A shame to loose the dimming and sculpting ability of what is there with some work or replacement is needed. That more about the artistic look - you are not lighting a
podium you are providing the ability to light art.
I am working with a local Junior High School right now in just having serviced all of their lights, dimmers and light board for the first time since bought. (Yet to get to the local High School in also needing help.) Added some proper cable and a few donated modern lights, for the key acting areas and next month, with some training on how to do looks and cues they have an inspired school custodian who is even re-wiring the patch bay and building a lighting
desk on his own, and director that is ecstatic. Before now they were not persay talking to each other - now both look forward to their new arts program.
You have
360Q’s - they have at least 40 year old radial 750w 360's and DJ grade 1K
PAR 64's at random located, with no Fresnels... and wondered why the 16ga
wire on the patch bay was getting hot and with each show in re-patching wondering why they blew breakers constantly on their two sets of 2.4Kw x 6
dimmer shoe box dimmers. A lot of major work done to the
Gymatorium after some professional advice, with more work inspired to come.
All that said, to more answer your questions - if the
dimmer modules are removable (probably not),
Leprecon probably also has
LED dimming modules at this
point, but more likely useful to what you are asking about, you would want
relay modules that are just on/off
switch modules. I have crappy internet connection but suspect your dimmers are not removable. Instead if really wanting to bypass the dimmers, I would
send them to a professional lighting company for a service
call and to bypass in output the dimmers. This would retain the
circuit breaker protection and the control. Easy to do but needs to be done professionally.
In dimming even with a
LED dimmer, dependant on the actual loading, you might still need a dummy/ghost loading on the
dimmer for it to work properly. I’m currently working on a show with 80x micro
LED Leko’s and given their last use in the fall, I had to make a 48
channel dummy load rack to make the
ETC LED dimmers work properly. A lot of R&D went into what wattage of
filament lamps on the
dummy load in 65
watt worked best, but for the application 25
watt per
channel minimum was sufficient for the show in use of micro
Leko’s. A lot of engineering went into making a
dummy load panel and distribution rack for it in doing so. But it’s feasible to as per the old school concept of doing low wattage on any chopping
dimmer - just
twofer a say 75
watt filament lamp
fixture in a closet somewhere - but one
fixture per
dimmer circuit. This is if all if your
LED loading per
circuit is too small to control. Dimmable
LED’s will work on normal dimmers also - a little flicker factor and small other problems we found in testing.
All problems dependant on what’s used and most larger output
LED fixtures might just work fine on a
LED dimmer module. Old standard is 75 watts for minimum loading on a
dimmer to properly control it in possibly will also work (
ETC members might correct at any
point.).
LED module dimmers might need less wattage and dim better but as above do still need some load to work properly if micro small. Working on some transformers also, believe it's 0.3 amps and 36 VDC as measured on the
ETC Micro
Leko - which gets complex in making
transformer that will control a bunch of them. Way above my head in having an electronics dpt. to figure out what is needed for constant something or other.
Most main
stage LED lighting fixtures to “replace” a
Fresnel or
Leko don’t require a
dimmer. They can be used with dimmers easily, but mostly they are best in self
DMX controlled dimming with direct
power. Means
relay modules or I would recommend hiring an electrical contractor to replace the dimmers if that’s what is wanted to best control them. Each
LED light
fixture will than require at least one control
circuit if straight dimming
channel and possibly more control channels per light. Can
address multiple lights to the same control channels - but very possible what light board you have will quickly become much too small to sufficiently design cues for a show.
Main problem in just doing proper
LED’s to solve the problems is cost - and it will be large. Perhaps get a few and have a electrician make dedicated “live” circuits for them. But overall if your theater has what it has, it would probably be most cost effective to work on the lights you have. Many articles posted about how to “save” older lights. What you seem to have in inventory isn’t any such thing other schools would not love to have. But if you can find budget to replace, certainly work on what you have - learn it and figure it out in why it's problematic, make safe and pass on to another school these more modern that what I'm for instance working with gear to another school. Perhaps once you learn to service what you have, you won't need to replace it, and instead might find supplement of the inventory with more modern in building a inventory would be more useful.