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I am on the hunt for one of these, a slotted letter change pole. it's for a historic theatre. I went down a few rabbit holes and haven't found any for sale. Anyone have one they don't use anymore?
Those slotted letter changing poles are hard to come by. Wagner and Gemini are the two primary companies that made those dimensional plastic changeable letters. They discontinued those product lines years ago. Now they only sell the cheaper flat Wagner Zip Change and Gemini Pronto letters. Some sign supply companies sell used/refurbished slotted letters. There just isn't much demand for those things anymore. It's kind of sad because those kinds of signs had a certain vintage charm to them. 30 or more years ago slotted letter signs were pretty common; some of the letters could be ordered in really big sizes back then.
The changeable copy letter market has been severely impacted by two things. LED-based variable message displays have cannibalized the market on one end. A "jumbotron" board just looks more modern and is far more versatile than an "analog" changeable copy sign. You can change the messages without having to stand outside in the weather to do so. On the other end we have increasingly restrictive sign ordinances. Ugly signs are pretty common. No one has to earn a license or certification to design signs; some companies will let anyone with a working pulse do so. We also have the factor of "DIY Design" -anyone with a computer and a bit of software can decide he's an artist, so the business owner tries to do the design work himself, even if he doesn't have a grasp of basic geometry. Shitty customer provided "art" is very common in the sign industry. Since it's impossible to legislate taste local city councils attack it from another angle: by banning entire categories of signs and severely limiting the sizes of signs businesses can install. Depending on the location it may force the business to have nothing more than a little tombstone-sized monument showing only the company logo. And that's if they allow anything near the street at all. Some places allow only building signs (under serious limits too). That doesn't leave much room for a changeable copy sign.
Unlike projector parts, HERE is an area where a large bed 3d printer would actually be really handy for Marquee having cinemas. We had to "invent" a special character recently by modifying some. We needed parentheses for "Sunn O)))"
Not so useful for the stick, but seems like someone relatively handy could make that too.
On the subject of LED signs, lately (over the past year or two) I'm seeing more and more of those signs with missing squares in the display.
This wasn't really something that I saw up to relatively recently; before that those signs always seemed to be new and shiny and pretty and all that. It takes a lot of the effect out of the sign when there's a square that's no longer lighting up.
So you just get a few years out of those signs and then it falls apart?
Nobody seems to be in a hurry to replace the missing panels, either.
Yesterday an employee at the theatre obliterated the handle on the marquee pole. I am now on the hunt to have the existing pole fixed or find a new one. I have reached out to several metal fabricators and a sign company who have guaranteed the pole will be repaired. I told them that I've seen about 20 historical theatres out on the Internet looking for these things. I might make an investment in getting some made and will come back to this thread to update. I might get a handful made and put them up for sale.
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