van depot, as i can't get them down or up agian whenever i want, ...even on my own ...unless i brought into existence an idea that's been on my mind for a few weeks now.
The MX600's have parts fixed to the sides of them so they can be suspended / flown in the air. A kind of tackle is used to do this. You can see the flying tackle on the rear cover of the very cool A.S.S catalogue with the astronauts assembling in space the exact stack i've been mentioning (but my identical stacks are on big subs)
This is what i had in mind. Imagine three scaffolding poles - each about two thirds the length of a lamp post. That when assembled / bolted together could make a tripod shape - just like a camera tripod. You then place the tripod over your subs. The tripod has attached somewhere on it an electric winch. Not sure where as i'm not an engineer. The winch has attached to it chains or heavy thick wire like a car winch has. On the ends of the chain or heavy gauge wire are attached the very same attachments that the A.S.S flying tackle has on the catalogue, which snugly fit into the flying holes / sockets that are actually fitted to MX600's. Job done innit!!! One could then sooooo easily and without any major hassle lift the MX600's gently into the air and then very carefully and so easily lower them onto the MX1200's and then at the end of the night lower them down. All you need to be able to do when the stack is all set up is lift using the winch the MX600 just above the MX1200 by an inch, then move the MX1200 out of the way, so you can lower the MX600 down where the MX1200 was and then take it off the sub. No more sweating, no more huffing and puffing looking like a right stressed muppet at 4/5am in the morning at the end of a gig! No way man!
Until i can have made something like this, my system won't be going out, as it's just not fair to expect a crew to lift these cabs up there or down at the end of the night.
Yesterday was the big gig at Essex Uni, i was asked to do the sound a couple of months back, but when me, Heathrow and Florian did our test run a few weeks back we all realised there was a lot of work to do to get the system so we could run it on the night professionally. A big problem was the mains distribution aspect, which is something i wasn't aware of as i'm new to this owning a rig lark. Not to worry, we'll do more gigs in the future at the uni, and get this monster out. I did pick up two Omnidrive 355's last week. Puka!.. and fun, i lurve twiddling that big phat knob and hearing the speakers sound change. Kewl!
Anyway, my point is I would very much appreciate if someone could direct me toward someone, or a company who could manufacture what i need. I do not want to pay more than three grand. Two would be great, but three is the most i can run to. Tony should know some people who may be able to fabricate the tripod and winch; as he had flying kit made for these lovelies and what i'm requiring is all within that area.
One importnat desgin aspect is the winch and the three tripod legs all need to be able to be taken apart (unbolted) quickly and easilly. As the three legs of the tripod would be stowed when in transitt on the roof rack off a 609 Merc (like those large Snap On tool vans) if you wonder what a 609 Merc is. Google.
Oh well i had better go may cat's just jumped through the window in theese early a.m. hours with a large chicken leg in her mouth that she's found while doing her night time explorations in the neighbour hood. All this week it's been pigeon feathers as gifts, and last week she came in with it held in her mouth - one of those plastic protective things that one finds on plugs fitted to new applainaces. I had better go and stroke her and admire the latest treasure.

Getting what you want is easy. Although Mick Nash, who was MAN Flying Systems ( he made my transformer system ) is no longer in business, I have have had a few custom frames made over the last 5 years to hang arrays in fixed installs. So, getting something made will be easy. You can then decide whether you want a manual winch or something like a load star to lift the cabs. The flying rings that fit into the side plates can still be bought, and are supplied by Adam Hall.
I know the cabs cabs are difficult to stack more than 2 high, but no more difficult than any other serious cab. EAW KF's Mayer MSL3's etc. These cabs are just as heavy if not heavier than the MX range. The problem these days is that with this kind of equipment now becoming cheap to buy, smaller outfits with no crew are getting hold of it. Some are jumping from plastic boxes on poles to these. I can imagine it's quite a shock.
The most my team stacked up was 4 high. This was the most dangerous thing I have ever done with speakers. It's not so bad if you have other equipment to stand on and space all around you. The venue was the Astoria in London. The stacks were 5 wide and 4 high. There was no space at the back, and there was the smallest of platforms to work on. On top of that the floor underneath was not solid, so, by the time we were putting the top cabs on, the whole stack was swaying. However we were never beaten and the job got done. I made special fixings for the backs to tie the whole rig together. As a matter of interest, the the system was made up from 10 MX121's. 10 MX1200's. 10 MX600's and 10 MX900's. This top row of 900's were placed on wedge platforms to aim them up into the balcony areas. There were also delay cabs in various parts of the building.
Anyway, we were glad when that one was over.

It has to be said that technique plays a big part when you're dealing with big heavy cabs like this.

I obviously haven't seen how you've tried to do it but there are some tips when it comes to getting cabs on top of stacks. The main one is of course having enough people who are suitable for the type of lifting involved. Preferably sober too! I have

The other option might be what 4DPA uses. He has some wind-up stands which are a bit like manual fork-lift trucks. You put the cab on the forks, wind it up to the level of the top of the stack and slide it onto the subs.

That's just wicked! looks like Tony won the Fixed it for Jim badge. Thankyou for that advise, mine will be a touring system, so the stacking them up and then down easily situation needs to be sorted as best as is possible. I reckon a manual winch would be best, as it's one less electrical appliance to konk out when in Africa or some other land where electronic dance music needs to be thumped outdoors for weeks on end in places of outstanding natural beauty, to people who'd think we'd arrived in flying saucers if it wasn't for our trucks and things. Get away from this land of you must do this, you must do that, you must pay these people that, 'cause we (our little form) says so. Company House can go suck, along with all the other cake slice wanters! (That is want, not the other W word) The Government are the greedy cake eaters. They want too much of my cake. They can have a turd cake, one that steams.
Knowing a lifting setup can be made is splendid. I now don't mind a few gigs lifting them, as i know in the future physical grunt won't be doing the effort.
I have plans to come to Southend to visit Adam Hall to buy some wheels and other stuff. In fact i know Southend very well, i was born in Hullbridge and lived in Rayleigh untill i was twelve. I've done loads of fishing on the pier in my younger days ...until i realised hooking fish with a nasty barb and dragging them from their home, on a line, to then club them to death on the head is somewhat barbaric.
Ian (JBL Man) recommended for my Concert's Mids, the B&C 12 PE32, which he said was 102db w/m. And added, they are very efficient, crisp and fast! The word sold springs to mind. I liked that fast word. It fills the mind with the right images!
Last week i came across a pair of A.S.S MT602's. I don't really need anymore cabs. But these have JBL bullet tweeters in. My systems are without bullet tweeters, and i've heard they give a kind of super-top, ultra crisp effect. Plus these cabs are the exact same size as the BS600. Four BS600's with two MT602's on top (so it's two cabs wide by three high) would be such a cool powerful block of sound. Tetris rig! Get everyone on acid and play tetris game-boy noises on the system. Google tetirs if you're like ''wot the fac is he on about''!
So the pair of MT602's may be coming my way. He only desires four hundred notes for the pair. Mind you they're missing the horns for the compression drivers, and i haven't checked if the tweeters aren't blown, but that can all be fixed. At present a pal who rides a Lambretta (me a custom cut down Vespa) is making my missing 1" flared horn for my concert system. He's been getting into making fibreglass moulds for scooters, so i asked him if he could make my horn. So far so good. (as there's a number of stages to making it) Can't wait to see the finished horn. The concert systems top horns look like they are whistling! They're my favourite horn shape of all time by far. Although JBL made some seriously wicked horns back in the day! Look to the past people, as much of what was created in years gone by is better than the best of now. Not all of it, but some of what was desgined has never been improved upon. And there are horn shapes from the past to die for. I know for a fact all people when they first come to soundsystems, not having the slightest clue what a rig is, other than it makes 'nosie' at a BIG party are impressed by flared upper mid / top horns.
You're like ''wot the fuk is that, it looks sooo cool, i need to get close and have a look!''
I'll post some photos eventually. Florian's coming down soon to spray some of his cabs, and i'll post some images then, as he's going to show me, as i just get in a mood when the puter won't do what i want. And who doesn't ehh!
Much love to the massive!

It's amazing what comes up from the past. The MT602 was designed shortly after the 502. It was built so that there was more choice in speakers size. The 502 was built around 10" speakers and the 602 around 12's. The 502 fitted on top of BS500's and BS1200's and the 602's fitted on top of BS600's when laid on their sides. The mid section had never been done that way before but it worked, in spite of being folded, because it didn't break any defraction rules.

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I look forward to picking up my MT602's, I'll post a high resolution image of the horn and Tony can explain to us what the diffraction rules are that mustn't be broken. No doubt Tony was hot at physics when at school back in that Victorian era. Or was it Edwardian. Nah cretaceous wasn't it Tone, where all the fossils come from! :lol:
I've had an idea that i think may work. What do you peps think of this. It's to do wiv web cams set up at gigs that stream to our site live footage of the gig. Such as a web cam on the turntables so people can watch a skilled jock, and one on the crowd so people can feel part of the party.
There's a thing about live footage, watching something that's happening there and then, especially if the party is outdoors and existing outside the laws, such as sound regulations and all that council jobs-worth bollox.
Years ago i used to help run a free party network called United Systems. Crews would call up with the location of the party and at 10pm Friday and Saturday we'd put it on the phone line. We had a three-line answering machine on the same number, and even then it was still chocker block and took people ages to get through as so many would ring.
I've done parties in some of the maddest venues you can imagine. The best venues for their acoustics are disused cinemas. In the 90's loads of palatial, very beautiful cinemas that were built in the 1930's (as seriously lush places for the public to gather) were on their last legs as capitalist ventures, as naff Bingo halls; many of which went out of business and closed down. Which when they did and the wood went over the windows, doors etc we'd gain access and throw parties the likes of which brought the venues back to life better than they had ever been!!!
Absolutely mental parties would kick, with thousands of people in attendance, and by about ten am the rig in the main theatre would go off and hundreds of people who hadn't gone home would watch well trippy thought provoking movies, with most of the people probably on some psychoactive wot not. The whole cinema would also be full of spliff smoke.
We squatted the Camden Parkway cinema for weeks on end. And would usually have about four sound-systems in there each Saturday night to Sunday, one in each room, and the place was rammed. Cinemas are the best venues to party. In fact many were knocked down and replaced with boring flats - a piece of architectural history from the 30's gone forever.
One of my pals got into pirate radio, we would take his transmitter to the party, plug it into the mixer, climb up on to the roof to precariously fix the antenna somewhere, and then blam the party was going out live over London town.
We took his transmitter to France and hooked it onto a British system and then went round tuning peoples car stereos into the rig. We didn't have an antenna wiv us, but found an old farm gate all bent outta shape so we used the metal cross beam off the top. (It's amazing what you remember as you write)
At one party which we did in a big disused warehouse in Park Royal we had Virus sound system in the main room - which was enormous; we hooked the transmitter up to an output on the mixer. In the morning i found James sitting up on the roof of the warehouse with his boom box that was tuned into the rave going on below us. We sat in the Sunday morning sunshine, with blue sky and thought it's been a good party!
I miss those care free days man. I wrote this because i just rode back on my scoot through the countryside at 5.30 a.m. The sun was coming up, there was steam on the slow moving river and all was very beautiful, i thought as i took the bends with glee oh what ultimate fun it would be to have my thunder machine making sweet music in a beautiful valley, without the pigs coming to destroy the joy.
So, anyway, in the future - as the future is what it's about! When it's in those valley's probably abroad delivering the best most wickedest music I'm going to see to it what we're playing is transmitted again. But not by radio, but by video onto the net onto a link of some sort.
And I'll practice getting that sussed in the UK first. Peace to you all. Live your dreams make them happen!

Nice one for that lifting device image. Do you know more about it - such as who makes it, and what weight can it handle, as in the photo it's only lifting hollow near weightless tubes that one could actualy toss in the air, you'll need to be about hundred feet tall and thirty foot wide to toss an MX600 skywards. A giant with legs the size of trees.
Anyone want to buy some magic beans?
Not all my MX600's have the lifting sockets for the flying tackle, so a device like this could be the solution. My builder, who was today partitioning the barn where the cabs are stored talked about making me an A-fram with a winch. All the same i'd appreciate more info about this image if possible before i decide. Or any otherlifting ideas or images people have. Anyway i've just heard ''fee-fi-foe-thumb'' in the distance, so i had better dash. :ugeek:

The image is from genielift.com/ml-series/index.asp , they have a huge range of related products, may be worth giving them a call.