number of dimmers and channel capacity of high schools

[avkid]

i was just wondering what the average number of dimmers and the average lighting console in a high school were!

I have 140 dimmers and 2 60 channel scenemaster consoles (one sits in a box in the corner)

 

[zac850]

My school has 36 dimmers. Our board is the ETC Express 125. I'm going to try to get another few dimmers, because our 36 dimmers is not enough for the 65 instruments or so that we have.

EDIT: 3 of our dimmers are used for house light

 

[JasonH]

I've got a 96 dimmer rack, and my houselights eat up 15 dimmers.
I've got a 125 channel Strand GSX (24 submasters)

 

[propmonkey]

we have 96 strand CD-80 our house uses 12. we use a strand 300, we also have a 300 in our little theatre with 12 i think 2.4k dimmer.

 

[JP12687]

100 dimmers with 12 being used for houselights(even thought 10 of those have no load right now because the custodians refuse to replace the house light bulbs!!!!) and then we have 2 boards....an ETC 48/96 express, and a colortran Inovator 96. We then also have a few smaller DMX control boards to control individual inteligent lights.

 

[Nephilim]

The three school's I've been to:

Kingswood:
20 dimmers - 12ch board (originally a custom job that then died)

Acalanes:
Two stages:
Main:
72 dimmers
Express 48/96
Small Stage:
48 dimmers
Express 24/48

Torrey Pines:
48 dimmers
NSI MC7524 - 192ch DMX output, we limit it to 48 for faster response.

 

[dj_illusions]

we have 64 dimmer channels, and have a jands event 48 in wide mode and a small 24 channel desk with its own dimmer rack that we use for small gigs or outside stuff. when the event and 5 racks are too much

 

[The_Guest]

I feel proud, and I thought I had it bad...

298 ETC Sensor Rack Dimmers

All in 3 sensor racks, along with a seperate processing rack handling dimmer network duties and the ETC Link/Net functions.

ETC Express 250, Express 72/144, and a (2) memory consoles controlling the worklights.

Express...
http://msnusers.com/techphotospeter/picsofmike.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=84

Dimmers...
http://msnusers.com/techphotospeter/picsofmike.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=98
http://msnusers.com/techphotospeter/picsofmike.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=99

Memory console...
http://msnusers.com/techphotospeter/picsofmike.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=81
http://msnusers.com/techphotospeter/picsofmike.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=86

 

[PATech]

We have 275 ETC dimmers in our big (proscenium) theatre controlled by an ETC Expression 3. We have another 100 ETC dimmers in our black box controlled by an ETC Expression 1.

 

[mbenonis]

We have around 108 dimmers in our proscenium stage (not including the 40 or so house light dimmers, individually controllable), and about 24 dimmers in our black box. Both systems are ETC Express systems (48/96 and 24/48 respectively)

 

[soundman]

I want to say 194 for some reason.

 

[propmonkey]

damn i feel small now.

 

[zac850]

damn i feel small now.

Don't feel bad about the size of your rack. My rack is much smaller then yours. Yes it is annoying, yes I want to get a bigger rack, but its not the size that matters, its how you use it.

Dimmer rack.

What did you think I was talking about?!!?

 

[Les]

The High School I just Graduated from has 192 channels in their mainstage and 24 channels in the black box. 192 is quite sufficient, but I have been called in to design lights for Les Miserables (which I just completed) and I have managed to fill almost all the dimmers. (even on the electrics). They use an ETC Expression 3. The show's Tech-in lasted 15 hours and I wrote the last cue (#200) at 3:15am.
I believe that the 24 channels in the studio is a little skimpy. That system is controlled by an ETC Acclaim, but usually for big shows we would just bring down the Expression. In the community theatre where I work at, we run 192 channels as well, on a Colortran system. We have 2 ENR Racks, and a Colortran Status 24/48. We are hoping to upgrade to ETC Control (possibly Expression 3) in the very near future.

 

[12yearoldlightingdesigner]

What are all you guys complaining about? We don't even have a rack at out school! We have, I believe (correct me producer if I'm wrong) 12 channels!! CONTROLLED BY A STRAND AMX! How on EARTH did you convince your school to get 200 channels? or an Expression? Or INTELLIGENT LIGHTING??? Are house lights aren't even controlled by the dimmer! They are on a REGULAR light switch! And I guess that is a good thing, otherwise we'd have no channels left!

P.S. Are middle school is in the same building as our high school

 

[12yearoldlightingdesigner]

damn i feel small now.

Are you kidding? Your house lights would take up OUR WHOLE DIMMER!!!!!

 

[mr_sound]

What are all you guys complaining about? We don't even have a rack at out school! We have, I believe (correct me producer if I'm wrong) 12 channels!! CONTROLLED BY A STRAND AMX! How on EARTH did you convince your school to get 200 channels? or an Expression? Or INTELLIGENT LIGHTING??? Are house lights aren't even controlled by the dimmer! They are on a REGULAR light switch! And I guess that is a good thing, otherwise we'd have no channels left!

I feel your pain. I've got 23 channels of dimming...on ADJ dimmers, so I can only put about 1000 watts on each channel. I've also got 4 more relay only channels...and 26 control channels from the board. I have ONE intelligent light, an ADJ pocket scan. Actually, I bought 2 at a steal on ebay, but UPS lost the second one, and it wasn't insured (insured incase they lose it? That's absurd), so I couldn't replace that one...and only having one gets washed out by all the other lights on stage. But that doesn't matter cuz I don't have enough channels to use that anyways.

The house lights are big halogen flood lights on the walls...on a regular switch of course. Of course the real problem is that I only have about 80 amps of power to work with.

But I'm a pro (despite my non-pro gear) so I needed to buy all this stuff myself...I didn't have a school to foot the bill. Once you HS and college kids get out into the real world, you're going to find out just how valuable credit cards are, hehe. Can't get a business loan? Just get a bunch of credit cards.

 

[avkid]

and then be prepared to get into debt!!

 

[12yearoldlightingdesigner]

We had to RENT a dimmer for west side story we did a few years back!

 

[mr_sound]

and then be prepared to get into debt!!

Well yeah...that's a given. Not many people get rich off of doing live sound or lighting. Somehow I doubt anyone around here is in it for the money.

Of course, running a live sound or lighting company is more than just knowing how to be good at what you do...you're also running a business. You need to be sure you can get enough work to pay off the gear you buy. But that's a topic for another thread.