Vintage Lighting Kliegl 1355 questions

I have come into a baker's dozen of Kliegl 1355 ERS for the cost of picking them up. I can tell markings on them that they belonged to the Children's Theater here in Minneapolis. They look to date from the early 1970s which is when CTC built their new theater building attached to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. I also know from reading old posts on here from their house electrician David Horn that once upon a time CTC maintained an inventory of about 200 of these up until about the year 2000.

They were clearly well maintained (all of them have newer teflon lead TP-22 sockets in them) and I do have a use for them for the little community group that I work with that has NO budget. I am well familiar with how to bench focus radial ERS from my days of working with conventional-lamped Altman 360s.

That said, I have 2 questions I am wondering if anyone can answer:

1. I bench focused a couple of these today using the EHG lamps that were already in them and the results were about what I expected. Does anyone have any experience in using the FLK lamp in these fixtures? Would the slightly more compact filament give a cleaner bench focus and/or more light output than the EHG while allowing me to circuit these 4 to a 2.4 kw dimmer.

2. What in the heck did these true "Klieg" lights use for a gobo holder? The shutter gate is 2-3/4" in diameter and the gobo holder slot is 4-1/2 or 4-5/8" wide and about 6" deep. I have seen NOTHING on the market in that size for standard metal gobs. Was it proprietary to Kliegl? I realize that the optics on this fixture leave much to be desired but I am interested in possibly projecting some breakups and other patterns where optical precision is not all that critical.

Any insights would be appreciated.

1. No experience, except to say that the FLK lamp is inferior in almost every way to the GLx series, so I'd try one of those. I'm certain I never used anything except an EHG in 1355 s, as that was all that was available at the time.

2. Likewise, the only gobo s I ever used were those made from radiator grating, and 4.5" x 6" sounds about right.
The cut sheet
does list "31355 Pattern Holder", but I've never seen any. Perhaps with some inventive use of BlackWrap / Blacktak / pie plate / paper clips, one could fashion a template holder.
.

2. For our old Colortrans, we made gobo holders with a light gauge aluminum sheet stock. Maybe from a hardware store? We took two flat pieces cut to shape (figured that out w/paper models) and managed a flat cpl of rivets. Or you could fold over a single large shape and smack the bend nice and flat. A nice discovery back then was that the holders could be shaped so they could be rotated somewhat.

2a. I have had success using hardware cloth from a hardware store for making non-standard sized gobos. This kind is metal and comes in a few different patterns. We put them in some 8x12 cannons with no gobo slots. It took disassembly - had to split it apart at the shutter package. But it worked!

Scenemaster60 said:

I have come into a baker's dozen of Kliegl 1355 ERS for the cost of picking them up. I can tell markings on them that they belonged to the Children's Theater here in Minneapolis. They look to date from the early 1970s which is when CTC built their new theater building attached to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. I also know from reading old posts on here from their house electrician David Horn that once upon a time CTC maintained an inventory of about 200 of these up until about the year 2000.

They were clearly well maintained (all of them have newer teflon lead TP-22 sockets in them) and I do have a use for them for the little community group that I work with that has NO budget. I am well familiar with how to bench focus radial ERS from my days of working with conventional-lamped Altman 360s.

That said, I have 2 questions I am wondering if anyone can answer:

1. I bench focused a couple of these today using the EHG lamps that were already in them and the results were about what I expected. Does anyone have any experience in using the FLK lamp in these fixtures? Would the slightly more compact filament give a cleaner bench focus and/or more light output than the EHG while allowing me to circuit these 4 to a 2.4 kw dimmer.

2. What in the heck did these true "Klieg" lights use for a gobo holder? The shutter gate is 2-3/4" in diameter and the gobo holder slot is 4-1/2 or 4-5/8" wide and about 6" deep. I have seen NOTHING on the market in that size for standard metal gobs. Was it proprietary to Kliegl? I realize that the optics on this fixture leave much to be desired but I am interested in possibly projecting some breakups and other patterns where optical precision is not all that critical.

Any insights would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

My experience with the Altman 360Q, which is of similar vintage, was the GLx type lamp (as Derek stated) would be the best possible lamp for that fixture. It's got that odd perpendicular lamp socket that is 90 degrees to the axis of the fixture, but had the advantage of being designed for the EHD/EHG/FEL series TH lamps, so won't have that huge hole cut in to allow for an incandescent/non-TH lamp. Still uses the single step lens though, so no getting around that.

As to the gobo, it's whatever you can make out of sheet metal. Nobody made custom or even stock patterns back then, so there was no standard, I think Kliegl actually sold 2 or 3 gobo's, radiator grill, etc.... as an accessory. There was no holder that I can recall.

I don't know if I'd be using these as template units, the optics don't support it. They might better serve as wash fixtures, side lights etc....

http://klieglbros.com/catalogs/t61/t61p11.jpg

available patterns in the 1965 Kliegl cataloge. Note at that time a fixture had to be specifically ordered to hold patterns.

That's interesting that they needed to be ordered that way in 1965. By the 1971 price list they all had the pattern slot and the iris was was special order accessory.

After much experimentation and tinkering, I thought I would share some of my observations about lamps in these fixtures. I stopped by Gopher and picked up an FLK and a GLC. The GLC was a disaster and completely unusable. The reason for this is that the lamp socket for the 1355 is mounted at a 45 degree angle so the filament plane of the GLC was also then at a 45 degree angle to the reflector. So much for that....

The FLK was acceptable and is perhaps a bit brighter than the EHG, I don't know how much of that is the higher color temperature and how much might have had to do actual greater light output. I really had to drop the socket quite a bit (3/4") in order to get the filament in the optical center of the reflector and the light beam was less smooth than the EHG. So, for now...it's back to EHGs for this fixture. I think that the slightly longer and thicker filament spiral of the EHG seems to mesh the best with obsolete optics of this fixture!

Well, learned first-hand today what a _POS_ the FLK lamp is. After messing around with it in a few of my 1355 this afternoon, I installed it in one with the lamp support in the proper position for burning. What I forgot was that I was bench focusing and had the fixture tilted UP slightly instead of down. Well, one wrong move with the screwdriver, a bright flash of blue and then.....$16.45 up in a flash! Oh well, I guess that's only 2 martinis.....

Take it from me....if you encounter OLD Kliegl 1355s. Use an EHG and ONLY an EHG.

Scenemaster60 said:

Well, learned first-hand today what a _POS_ the FLK lamp is. After messing around with it in a few of my 1355 this afternoon, I installed it in one with the lamp support in the proper position for burning. What I forgot was that I was bench focusing and had the fixture tilted UP slightly instead of down. Well, one wrong move with the screwdriver, a bright flash of blue and then.....$16.45 up in a flash! Oh well, I guess that's only 2 martinis.....

Take it from me....if you encounter OLD Kliegl 1355s. Use an EHG and ONLY an EHG.

Click to expand...

Sounds like operator error, or maybe a defective lamp. EHG and FLK share the same design, the EHG just has a bigger filament. If you want an upgrade go to a GLA, GLC, GLD or GLE depending on your needs.

Read above to see my experience with the GLC. They don't work in the 1355 because of the 45 degree orientation of the lamp.

I used to have 200 Kliegls and we did convert to the FLKs, the gobo holders are an odd size and gobos never worked good. We used pie tins and made holes or slots for breakups.

Well, after much experimentation and months of "puttzing" with these lights, I have determined that for my purposes the EHG is the lamp of choice and I also discovered that the Strand SL B pattern holder with a 1/4" wing on each side made of from a pie tin works PERFECTLY for breakup patterns, etc. I would never use this fixture for an important projection, but given my budget, it will "project" things like "shattered fragments" and "giraffe 2" quite acceptably to add texture to a plot.

Got one of the fixture in the collection and extra lamp sockets; but to be honest, past wiring it up and working on it so it’s back to spec.. I as with many fixures I worked on, never turned it on. Bench focus for me while I have done tons of fixtures over the years has normally been for the end user if working on gear for them, or for when I need to use it, or one of my staff to do. Always wanted a as I call it "Circle K", and got one eventually as a needed part of history, than got extra sockets to it also. My home use Kliegl #1340 fixtures lamped down to 100w are in perfect bench focus on the other hand because I wanted to use them. Watching the movie "Major Payne" at the moment... don’t see a problem with your problem other than your bench focus problems that does take time to master.
I would doubt that in bench focus the lamp going spark due to bad lot number... more that something often done, a lamp that’s stressed against the reflector too much and it breaks.
Now for lamps... The ANSI EH... series lamp was what the fixture was designed around, but the other lamps are only improvements. Not the Hx-600/FLK but more the GL series with more refined filament. Hear recently that even such lamps are obsolete given the ETC series HPL filament design is out of pattent. Don’t know what the newest filament will be called for such fixture, but believe me GL series or new HPL type filament installed into the fixture, it is not going to be the filament but the optics of you in bench focus for a good bench focus optically in better than any EHG installed once a good bench focus.
Sorry, but the GL series and HPL series filament installed in your fixture - no matter what angle it’s at will be more optically refined. A HPR lamp, now discontinued, would be great for a 360Q Altman but really bad for this fixture if that was installed. This unless the axis plane of the lamp is wrong which I would doubt.
Give another shot to the bench focus and learn in often powering off and inspecting the position of the lamp in relation to the reflector. Than perhaps a height adjustment as opposed to polar adjustment. Overall, should be able to get a good bench focus no matter what lamp is installed. Optically for the gobo superior lamps TBA after establishing the lamps in a good beam from the projector.
As the movie said, "Ah boy, get on out of here with that crap." Get a good bench focus, and the gobo with some #65 High Temp. Fiberglass electrical tape could about allow any plate with a hole with gobo taped to it to do it’s purpose. That or perhaps as I didn’t try, black tack tape in doing so also for a plate with gobo taped to it.