As a person that has now purchased used and damaged scrollers, and then brought them back to life, there are several very servicable brands and several that will cost you a lot regardless of used or new.
Over the years, until fairly recently, most all scrollers were made by just a few companies. Camelont in Sweden manufactured the
Strand Colour
call and the Rainbow. Spectrum engineering in Canada, manufactured the Chroma-Q, and the
Apollo Q series along with many others. Both Spectrum and Camelont use pretty much the same parts for everything except the
circuit boards, so much so, that the
gel rolls and mounting plates are interchangeable.
Wybron scrollers have been considered the top of the
line and the Coloram model has been the backbone of the lighting rental business. The first
scroller of the
Wybron line was "The
Scroller". These are what is mentioned mostly in this thread. The
feedback pot has limits, and if you don't use the pricisely correct
gel and load it exactly as instructed, the limit can be exceeded and if left with a command from the board that the
scroller can't produce because of hitting the limit, the motor drive circuits will overhead and burn up. Most of the time they will also burn the
circuit board. Trying to get parts or service for these scrollers is near impossible. The "forerunner" by
Wybron is a middle of the
road scroller, that is comaptible with most of the rest of single
roll scrollers on the market. This means that they can use each others
power supplies and cables, and can actually be in the
daisy chain with scrollers of a different manufacture. This is because most scrollers use a four pin
XLR connector, with pin 1 gnd for both the
power and the
DMX data. Pin 2 is data (
DMX) minus, pin 3 is data plus and pin four is 24 volts DC. Now don't be confused, but The coloram by Wyron, while using the 4 pin
XLR reverses pins 1 and 4, and the data is a proprietary
Wybron data signal that does a two way communication with the
power supply. So even if you can find colorams used for little money, it is very likely that you will not find a used coloram supply cheaply. Morpheus is even less compatible, in that
power is plus on pin 3 and minus on pin 4, with data on pins 1 and 2. Plus the Morpheus supplies provide nonregulated
power.
I have put together quite a nice
system of scrollers with cables and
power supplies for less money than I could
purchase a coloram supply.
Because I
purchase for a
community theatre with my own money, I would avoid anything from Wyron except the "Forerunner", and then I would have to get a really good price before purchasing that
system. I have five different label names on my 41 scrollers, and they are almost all either manufactured by Camelont, or Spectrum. I have made all of my own cables, and
power supplies.
When buying used I primarily look for
Chroma Qs, specifically the original with the three screwdrive selected
address wheels. They are a little more difficult to load the
gel strings, but they maintain their position during a
power failure, and don't stress the
gelstring doing an autocalibrate routine.
If I were to
purchase scrollers new at this time, it would be the
Apollo brand. They have the most features and reliability for the price. Just my opinions.