Hey guys (and gals). Y’all are a wealth of info and invaluable to a somewhat newbie like me! Hope you won’t laugh me off this board, but please give me your thoughts on this proposal. Small
community theatre with a small budget. Currently running an old
ETC Express, 48 SmartPac dimmers, and a slew of old fixtures. Remarkably, we put on some pretty fine productions and our
lighting designer does a great job with what we have to work with. But an upgrade is well overdue and we have our sights on an
Element 2 and transitioning to
LED fixtures and movables. We had a
ETC dealer give options for full replacement and a hybrid option, retaining some of the old fixtures. Both prices were well into double six figures, which is simply not reachable for us. So my proposed plan, in very simple terms...
I understand we can swap out the
Express with the new
Element 2 and it should work just fine with our existing setup (after patching in the channels). We have
power and
DMX (or extensions) available in all locations. Can we simply run a second
DMX from our board, creating a second
universe just for our newer LEDs and movables (running direct to the fixtures, not through the SmartPacs)? Looking at
DMX fixtures (with my very limited knowledge), is it a case of where I supply them
power and the
DMX signal and they become controllable from the board? I would hate to sink 20-30 thousand into upgrades only to find out I need some expensive special relays or ?? to make it all run. And by having multiple universes, does that create special challenges when programming and playing back cues for shows?
We are trying to be realistic here and am hoping we can design sufficient upgrades to controls and acquire some new (or gently used) fixtures and bring this in for 20 to 30 thousand. Won’t be anything fancy, but it would open up a whole new lighting world for our little
theatre. I am researching and trying to think through the details, but again my knowledge is limited, so I’m afraid I may be missing some crucial details.
Look forward to to your thoughts and comments and thank you all in
advance for what you do to support our community.