# Motorpickle DIY



## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

I am trying to make my own motorpicke. I knoe the wiring , have the panel cable xlr, micro switch etc. 

I can not find appropriste housing for it. Any suggestions. 

I have attached an image for reference.


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

Thats just a neutrik D size housing adapted for that pocket pickle. Your switch is a momentary switch correct?


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

That is correct


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

Is that what you are referring to?
I need place to put up and down switch though...


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

Yeah, you can clearly see the example you posted was modified, the cut out is rough near the top of the switch. I'd have drilled it out and cut it differently or gone with a different option but the reddit thread about your example made it clear that was a prototype version some guy was making.


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

What option would you have gone?


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

I'd have gone with a premade version to save me the hassle of making my own. there are plenty of small pocket pickle options on the market already for a reasonable cost given that they deal with controlling motors. Monkey wrench productions make a nice compact cheap one that I like. But the one Applied makes, is worth the $90 in my opinion.


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

You work mostly with L14-20?

I looked at those but i use XLR only pretty much


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

Our stacking motor is twist lock L14-20, the rest of our motors use l14-20 twistlock with 7 pin motor cable from the distro. None of the broadway tours or for that matter any tours that we've had through our space with motors in the last two years have been anything but that. Nothing has used xlr. So I've had no need for one like that.


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

What motors you use ? Cm , stagemaker, .etc?


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

Stacking motor is a CM hoist, the other 10 we have are stagemakers, primarily with the tours we have come through we see CM motors.


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

Apaer feom the conncetin What are the differences between xlr vs twistlock ?


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

Personally I just prefer the twistlock because it feels like a more robust connector. As an audio guy I've ran into so many smashed/destoryed xlrs over the years, if thats what the majority of the motors you see use though and you take care of it, its not that big of an issue, but a twist lock pickle I know I can toss around and not worry about. I rarely have a need for a pocket pickle though generally speaking theres a distro with a control box near by and other than the 30 seconds to float or land a motor, pocket pickles don't get used that much in day to day life. Handy to have just in case, but you also have to remember to carry it then too, and on half the tours its seems like they'd rather run their motors in and out themselves rather than hand it over to someone they dont know.


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## Amiers (Jan 31, 2020)

Go with 14-20 if you can. The XLR pickles we have sit and rot in a milk crate.

but really it depends on what motors run through your area.

Also on a national scale most venues will provide and prefer to provide points and truss and the kit n caboodle. Which means you will have no need for anything besides gloves, the directions to the lift and where the truck full of your gear is. Baring you work for the companies providing the rig.


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

I'm working with the lead rigger/flyman of Wicked while they've been on break and talking about how they do everything, all of their motors are 14-20 and for that matter most of their gear and scenic elements are rigged to fly stacked on themselves because when they run out of space they start storing vertically.


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

josh88 said:


> I'm working with the lead rigger/flyman of Wicked while they've been on break and talking about how they do everything, all of their motors are 14-20 and for that matter most of their gear and scenic elements are rigged to fly stacked on themselves because when they run out of space they start storing vertically.



Could you explain " stacked", stacking motor etc.

99% the motors we use here are xlr. Only used twistlock on some arena rockn roll shows .


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## egilson1 (Jan 31, 2020)

Dagger said:


> Apaer feom the conncetin What are the differences between xlr vs twistlock ?



The main difference is that the control voltage on a hoist is usually 120v which an xlr connector is not rated for. 

My advice? Make your xlr version, and then eventually buy a 14-20 version and have both in your bag. They don’t take up much room at all.


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

Dagger said:


> Could you explain " stacked", stacking motor etc.
> 
> 99% the motors we use here are xlr. Only used twistlock on some arena rockn roll shows .



A motor for stacking and unstacking road cases. Usually just runs around head height with 2 spansets on it to hook under the top case near the wheels to pick and lower to the ground.

And in the case of Wicked, they've made permanent points on a lot of their scenery and cases and hampers so that they can fly a table or something they don't need and when its off the ground, connect the next piece under it, continue lifting and keep connecting more pieces until they've got everything they want stored up in the air for those times that they are in theaters that don't have enough wing space or storage elsewhere.


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

Ohh ... I have seen motor being used just for that purpose .
You work in a theatre? 

I have never seen motor being used the scenery to store things . Thats a great idea . When they fly table etc off the ground .How did they connect the next item underneath it?


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

Yeah I'm in a theatre. Stacking motors save having to get a forklift in tight spaces and small venues or on stages that can't take the weight. We store stuff in the air all the the time. We store the towers of our shell in the air on truss above the stage. For Wicked, it depends on the piece, they have permanent points installed on some of their pieces, and some they just leave hangers or bridles attached to.


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## Dagger (Jan 31, 2020)

Thats cool. 
Would you mind sharing pictures of your theatre whenever you chance?


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

What do you want to see? You can see a couple of the towers up in the air upstage here. We've got 10 sticks of truss and 9 towers in the air, spaced between the last 15 linsets upstage.


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## RonHebbard (Jan 31, 2020)

josh88 said:


> Yeah I'm in a theatre. Stacking motors save having to get a forklift in tight spaces and small venues or on stages that can't take the weight. We store stuff in the air all the the time. We store the towers of our shell in the air on truss above the stage. For Wicked, it depends on the piece, they have permanent points installed on some of their pieces, and some they just leave hangers or bridles attached to.


 *@Dagger * and *@josh88 * When I toured with the rock musical "Buddy, The Buddy Holly Story" in 1990, we had 7 motorcycles in the production. Approximately 90 minutes to two hours prior to the first performance of any given day, Carp's would fly them in then props would take them out, run them , warm them up, race them a little to minimize the accumulation of carbon within their cylinders, replenish their tiny fuel tanks, (There were normal tanks for the look but tiny tanks actually containing only enough fuel for a performance.) then they'd come back in and be flown one below the other with three stacked USR and four stacked USL. 
To keep noise down back stage, the motorcycles were hung from a pair of 4 to 3 blocks.
In reality the bikes were tiny Honda's, approximately 90 cc's; they were beefed up with fiberglass to appear much larger. The sounds of their puny engines were buried in pre recorded sound effects of MUCH larger, beefier motorcycles. The stage went black for a scene change, the band played, the SFX rolled, and the seven bikes "roared" on stage with their lights lit and the actors stopping on, or close to, their marks seeing only by their bikes headlights; looked and sounded great performance after performance. The seven bikes and one spare were modified for the production by Singular Productions of Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario. In Toronto, the bikes were warmed up in a back alley behind the Royal Alexandra, on Broadway they were warmed up and polished in front of the Shubert Theatre where they caught the eyes and ears of passersby and hopefully helped sell tickets. 
It always seemed strange to walk backstage and see four motorcycles hanging in a chain with the lowest bike's wheels perhaps 30' above the deck. 
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## DrewE (Jan 31, 2020)

egilson1 said:


> The main difference is that the control voltage on a hoist is usually 120v which an xlr connector is not rated for.



Most XLR connectors actually are rated for 120VAC operation by their manufacturers, at surprisingly high currents. Here's the specification sheet for Switchcraft A series male connectors for one example.

One good reason not to use a three-pin XLR connector for a hoist is that sometime, somewhere, someone is going to plug it into a microphone or a mixer with predictably bad and possibly dangerous results. Another is that sometime, somewhere, someone is going to use a standard microphone cable to connect the hoist to the control, which might not be approved for such voltages or assembled suitably for such voltages.


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## Amiers (Jan 31, 2020)

That’s our stacking motor.


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## josh88 (Jan 31, 2020)

Amiers said:


> That’s our stacking motor.


I think ours is the exact same motor, but just with the spansets, we've found they're long enough to hook under the corners of the cases alright. Of course we have to pretty constantly hang and strike it from our 70' grid because we never have enough room. #1895eravenueproblems.


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## Amiers (Jan 31, 2020)

Ours is a single phase 14-30 it’s a weird one. We have 2 of them. One for audio and lighting ( my dept)


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## josh88 (Feb 1, 2020)

Amiers said:


> Ours is a single phase 14-30 it’s a weird one. We have 2 of them. One for audio and lighting ( my dept)


Same as ours, We've got a company switch normally dedicated for audio right there and we run it off one of the edison plugs on the lunchbox that powers my line arrays, ends up working out pretty well.


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## Dan Fischer (Feb 5, 2020)

josh88 said:


> A motor for stacking and unstacking road cases. Usually just runs around head height with 2 spansets on it to hook under the top case near the wheels to pick and lower to the ground.
> 
> And in the case of Wicked, they've made permanent points on a lot of their scenery and cases and hampers so that they can fly a table or something they don't need and when its off the ground, connect the next piece under it, continue lifting and keep connecting more pieces until they've got everything they want stored up in the air for those times that they are in theaters that don't have enough wing space or storage elsewhere.



I have a friend that works on the Broadway production of Wicked an gave us a full tour a couple years ago. That is exactly how they store set pieces and props when not in use. See the attached pics.


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## dalebobvideo (Feb 5, 2020)

I don't want a pickle. Just wanna ride my motorsickle. 
I don't want to die. Just wanna ride my motorcye.


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## RonHebbard (Feb 5, 2020)

dalebobvideo said:


> I don't want a pickle. Just wanna ride my motorsickle.
> I don't want to die. Just wanna ride my motorcye.


 *@dalebobvideo* That'd be your *Chainmotorsickle* and / or *Chainmotorcye* of course, right?? 
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## macsound (Feb 5, 2020)

Most touring shows operate this way. 
Mamma Mia has the bed used at the top of Act II flown out of the way as well as tanks of liquid nitrogen and hampers.


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## RonHebbard (Feb 5, 2020)

macsound said:


> Most touring shows operate this way.
> Mamma Mia has the bed used at the top of Act II flown out of the way as well as tanks of liquid nitrogen and hampers.


 *@macsound * Bed and hampers, great; those tanks of liquid nitro' flown overhead give me a few palpitations. 

( @dvsDave How can I add a "Like" and a "Wow" simultaneously? [ Some geezers are NEVER satisfied.] )
Toodleoo! 
Ron Hebbard


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## dvsDave (Feb 5, 2020)

RonHebbard said:


> ( @dvsDave How can I add a "Like" and a "Wow" simultaneously? [ Some geezers are NEVER satisfied.] )
> Toodleoo!
> Ron Hebbard


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## josh88 (Feb 6, 2020)

Dan Fischer said:


> I have a friend that works on the Broadway production of Wicked an gave us a full tour a couple years ago. That is exactly how they store set pieces and props when not in use. See the attached pics.


They're mostly prepped to do that for small theatres. They don't do it if they have the space to avoid it, because its saves a hassle and added step, keeping something out of the air, but its also a quick solution when you've got nowhere to go but up. The tour actually had to cut a hole in the exterior wall of a theatre to get some of their equipment in. But that was for a pretty long sit down.


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## Chris Cotter (Feb 6, 2020)

Dagger said:


> I am trying to make my own motorpicke. I knoe the wiring , have the panel cable xlr, micro switch etc.
> 
> I can not find appropriste housing for it. Any suggestions.
> 
> I have attached an image for reference.


What is a pickle ?


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## TimMc (Feb 6, 2020)

Flown storage? Yep. Our PAC is round, with 4 theaters/stages - and they all back up together which means the stages are trapezoidal, not rectangular. When "the Mouse" came through with Beauty and the Beast, they had a number of building modifications made (like 4" coring of the fly floor in 5 places) to allow certain large, used-once things have a home... Maurice's contraption/invention was hanging right over the venue's SM console.

Wicked also flew (ironically) the levitation machine that 'defies gravity' at the end of act one, among other things.

The Lion King flew LOTS of stuff - the pampas grass headpieces, props hampers... and spilled out onto the stages of 2 other theaters in the complex, as well as the paint shop.

Sometimes there just ain't enough space...


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## almorton (Feb 7, 2020)

Chris Cotter said:


> What is a pickle ?


Small handheld controller for a hoist's motor.


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## josh88 (Feb 7, 2020)

Chris Cotter said:


> What is a pickle ?




almorton said:


> Small handheld controller for a hoist's motor.


But also, check the underline on your post under pickle and it will take you to our Wiki entry for it!


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## egilson1 (Feb 11, 2020)

you are all a bad influence......

I decided to build my own XLR pocket pickle as several of the local vendors have XLR pickle based hoists. Below is the list of parts I used. Also attached are some pictures.

Housing: $20.43 

XLR connector: $6.92 for (2) 

Blank cap: $9.40 for (4) 

Switch: $9.99 (actually got it locally for about $6) 

So the total cost was just under $43 bucks if you base price on unit cost of the parts. I also purchased a 5' XLR cable for $13.
Time was about 90 minutes start to finish.

Some learning curve notes:
- Don't center the switch along the long axis of the housing. I had to slightly shift the switch away from the XLR connector after i cut the hole for the switch. Thankfully the switch bezel had just enough size that i didn't have expose the cut out for the switch after I adjusted it.
- I epoxied the switch into the housing. don't get the epoxy into the switch itself.
- I checked the pin out with the hoist vendors before I soldered the switch to the XLR. There is no standard, so you need to know how the hoists you plan to use the pickle with are wired.

Image 1 is of the housing before I cut out the switch opening. I used my dremel to get the rough size and then hand filed the exact fit.
Image 2 is of the XLR panel mount with the wires soldered to it.
Image 3 is the 3 position (on - off - on) rocker switch epoxied into the housing.
Image 4 is the XLR installed. you can see how tight it was.
Image 5 is the final assembly.

Enjoy!


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## DrewE (Feb 11, 2020)

egilson1 said:


> you are all a bad influence......
> 
> I decided to build my own XLR pocket pickle as several of the local vendors have XLR pickle based hoists. Below is the list of parts I used. Also attached are some pictures.



I'm generally in favor of DIY stuff, but there are a few things here that give me pause, mainly because this is working with what I assume is a line-voltage circuit. If the hoists use a low voltage control system then most of these concerns aren't really applicable and I've just proven how little I know about the inner guts of these hoists.

The housing is aluminum, right? Should any wire or terminal short to the housing, it will be live and ungrounded. That isn't a very nice situation, to put it mildly. It would be wise at the least to line it with some sort of insulating material, maybe a plastic sheet bent to the contour of the housing. It would also be a good idea to shrink-wrap the connections, especially as they are very close to each other; it would not take much shifting about to have them short together and cause unexpected/uncontrolled movement and/or blown fuses.

Second, if the XLR cable is a standard microphone cable, it's probably not built to appropriate standards for handling a line voltage circuit. The wire itself may or may not be rated at line voltages; but I'd venture to guess that the terminations are not appropriately insulated from each other or the housing. If it's a wire specifically intended for hoist control duty, then presumably those concerns don't apply and it's been built appropriately.


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## egilson1 (Feb 11, 2020)

DrewE said:


> The housing is aluminum, right? Should any wire or terminal short to the housing, it will be live and ungrounded. That isn't a very nice situation, to put it mildly. It would be wise at the least to line it with some sort of insulating material, maybe a plastic sheet bent to the contour of the housing. It would also be a good idea to shrink-wrap the connections, especially as they are very close to each other; it would not take much shifting about to have them short together and cause unexpected/uncontrolled movement and/or blown fuses.



Ah, I should have posted more. I sealed the back side of the switch with silicon to prevent this situation. Good catch.

As far as the xlr cable, the items you mention are certainly things that need to be considered when selecting the cable.

FYI, on a CM lodstar hoist the control circuit is 115v and .04 amps. So the overall current is low.


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## egilson1 (Feb 12, 2020)

Both pocket pickles side by side.


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## TimMc (Feb 12, 2020)

egilson1 said:


> Both pocket pickles side by side.
> 
> View attachment 19351


Obviously not all pickles (or pockets) are created equal...


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## dalebobvideo (Feb 19, 2020)

RonHebbard said:


> *@dalebobvideo* That'd be your *Chainmotorsickle* and / or *Chainmotorcye* of course, right??
> Toodleoo!
> Ron Hebbard



Cle.
Arlo Guthrie, "The Motrocyle Song"


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