Bright Eyes is a very useful tool during rigging or fault finding to check if an XLR cable has active microphone powering.
John Nottage
Back in the day, the big sound rig required looms of single mics, all of which needed checking. I turned up at the Lyceum for Come Dancing one day to find Roger Ball had checked all the mics already – it usually took hours. He’d built himself a BrightEyes using an old XLR plug & a couple of LEDs. Phantom Power was a new thing back then & he’d used the BrightEyes to test the cables. After that everybody wanted one. Mine lived on my keyring for years. I always assumed he had invented the thing. Perhaps he did or perhaps he copied someone else’s idea. Does anyone know?
Chris Woolf
Tell me the date you first saw it….
There have been many such designs – I even sold one to Canford, who marketed it for a while – but I don’t know who did it “first”.
[Ed: see also: IPS: https://ips.org.uk/encyclopedia/bright-eyes-phantom-checker]
Alan Taylor
I can’t give you an actual date, but I would put it in the early to mid 1970s.
That fits in with my recollection and also ties in with John Nottage’s recollection because the Lyceum was regularly used as a “Come Dancing” venue at that time.
John Nottage
Looking up the history of phantom power:
https://www.iconnectivity.com/blog/historyofphantompowerbut it didn’t help me to narrow down the date. Probably early to mid 1970s as Alan says.
Barry Bonner
I think it was Jon Sweeney along with Neil Cooper who invented “BrightEyes”.
Nick Ware
With respect, I think any claim to have invented the bright eyes would be on a par with claiming to have invented the soldering iron. It’s something we all did as soon as phantom power and LEDs came on the scene – it was such an obvious idea. I built several mixers with 48V phantom well before it appeared in BBC studios, and a checker tool of some kind was essential. (Sound-desk-originated Phantom power was late arriving in BBC studios because the apparent need for a 30 – 300ohm transformer in the wall box made it impractical. Plus, of course, not ideal when plugging in ribbon mics!)
I really wanted to prove the point by showing mine, built into a cut down old fashioned style Cannon XLR, probably around 1973/1974, but like a heap of other redundant junk, I fear it went into the skip when we moved house, so I can’t.
Dave Mundy
Making [Bright Eyes] was the first job we had to do on attachment to OBs from TVC. Later on, after transferring permanently, mine got blown up when testing the tail board mic sockets on the newly arrived type 5 LO5. I eventually discovered that a 6BA nut had dropped into the wiring and had shorted out the limiting resistors! I then made a new one with the new tri-colour LEDs! It indicated polarity with either red or green, and tone with yellow! (it had to be about +20 db. though!)
Nick Way
……When I went for my stint on OBs out from the [Television] Centre in 1981, the first thing we all did was go to stores and were issued with a Cannon XLR3F, two LEDs and resistors (I think we needed two?). We went to a workshop and made our own Bright Eyes. On my last day at a Golf Course, the man whose name has slipped away (he’s on the Christmas Tapes with a gun mic behing the Actor on a horse drawn buggy, who complains “let’s get the farts over with and get on with it”), borrowed it in a hurry and ran off. I’ve never seen him again and will never forgive him either!
.. Jon Sweeney and Neil Cooper came after my OB summer, but they came up with their tester the Yibbox. Named after they used to be asked “where’s ya box?”
Alan Taylor
To hell with it, I’ll name names.
My guess is that your horsey fart man with a penchant for pinching phantom testers might have been Mike Valentine. At the time he was a sound assistant at Kendal Avenue, but soon after went on to become a very successful underwater cameraman in the movie world.
People involved with equine activities will tell you all sorts of horse feeds which create flatulence in horses, but none of them compare to the red light appearing on a camera.
It’s an altogether more delicate problem when such things happen with humans. The first drama I worked on as a sound supervisor was “The Bell”, by Iris Murdoch. Rowena Cooper was a very dignified actress of a certain age, playing the role of Mother Superior in a highly emotional scene with Ian Holm. It was a very quiet location and this quietly voiced dialogue with poignant silences was pivotal to the whole story but there were constant tummy rumbles throughout. It became obvious who was the source of the noises, but nobody had the audacity to point an accusing finger at such a respected and much loved actress. As a result we did multiple takes until we finally got a take without distracting noises over any dialogue, we knew we could eliminate any noises during the pauses so long as the dialogue was clean. The biggest challenge was coming up with innocent excuses for why we needed a retake for such an emotionally draining scene.
Nick Ware
It’s quite fascinating to compare notes with others on topics like this. I have always found that a discreet and honest “Would you like a glass of water? I’m hearing a hint of tummy rumble going on” never fails. Usually produces a thankful response. They are, after all, actors, not the people they are portraying. Admittedly, it’s much easier on location where things are a bit less stressy than coming from someone they can’t see. Even with Royalty I have found it worked perfectly amicably. Ditto, when you hear those clicky noises due to dry mouth, etc. Can’t say I’d know how to handle a fart situation though. Depends on the person, I suppose. Thankfully I’ve never encountered that on a take!
But I know the agony all too well of trying to decide whether to say something or let it go in the hope it can be salvaged.
Barry Bonner
Difficult to ask a horse to stop farting though!
