number of dimmers and channel capacity of high schools

[who_touched_the_patch]

hehe... 12yo, you sound like me 2 years ago.

i was head tech for 4th form (year 10) and we only had 2 3-phase outlets underneath the box, which we ran jands fp12's from.

they were multicored to the FOH and wing batons and racks.

But THEN (and here's the fun part...) some smart-alec electrician had put another two 3-phase outlets ABOVE the stage... so we were bolting these rental racks to the ceiling and plugging lights directly in...

*sigh* ah the BAD old days...

now, after much petitiioning and explaining to the administration, we have four semi-permanent racks in a custom built rack room backstage.

four fp12wm's from jands, and one of their programmable racks (cant remember what its called.)

Basically, just talk to the theatre coordinator and explain the limitations the current setup is having in your learning experience... or something like that.

 ps: whats the [ code ] tag for?

 

[Peter]

Off topic, but I'll give my thoughts anyway:

I think the code tag is to be useful in forums that talk about computer languages, so that code examples do not get read and executed by the users' browser. I am not really sure if it has a huge use on these forums, but maybe it will be for me in a while when a teacher teaches me how to code a program to run DMX and possibly audio stuff. (He says he can do it, but I dont know if he knows what is really involved with doing that!)

Anyways, that's just my thought.

Oh ya, I cant remeber if I already posted here or not, but my school has 96 dimmers for on stage, and another 13 for house lights. We have an ETC Express 48/96 board with 13 of the channels controling our house lights. We have a few dimmers patched to the same faders just because we nearly always use the two lights at the same time, and doing that is ALOT easier then having multiple screens of dimmers (i think this board can do a thousand dimmers or something like that).

 

[sound_nerd]

bringing back an old topic, but here is what I had at high school. Most of you should feel very lucky to have what you've got.
Main Stage:
24ch Strand CD-80
24/48 Strand MX console

Black Box:
6ch NSI analog dimmer
6ch NSI analog controller

TV Studio:
4ch Elation relay pack
8ch Elation dimmer
AMDJ scenesetter 8 console (yay for crap...)

 

[bdesmond]

2x96 dimmer Strand CD80SV racks. I believe there are around 130 circuits actually installed, so some room to expand on the racks. All the mdouels are 2.4kW. Stradn 300 control console, have an older LBX that was replaced last year as well.

 

[moojoe]

our school has 112 or something dimmers. i dont know what model or company. the school bought them though in the 80's...used. so theyre bad. very bad. they light on fire about once a week. and mabe 50 of the circuits dont work. plus we cant bring anything over 65% or it will overheat. :roll:

 

[falcon]

Wow! you are all lucky, my school has 24 digital dimmers, use to be 20 analog dimmers and 3 non-dims a year ago. And we have one additional dimmer for houselights, which is controlled by a dimming switch that you would find in a house. We also have a Leprecon 624 board. I can only put 1000 watts on each dimmer which makes the lighting for our upcoming production pretty crappy.

 

[squigish]

*is jealous of all you 100+ folks*

My school has 48 1.2 kW L86 dimmers, but they have 15A circut breakers on them for no apparent reason. We have an ETC Idea 24 light board, which is basically a 24 channel 2-scene preset with a 120-cue memory. Our house lights are on their own analog system that doesn't work very well. Based on their behevior I think they're moterized autotransformers, but I'm not sure.

 

[SketchyCroftPpl]

Our theatre doesn't use any dimmers. Instead we use SCRimmer sticks and the Omega 2 board so we don't need the dimmers or the dimmer room.
~Nick

 

[SketchyCroftPpl]

We don't have any dimmers in our school. We use SCRimmer sticks instead. By doing that if we want more lights all we have to do is plug in another stick and there is no huge dimmer room or anything like that. The software that our controler uses can handle upto 200lights, 1000 cues, 1000 effects and 10 Macros.
~Nick

 

[producer]

12yearold. a correction is in order. We didnt HAVE to rent the dimmer, the LD decided taht 24 lights werent enough so he rented it. It was a 12 dimmer beast with u-ground. our system is twist lock. (not mad at you 12yearold, but i did work on that show from start to finish)

 

[Kruton]

Well fortuatly I have a colortran D192 3 Phase Dimming system (The school has a soft neutral though, so all sound and lighting board are on conditionars and batterys.

I have 98 fully wired dimmer about 6 spare, and 12 indpendent from lighting board house light dimmers.

I got to say, I am glad for what i have for a 500 seat audt, and I routinely use all channels

 

[theothergreg587]

Man everyone of you are lucky my school has an REALLY OLD analog board w/ only around 20 dimmers and 2 Non dim swiches also we have 3 dimmers for house lights. . . .plus it is a patch board system and if u patch too many lights in teh breakers for the dimmers pop . . . .also all teh dimmers stick maybe ill take pictures and post them

 

[freshmantech]

CCHS Stage Lighting

We have two stages at our school.

Mainstage:

132 dimmers - plus one aux solid state dimmer (for projectors and solid "on/off" devices)
132 channels - 10 for house light control - 4 of them not working due to blown lamps
all channels are double - for x lighting on both the 3 electrics and 2 cats
ETC Express 48/96

Lab "black box that's not a box" theatre:
12 ch dimmer pack
24 plugs - split off to 2 plugs @ each spot
i don't remember the board's exact name (i'm a sound / design tech) but it is a 2 scene preset with 24 channel control

our school does have quite a lot for a HS though...both in our lighting inventory (150 total insturments) and board...i'm quite proud of the Express.

 

[Roger]

At my high school we had 50 in our mainstage (5 for houselight 9 for permanantly rigged striplights) and 11 in our black box.

At uta we have 150 in our mainstage and 101 in our black box. heres a rough count of insturments in case anyone cares.
25- 25-50 s4 zooms
30- 15-30 s4 zooms
10- 19' s4s
5- 36' s4s
25- s4 parnells
15- 8' fresnels
at least 30 new 6" altman fresnels
25- 6x12 ellipsoidals
25- 6x9 ellipsoidals
at least 10- scoops of various sizes
There are some cyc lights, strip lights, minis and things like that also.

not trying to show anyone up here, because im willing to bet that the majority of the people on here have a better sound system than we do.

 

[12yearoldlightingdesigner]

Sorry producer, I regret the mistakes!!

 

[Trolley01]

So far it is sounding like my school is a little bit behind the times!!!

Have only got 24 channels of dimming, only 20 fully working though, on a early 1980's Horizon hard wired rack......

Combine that with a single scene 24 channel manual desk that doesn't even support dmx........

I think it's time I asked for some money.

I woudn't mind 96 channels of dimming and an ETC Obsession.......

 

[great_beyond]

our school has 96 dimmers. 16 of which are not cabled to anywhere/ and our house lights use their own stpuid dimmers which are a pain more than anything. and we have a Lehigh Millenium Board, which is crap.

so to recap
96 dimmers/ 72 work
house lights suck
board is crap

 

[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

Are we forgetting somthing here? 8O

 

[wemeck]

330 ETC Sensor Rack Dimmers with an ETC Insight 2x, our sister school has about the same amount of dimmers and an ETC Obsession II.

 

[Jamie]

hate to burst a bubble

Our regular proscenium theater has 289 dimmers not including worklites and houselights. However, we have a ColorTran board that i just despise with all my being. We're trying to get and Expression, but the school board here sux.
In our studio theater, we got about 48 dimmers, but have to bring in the board from main theater to work 'em. Old one shut down and fried.
In the student ministry center at my chruch, we have about 48 dimmers as well, however each is wired at about 135 V so my patch is all screwed up. But, we got an ETC Express 24/48, and i luv the sucka. We use two of our dimmers for the intels cuz they're fixed at 120 V.
Overall the mass of dimmers at school balance out with the sweet board + intels at church :roll: .