South Africa’s Stones Venues Go Martin

The Stones chain of entertainment venues is rapidly becoming one of South Africa's most established and successful hotspots and has been franchised across 19 branches nationwide. Two of the chain's key venues in Cape Town and Pretoria now boast state-of-the-art Martin lighting systems throughout, supplied by Electrosonic South Africa and installed by Johannesburg-based systems specialists Surgesound.

Offering customers a huge choice of entertainment, Stones venues incorporate chilled lounge areas, upbeat dance floors, live music stages and a relaxed bar and pool table environment, all open seven days per week.

After seeing the impressive Martin lighting rig installed by Surgesound in Manhattan Club in Johannesburg, Adam Collingwood, operations manager for the Stones Group, had no hesitation in commissioning Surgesound to supply and install a full Martin intelligent lighting and control system.

Indeed, Stones Centurion now boasts the biggest and most powerful audio and lighting setup throughout all of the Stones venues to date. The installation consists of 12 MX 10 scanners, 4 MAC 250 Krypton’s, a Jem ZR 33 smoke machine and a host of Par Cans. All this is controlled by a Martin LightJockey PC-based control system. The lighting system doubles up to light the stage for live acts, and has plenty of coverage to simultaneously cover the dance floor.

The results are stunning as affirmed by South African Indie rock band, the Parlotones, who regularly play at Stones venues countrywide and are starting to enjoy international recognition (they start a UK tour next month). According to Kahn Morbee, Parlotones’ lead singer, "We've always enjoyed playing at Stones Centurion but it's great to see that the company is making greater investments into the quality of the audio and lighting equipment. The new system looks and sounds fabulous and I believe that Stones have set a higher benchmark for other venues to follow."