A final post from me on this topic. After speaking to a technician from Century and also with a stagecraft and lighting professor at Lehigh, I had enough comfort to try my idea. It works fine.
Since the shows I light are elementary school shows in this exact kind of space, I can speak from personal experience. I do two trees on crankstands, for front lighting, with three or four ellipsoidals all lamped at 375 so I don't fry the shoebox dimmers. That gives adequate coverage, more or...
Yes, thank you. That is where I got the information. We have discovered floor pockets as well as footlights - I forgot to mention those - that are connected to the strip lights. They work but I don't use them. I don't know about the floor pockets. I will definitely reach out to them.
Wow indeed, and thanks for the response. I probably should have expected your answer, but it is not ideal for me for several reasons. 1) I can't see at all from there and I need visual cues. 2) The backstage area is crowded and there really isn't even room to stand there during shows. 3) A...
Here are photos of the unit. Replacement is not an option. House lights and who knows what else runs through it, along with my lights. It was installed in 1954. Autotrans bd (seven 4 kw + three 4 kw house).Modified Century 2C configuration; no plugging panel. (that according to a source I found...
I have limited manpower, and it is hard to change colors on the backstage panel; it is pretty old and unwieldy, so that is my last resort. And as for it being cost-effective, I was thinking of renting the dimmers rather than buying them, as I only need them for a few days each year.
the lamps are 60W (sorry, thought I said that in the original post)
each border has three stage pin connectors - 1 for each color (R,Y,B)
i will try to photograph and post here
control board has large hand size levers
it dates back to around 1960; it was made by Century Lighting.
Well here's the thing. The old dimmers are 50 yrs old, they are mechanical dimmers operated by hand, with big levers like something out of Frankenstein. As for the per-channel load, each channel in each row is 8-9 amps.
I do lights for a school that has an antiquated lighting panel the size of a small car that is hard wired in place backstage. I want to insert small dimmer packs between the border fixtures and the panel so that i can use an xlr controller to dim them remotely. The connectors are all stage pin...