The Vic Lopez Auditorium is a huge 2,448-seat civic auditorium with a 49'x26' proscenium. After an earthquake renovation in 2001 that included an updated rigging and audio system, our school district seemed to run out of money and our lighting rig got the short end of the stick. We've been suffering from inadequate power, circuits, and lighting positions ever since. The electrical rig upgrade plans called for 17 6kW house dimmer circuits and 340 2.4kW stage circuits (172 dual dimmers) distributed over APs, balcony rail, AP booms, SL/SR proscenium booms, electrics battens, side floor pockets, upstage floor pockets, border lights, and footlights. That would have been sweet! Instead, we ended up with 17 6kW house light dimmers and 36 2.4kW stage circuits (18 dual dimmers) distributed over 6 APs circuits, 6 SL proscenium wall pigtails, 6 SR proscenium wall pigtails, 3 SR floor pockets with 3 circuits each, and 3 SL floor pockets with 3 circuits each. Everything else was abandoned except for the balcony rail positions which were demo-ed and new conduit installed, but no wire. All our stage circuits (floor pockets and proscenium wall) run straight up to an up/downstage traveler batten (with no soft goods) then swag over to the electrics and the primary front light comes from the APs. We have one aging CD80 Supervisor rack with 12/48 open spaces that are not wired. in 2008 (?) I added 18 hot-powered ETC Selador Vivid-R fixtures to replace a blue/amber fresnel wash which gained us a few extra circuits. The Seladors are controlled by DMX direct from the board. We're currently running an ETC ION with 194/1024 addresses used. Our lighting rig is not networked.
Getting the electrics battens un-tethered from the floor pockets would be a game-changer. There is an existing run from the dimmer room straight up to the grid and incomplete existing pipe and junction boxes for drops to the electrics. This is what the upgrade plans specified but it didn't happen. However, I have no unused dimmers, and I am hesitant to add NOS CD80 dimmers to an aging rack. I could detach my floor pockets and rewire them to the battens but that's only 18 circuits. We have a lot of open space in many electrical panels and could run a lot of hard power from panels for LEDs, or pipe dimmers or some kind of other localized dimmer solution.
DMX control is sparse. There is one jack on the SR Proscenium wall that I am currently running to a splitter and on to the 3 electrics of Seladors. The building has network connectivity and some jacks may be able to be disconnected from the school network and re-assigned to a lighting network? There are at least a few more network jacks already installed on SL and SR.
I'm highly considering the Chauvet Ovation B2805FC LED cyc lights to replace my Altman 3-cell cyc lights, which would free up a lot of circuits.
Although I've tried to save up my budget for a larger lighting upgrade, it's always been tight and I haven't been able to make much progress. I've been asked to come up with some numbers to justify my budget and possibly pull from a bond that was just approved.
Given the scenario above, what would YOU recommend?
a) add more dimmers in the dimmer room and run wires from there to install more circuits
b) add dimmer bars or packs, power, and DMX locally (like to the battens or balcony rail)
c) add LED fixtures, power, and DMX control
d) add LED fixtures, network nodes, or perhaps wireless DMX control
e) some combination of above
Thanks and fire away!
Getting the electrics battens un-tethered from the floor pockets would be a game-changer. There is an existing run from the dimmer room straight up to the grid and incomplete existing pipe and junction boxes for drops to the electrics. This is what the upgrade plans specified but it didn't happen. However, I have no unused dimmers, and I am hesitant to add NOS CD80 dimmers to an aging rack. I could detach my floor pockets and rewire them to the battens but that's only 18 circuits. We have a lot of open space in many electrical panels and could run a lot of hard power from panels for LEDs, or pipe dimmers or some kind of other localized dimmer solution.
DMX control is sparse. There is one jack on the SR Proscenium wall that I am currently running to a splitter and on to the 3 electrics of Seladors. The building has network connectivity and some jacks may be able to be disconnected from the school network and re-assigned to a lighting network? There are at least a few more network jacks already installed on SL and SR.
I'm highly considering the Chauvet Ovation B2805FC LED cyc lights to replace my Altman 3-cell cyc lights, which would free up a lot of circuits.
Although I've tried to save up my budget for a larger lighting upgrade, it's always been tight and I haven't been able to make much progress. I've been asked to come up with some numbers to justify my budget and possibly pull from a bond that was just approved.
Given the scenario above, what would YOU recommend?
a) add more dimmers in the dimmer room and run wires from there to install more circuits
b) add dimmer bars or packs, power, and DMX locally (like to the battens or balcony rail)
c) add LED fixtures, power, and DMX control
d) add LED fixtures, network nodes, or perhaps wireless DMX control
e) some combination of above
Thanks and fire away!
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