Axial Silhouette? Any thoughts?

Uncle Dirtnap

Active Member
I recently started volunteering at an awesome old community theatre with rooms of archaic old equiptment. Almost all of it has been donated, and typically has a story but the only person that knew what it was hasn't been seen in 15 years. It's pretty neat going through the 'museum of lighting through the decades'.

I ran across some HUGE Axial Silhouettes. Zooms, from what I can tell, and ridiculously large. Are these worth wiring up and playing with?
 

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Good lights in their time, but as for using them today? These appear to be the "long throw" variety, so do you typically hang units 30-60' away from their target?

Quick research leads me to think these are fixed 10° units, not zooms. So at your max. 55' throw distance, you'd have about a 10.5' pool.

Now let's talk about that LMI SD-12 dimmer pack...
 
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Ha! From the back wall of the converted church to the back of the stage is 55'. I guess they could be useful for extreme gobo use, right?

It's fairly fun, to be honest, and I'm treating it like a post-apocolyptic theatre thought experiment. What can I get working again? Sure, I'd still rather have a bunch of source 4s. but it sounds like they may better than the assorted scoops, par64s, strip footlights, and what I suspect is an arclight spot. I have found 2 projectors that are at least 3' x 2' and weigh a ton as well- god knows where I will find something to output VGA with BNC connectors.
 
We have some of the zoom versions of the CCT sils. We sometimes use them as they have particualrly large gobo gates. They're outshone these days by better lanterns of lower wattage, but, as @derekleffew said, in their day they were pretty useful.

We have a couple of 2k sils we still use as follow spots when we go to Minack. They're not as bright as the Source 4 follows, but the beam is "nicer".

The sils are considered "sacrificial" since the sea air is so corrosive. We rig a bunch of them with breakup, and leave them out in the sea air (and wind and rain) all week. They've been our sacrificial outdoor profiles for must be getting on for 15 years now. They just get dismantled, cleaned and put away until next time.
 
Good lights in their time, but as for using them today? These appear to be the "long throw" variety, so do you typically hang units 30-60' away from their target?

Quick research leads me to think these are fixed 10° units, not zooms. So at your max. 55' throw distance, you'd have about a 10.5' pool.

Now let's talk about that LMI SD-12 dimmer pack...
Just caught your reference to the dimmer pack. We seem to have a few of them floating around- I wish I knew their history as our TTI mds dimmers are starting to act flakey.

-rj
 

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