jreeves1701
New Member
Help.
I am looking for any technical information, schematic or otherwise on this particular model Davis Dimmer. I am the director of a new theatre program in West Point, Mississippi. My mentor and technical theatre guru has helped me with the basic history of Ariel Davis, even shared the story about meeting the inventor and sharing a beer. Here is a photo of the beast.
At some point, the school got the notion to upgrade and had Lehigh come in and they jerry-rigged the entire system through a secondary circuit breaker box on the wall to the left, and then installed a 9-circuit dimmer panel (the black box on the right). So all of the circuit breakers on the Davis Dimmer are still live and active. But are also redundantly patched into the new circuit breaker. Now I am in a position to reverse engineer this mess and rewire it properly so that the school auditorium can be properly wired for theatrical lighting. We are actually looking to remove the entire Davis Dimmer completely. It is a hot mess, let me show you the instruments.
The "vintage" Major B-156 border lights. Not patched into the Davis Dimmer anymore, nor the Lehigh system, or at least not that I can tell.
Yes, someone decided to remove all the roundels from it. All but a few of the lights were kept. Instead of the PS bulbs, maintenance got extenders and installed low-wattage standard bulbs. I am in the process of relighting these instruments with LEDs and replacing the missing roundels. We have two of these B-156s, one on the first electric and one on the second. I think there was one on the third electric but it was removed. As I mentioned they are not hooked up to the Davis Dimmer or the Lehigh Dimmer Panel that I can tell. They are controlled from the booth by two residential dimmer sliders. Once, I figure out how to properly upgrade our dimmer system, I am looking to replace these with something more versatile. As well as take them off the residential controls.
And now for our alcove lights.
These are the most modern instruments. They were installed when Lehigh came in. However, they are poorly patched into the Lehigh dimmer panel. As I mentioned there are 9 circuits. Space for 12, but only 9 installed. There are two assigned instruments per circuit/channel. There are a total of 8 circuits on each side of the alcove electric. However, the four unused sockets don't seem to be hot. I have attempted to add instruments but didn't get them to work.
I am looking for any technical information, schematic or otherwise on this particular model Davis Dimmer. I am the director of a new theatre program in West Point, Mississippi. My mentor and technical theatre guru has helped me with the basic history of Ariel Davis, even shared the story about meeting the inventor and sharing a beer. Here is a photo of the beast.
At some point, the school got the notion to upgrade and had Lehigh come in and they jerry-rigged the entire system through a secondary circuit breaker box on the wall to the left, and then installed a 9-circuit dimmer panel (the black box on the right). So all of the circuit breakers on the Davis Dimmer are still live and active. But are also redundantly patched into the new circuit breaker. Now I am in a position to reverse engineer this mess and rewire it properly so that the school auditorium can be properly wired for theatrical lighting. We are actually looking to remove the entire Davis Dimmer completely. It is a hot mess, let me show you the instruments.
The "vintage" Major B-156 border lights. Not patched into the Davis Dimmer anymore, nor the Lehigh system, or at least not that I can tell.
Yes, someone decided to remove all the roundels from it. All but a few of the lights were kept. Instead of the PS bulbs, maintenance got extenders and installed low-wattage standard bulbs. I am in the process of relighting these instruments with LEDs and replacing the missing roundels. We have two of these B-156s, one on the first electric and one on the second. I think there was one on the third electric but it was removed. As I mentioned they are not hooked up to the Davis Dimmer or the Lehigh Dimmer Panel that I can tell. They are controlled from the booth by two residential dimmer sliders. Once, I figure out how to properly upgrade our dimmer system, I am looking to replace these with something more versatile. As well as take them off the residential controls.
And now for our alcove lights.
These are the most modern instruments. They were installed when Lehigh came in. However, they are poorly patched into the Lehigh dimmer panel. As I mentioned there are 9 circuits. Space for 12, but only 9 installed. There are two assigned instruments per circuit/channel. There are a total of 8 circuits on each side of the alcove electric. However, the four unused sockets don't seem to be hot. I have attempted to add instruments but didn't get them to work.