Vintage Lighting Identifying an Old Light Board

[dramatech]

[
I did some repairs to the board in my kids high school a number of years ago, and it was almost an exact duplicate of the one shown. It is a HUB. The dimmer rack with it was non-toroidal choke coils with dual SCRs. the control is a negative 24 volts. After a year of working with the school theater program I modified the dimmer modules using op amps and resistive pads so that it could be controlled with 0 - 10 control and used a Lightronic converter of microplex to analog 0 - 10. The dimmer system was installed initially in 1972. The same as the unit shown in the first post.
When the school was remodeled 1997, it was replaced with a Strand CD80.

 

[derekleffew]

Do they determine whether the light board or stage panel has priority for that set if both are on?

No. Booth vs. Stage Manager panel precedence is determined usually by a "take control" button at either location.

One aspect of the light board and stage panel that confuses me is the switches labeled "Stage/House/Undim Master" <-> "Off" <-> "Independent." Switching them to "off" turns off whatever they control, but what do "Stage/House/Undim Master" and "Independent" do?

"Master" puts the handle under electrical control of the master for that section. "Independent" means it acts by itself with no higher (greater authority) control.

When would this be useful? Suppose at the end of an act one wants to fade out all lights except one: one could write the next preset with only that light up, OR, have that light switched to independent in the current live preset.

 

[gordonmcleod]

Litecon who distributed Major Dimmers and Fixtures had a molded case illuminated pot that like ward leonard basically had a wirewound resistor that one side was non glazed that a wiper ran up and down against

 

[Vader0629]

Here are the pictures I said I'd get of the inside of board, if anyone's still interested. Putting aside the dust and debris, the wiring looks like it's in great condition.

There are more pictures here:
http://imgur.com/a/CTtaJ

 

[Ben Groseclose]

I had a chance to get familiar with a huge back lit HUB lighting board and dimmer rack in college 25 years ago. I got credit for rewiring 40 of our instruments and resoldering an entire rack of 9k dimmers.

Yes, HUB had Backlit dimmer sliders on the massive control board. They lit up the whole control room during our shows.

I'm pretty sure we had 20 channels. I know the entire thing was modular, and very smooth to operate after I cleaned up some of the dirty channels. It's incredible how much heat everything produced.

 

[Vader0629]

I was finally able to access the furnace room and get some pictures of the new/old dimming equipment that I want to share. The door was unlocked for whatever reason, so a few classmates and I walked in to see everything. It was a much bigger space than I thought it'd be. We didn't want to stay in there for long, so the pictures that I got were quick ones.

New dimmer rack (I think)


Old dimmers (I think)


Original, in use house light dimmer rack on the right (I think)


A few more pictures here: http://imgur.com/a/zg8kf

 

[RickR]

Yes that's your new dimmer rack. Sensor 3 model is only a few years old and might be good til your children attend that school.

I'd say that space is fairly typical of the insides of a large facility. A good place to avoid unless you know what not to touch or even get near!