Scenemaster60
Well-Known Member
A colleague of mine who has recently become the TD for a local college reached out to me yesterday with a lamp question for their followspots. It turns out that hey have 2 Phoebus Ultra-arcs (original) that use the GE Marc-350 lamp. I have never used or encountered this particular followspot and have not used anything with a GE Marc-350 lamp since 16mm projectors back in my college days (early 1990s). It seems that this lamp is discontinued and that there never was any sort of cross-listed substitute by either GE or any other manufacturer. Online searches indicate that you can maybe still get them from old stock and that the price ranges from $200-$500/ea. with various estimates on shipping time ranging from a few days to weeks. He has two of these units in his theater. One unit has no lamp in it and the other works, but is not very bright. His musical opens in a week and his LD is planning on 2 followspots that need to be able to punch though a mixed lighting design of source 4 conventionals and Colorsource LEDs at about 100'.
He's in St. Paul, MN and I told him that his best bet is probably to try the rental houses in the Twin Cities area to see what he might be able to find to rent because trying to find NOS Marc-350s online is just throwing good money away at this point. Anyone out there have any other thoughts about this situation?
In the arc-lamp world it would seem that the Phoebus/Strong Ultra-Arc II (ST) or the Lycian Midget HP would be tried and true older units that a rental house might have in stock.
He's in St. Paul, MN and I told him that his best bet is probably to try the rental houses in the Twin Cities area to see what he might be able to find to rent because trying to find NOS Marc-350s online is just throwing good money away at this point. Anyone out there have any other thoughts about this situation?
In the arc-lamp world it would seem that the Phoebus/Strong Ultra-Arc II (ST) or the Lycian Midget HP would be tried and true older units that a rental house might have in stock.