Other than
Wybron, the two major manufactures of scrollers are Camelont in Sweden and Spectrum in Canada. I'm not sure which came first or how they do their licenseing agreement, but they have many interchangeable parts including the rolls that the strings are loaded on. These two companies do not market any scrollers under their own name, but provide other companies. The Camelonts are known as
Strand Colour
call and Rainbow. The Spectrum units are
Chroma Q, The older
Apollo Q series. Color Ranger and Morpheus. Both manufactures started out with a
manual calibrating
scroller and then moved to an automatic calibrating
unit.
With the
manual calibrating units, they must be connected to
DMX with a value of "0" when the
gel string in installed. The first frame past the leader is centered and then the spring loaded
roller is turned 1 and 1/2 turns, while holding the fixed
roller in place, then both rollers are pushed down on to the securing pins. Then operating the
DMX control
advance the scroll slowly until the last frame is reached, and then there is a small slotted adjustment that is moved until the last frame is reached when the controller is at full. It is then a good idea to
advance the string back and forth at top speed a few times, and then check centering of the first and last frame and tightness of the string. Then readjust as necessary. On the
manual calibrating units, the leader length and shape are not very critical, and can be secured with
gaff tape. The
manual units can be
identified by the
DMX address controls being three switches with the numbers 0-9 around them.
The auto calibrating units are
identified by their having dip switches for
DMX addressing. The auto units also are very critical about the shape and length of their leaders. They have a metal
tab on the end that is folded back one fold. To install them, just put them in the
scroller with the same 1 and 1/2 turns of tension.
plug them into
DMX and
power and they calibrate. If there are several units with the same strings, and they don't
track to the same
gel at the same
DMX setting, you need to
play with the tension. They do their calibration by moving the
gelstring to both ends and count the rotations. If the tension is wrong or the
roller shaft is slightly bent, or the bearings dirty, they will produce a wrong count and will not
track correctly.
I have a total of 26 scrollers from these two manufactures as follows: 6 each
Apollo Q6s (auto), 10
Chroma Q (
manual) and 1
Chroma Q (auto), 7 each Rainbow (
manual) and 2 each
Strand Colour
Call (
manual). I far prefer the older
manual units as they never lose their calibration once they are set properly, and don't have to calibrate if there is a
power failure. They of course require a
DMX console for calibration, which is a minor inconvenience.
Most all scrollers can use each others
power supplies with the exception of the Colorram by
wybron and any of the units that don't set the
DMX at the
scroller but set the
DMX at the supply.
If you have scrollers that require a
return line to operate, check and see that you have Plus 24vdc at pin 1 and 4 on both the male and female
XLR connectors. The standard
Scroller supply has on the female 4pin
XLR as follows: pin 1
ground for the 24 vdc and
ground for the
DMX. pin 2 Minus
DMX data. pin 3 pus
DMX data. pin 4 Plus 24vdc. On the male
connector: Pin 1 is the
ground for the 24vdc across pin 2 and 3 is a 120
ohm resistor and pin 4 has the plus 24vdc.
The
Apollo colorSmart
scroller is manufactured off shore to Apollos specifications and quality.
I volunteer at a
community theatre where I buy the lighting equipment with the money they pay me as a fee for being the ME, and then give the equipment to the
theatre. That is why I have such an
array of scrollers. I have purchased them at the lowest prices I can find, and rebuild them from top to bottom. That is also why I prefer Spectrum and Camelonts, as I have become quite familiar with them, and
stock some of the parts. I also
build my own
scroller supplys and cables. Personally.
If I were buying new scrollers, from what is available on the market, and for a
community theatre with a small budget, it would be the
Apollo colorsmart. Tha is just one man's opinion.