@ship Would you care to contribute your thoughts for @Zachary Tarantino 's benefit?
@RichardBunting On my side of the pond, MR16's were available in 6, 12, 24, and 82 volt versions (The 82 volt lamp was used in at least one follow spot as mentioned previously in post #2 of this thread.) In North America we had only one 120 volt line voltage lamp, ANSI 'EZK' if I'm recalling correctly. Making the 120 volt filament as compact as possible with optical considerations in mind forced its being wound from thin gauge, fragile, wire. The lighting designer for The Who's "Tommy The Musical" insisted on using eight of the 120 volt EZK's across the apron for low angle front lights. Even on our side of the pond, if you had 8 EZK's at lamp check, you'd likely have lost one or more by interval and having only four remaining lit by the end of any given performance was not at all uncommon. Our shop in Canada won the bid to build "Tommy" for Offenbach / Frankfurt, Germany in 1995 and we built it all again for London, England a year later in 1996. (Tommy performed in the Shaftesbury if I'm recalling correctly.) In your country the U.S. based designers specified the eight 120 volt EZK's be wired as series connected pairs to operate on 240 volts prior to Britain agreeing to the newer 230 volt standard. (In reality, I believe your lads stayed with 240 suggesting it fell within the new 230 +/- 10% specification.) Again in London, the fragile EZK's were dropping like flies. The designers would have been better to have gone with transformers and 6 or 12 volt MR16's with their MUCH coarser, far less fragile, filaments. The EZK's were already fragile when cold and they didn't gain any strength when up to operating temperature. It was a combination of the driving sub woofers and the choreography vibrating through the production's partially hollow show deck that was shaking the thin 120 volt filaments into submission by interval, performance after performance. We knew sourcing 120 volt EZK's would be difficult on your side of the pond and thus included 200% spare lamps when we shipped both productions. In both Germany and London the production electricians whistled through 24 lamps during previews and had more 120 volt EZK's sent from North America by UPS "Red" overnight courier. Although 120 volt MR16's were available in North America, 240 volt MR16's were 'unobtainium' on your side of the pond. More than you ever wanted to know about line voltage MR16's. [ Be pedantic, join @derekleffew 's and my club. ]
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