How time flies. It was ten years ago that Martin Professional launched the MAC 600 washlight, a fixture destined to become one of the most successful automated moving heads in the history of the lighting industry. From the first delivery to Hamburg-based PROCON Event Engineering in early 1997, the 575 W Fresnel luminaire went on to become an industry favorite with over 30,000 units sold to date.

The MAC 600 certainly lived up to the company's slogan at the time, "Tougher than the rest," and set a tradition for product excellence at Martin that exists to this day. Marketed as the ‘MACnificent Team' along with the MAC 500, which launched later that same year, the MAC 600 gained a loyal following that changed Martin's reputation forever.

PROCON leads the way

With their purchase of 300 units on February 23, 1997, PROCON was the first to bring the MAC 600 to the rental market, a transaction that other rental houses would soon copy. In honor of that first purchase Martin recently presented PROCON with a gold-plated MAC 600. Morten Carlsson, PROCON CEO, accepted the fixture on behalf of the company. He commented, "The MAC 600 has been our workhorse for 10 years now. In 1997, we bought the first 300 fixtures which was a real adventure for us because we had only seen a prototype and at that time had no idea what to expect from it. But we said to ourselves: ‘Let's give it a try!' At that time we didn't expect that the MAC 600 would be the most profitable fixture we ever owned. Meanwhile, we have used each of them on over 2000 shows - and it's still continuing. The MAC 600 changed the market - it allowed the designers to spec large amounts of daylight washlights for a reasonable price."

MAC 600 sets the standard

After modest success in the mid ‘90s with the MAC 1200, Martin's first moving head fixture, it was decided to develop a moving head washlight targeted at the TV, theatre and touring markets. "The main issues were to make an extremely efficient and silent fixture at a competitive price," says Martin optical designer Dennis Thykjaer, the man responsible for creating an optical design that is literally unbeatable to this day. "The development of the MAC 600 was a key process in the development of what Martin is today as it forced us to learn and master a number of essential technologies like optical simulation of the lamp - reflector systems, custom designed cold light reflectors, etching of dichroics, passive cooling, improved stepper motor coupling and driving technologies. Now, 10 years later, I'm still quite satisfied with the optical efficiency of the MAC 600 which has not really been beaten."

Peter Skytte, Martin Product Manager Moving Heads who was highly involved in the MAC 600's development, remembers being at the Martin factory when the first units for PROCON were produced. "It was a late shift," he explains. "PROCON were quite eager to get their hands on the units and had their own truck waiting at the factory. The first production batches were used at the CeBit show in Hannover - 300 on one single stand! I remember this as being a tremendous amount of lights. Even after all these years and getting used to big quantities of moving lights on shows, this is still quite a huge number of one single type of moving light on an exhibition stand. I remember the units were placed on the floor, one every meter or so, to illuminate a total of 300 meters of screen. An error on just a single unit would be spotted immediately, so errors were not really an option. It was a bit nerve-wracking but they performed very well. Today that reliability continues. We still manufacture and sell quite a few of those lights."

Lighting designer favorite

An untold number of lighting designers the world over have relied on the MAC 600 as an integral part of their designs over the years. Lighting designer Seth Jackson reminisces, "One day back in 1998, I was minding my own business, oblivious to the world of Martin, MAC, or anything in between. At that point, I seemed to remember a Robo-something, but that was about it. Then Martin US called. Before I knew what had happened, I'm in Florida looking at MAC 500s and 600s. Within a few hours, I was sold on the lights and the company. I called up my vendor for Barry Manilow, Bandit Lites, and changed the order that day. Manilow would be ALL Martin MAC series. The following seven months were filled with great support, terrific performance, and not one failure for the entire tour. The MAC 600 has been a part of my shows ever since. Its size, speed, and color mixing can still fit the bill for me in a lot of different situations."

Lighting designer Peter Barnes is another long time MAC 600 user. "I remember I first used MAC 600s on ‘The Spice Girls' world tour. When at rehearsals I looked at the 10 units I had on the front truss and thought how nice it would be if they were just a little narrower so that I could light the musicians individually without so much spill. I called Martin's Hanne Alsen who was looking after us at Martin, and asked her if Martin made a narrower lens for the MAC 600. To my surprise she told me they did, so I asked if there was any chance we could have 12 lenses and she agreed. I went back to rehearsing and waited for what I thought would be a small box of 12 Fresnel lenses to arrive in the post. Two days later a truck pulled up outside the rehearsal studio with two large pallets on it that needed a forklift to offload! I had not realized that you needed to change the entire front section of the MAC 600 when you changed the lens. I felt a little embarrassed that I had asked Martin to send what must have been such an expensive express shipment over from Denmark but even more impressed by their service."