dimmer questions

[moderately_clueless]

I'm high school with relatively outdated equipment. We currently have a 48/96 dimmer rack. It's a CD80 strand century. It's from the early eighties. Our dilemma seems to be that many of our dimmer ghost, pop up or do other random things. We've had a repair guy come in twice recently and he looked at all of our dimmers and said they were fine. However, the very next night, they were ghosting again. I've dusted in and around the dimmers, switched out the location in the rack, just about everything. The man from Operashop saw nothing wrong with them, yet they still ghost. Any solutions I haven't thought of yet?
Also, another random curiosity that's been bothering me for a while. Is it acceptable to mix gel colors to get the right look? I assume it's alright, but there's probably some random reason not to.
Thanks.

[disc2slick]

Hey,

I'm far from an expert in dimmer troubleshooting. If they are ghosting, I don't think it is an air-flow problem, which is one of the main causes of dimmer trouble. I'd say check all your dimmer profiles to make certain they aren't set to something wierd, depending on the set-up you can do this either on the dimmer rack itself, or through the board.

in terms of your question about mixing gels. I'm not sure what exactly you mean, but i've always believed and been taught that if it achieves the look you want go for it by all means. Especially when it comes to color choice there are very few hard and fast rules. Just do what looks right, y'know.

-dan

[ship]

Find a new dimmer repair guy.

[koncept]

i have used a cd 80 dimmer system, if the one i am thinking of is anything like yours it does not have the many controls on the dimmer rack, at least ours doesnt. i would definately find a new repair guy and chekc the board (cues, macros, subs)

good luck with this problem though

[BillESC]

I suspect there is a trim adjustment on each of the dimmer modules that you can use to zero them out. What protocol does your system use, is it analog, DMX or AMX? It is possible the system was set up with the dimmers set to a filament glow.

[moderately_clueless]

Erm, dumb question , but what's the dfference between AMX and DMX?

[koncept]

it is the type of signaling the dimmers operate on

amx - analog variant (4 pin cable)
dmx - digital (5 pin cable)

im sure someone with more knowledge of the difference will be along.

[Footer]

Originally Posted by koncept

it is the type of signaling the dimmers operate on

amx - analog variant (4 pin cable)
dmx - digital (5 pin cable)

im sure someone with more knowledge of the difference will be along.

amx (in its native form) can carry 192 slots of info... dmx can carry 512.... properly terminated amx will work just as well as dmx.... what kind of board are you using?

[gafftaper]

Before we go too far down the path of speculation, let's go back to the begining... What if your Dimmer Repair guy is right? Are you sure the problem isn't in the board?

As for mixing Gel, the only negative is that you are double filtering the light so you loose intensity. If 50% transmit's through the first gel and then 50% transmits through the second gel, only 25% is going to make it all the way through. So the negative is it might end up a lot darker than a single gel of similar color. If that's not a problem for you, go for it.

I also want to add that you can sometimes do cool things with cutting two gel's in half, and taping them together side by side. For example a leaf green and a yellow, taped side by side shining through a leaf gobo looks nice. Just cut lay them side by side and tape right down the seam on both sides of your new gel. It's a poor man's colorizer. Be sure you buy the tape that is clear and feels sort of like gel plastic... I think it's typically called "transparent tape" You don't want the kind that is sort of cloudy white but looks clear when you put it on paper.

[RiffRaff54]

i had the same problem at my theatre, but it was just our house lights that would ghost. some one said the ramp might need adjusting. i dont trust myself playing with the electronics of a dimmer rack, so i didn't mess with it. but it quit after a couple of weeks and hasn't done it in about a year.