number of dimmers and channel capacity of high schools

how many dimmers do you have in your high school?


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no idea how many channels but we do have a great museum piece for a dimmer, an old SCRimmer from 1969 ancient and sparks when adjusted. Any want pics of it?

However for some unknown reason we have a ETC express 48/96. Nice board but attatched to junk so we are limited
 
Poshul said:
no idea how many channels but we do have a great museum piece for a dimmer, an old SCRimmer from 1969 ancient and sparks when adjusted. Any want pics of it?

However for some unknown reason we have a ETC express 48/96. Nice board but attatched to junk so we are limited

Before the remodel, SIU at Carbondale had a similar situation. An ETC Expression attached to a large patch panel with 88 8.8KW Varie-Lite dimmers. So soft-patch was a dream. It was like having a Ferrari Steering wheel in a Ford Festiva.

It was even worse for me because I was reared during high school on a Kliegl Performer III system.
 
great_beyond said:
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

At my school, we use the Lehigh Millenium board (96 dimmers) and it is the BEST board in our entire COUNTY. Considering the local Catholic Private school is still running an AMX 12 channel/2 scene (X/Y) board (that is probably from the late 70s), we consider ourselves lucky to have a board that is as VERSATILE as the Lehigh Millenium. I think someone needs to sit down and read the manual :roll: :idea:
 
New system we got last summer:

ETC Express 48/96
ETC Sensor SR48 with 88 D20 dimmers, 66 on stage, a couple spares and the rest on house lights. Yes our house is BRIGHT...about 50 250w cans over about 275 seats :shock:

Lighting inventory:

22 - S4 26 degree (575W HPL)
9 - S4 36 degree (575w HPL)
16 - Colortran 6" Fresnel (750w BTN)
3 - 3 cell L&E Runt Cyclights (750w EJG)
and possibly 12 donated 1980's Strand/Century R40 borderlights from my old school who may be getting rid of them.


Compared to our old system, we're leaps and bounds better now! Old system consisted of a complete Electro-Controls analog system straight from 1972 with 13 30A dimmers and 2 60A dimmers, a complete patch panel (sliders), and a board that barely had two presets working. And complete with EC asbestos-corded instruments! Thankfully those are all gone now...they looked like flashlights compared to the S4.
 
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I have 384 Dimmers. The light board has three universes of 512ea, and 600 channels.
 
My old high school had
-36 2.4k's in the little theater
-Around 120 2.4k's in the big auditorium... although I could only find about 70 channels worth of outlets. Never figured out what the other 50 cirucuits were for.

Originally had a 24 channel and a 48 channel Two Scene presets boards to run the two spaces. But I mangaged to get an Express 24/48 through a grant after a year or two.

Currently ending the design phase and begining two years of construction for a college blackbox. It'll have around 200 circuits and a $20K board... I'm drooling.
 
ok i dunno how many dimmers we have but we have one of the oldest digital desks

axiom 36

yep

pretty sad
 
We just got some of the power supplies replaced in our dimmers, so we're finally up to 24 dimmers. Once the last power supply is replaced, we'll have 32. All of them are 2.4kW. And the house lights are flourescents, all controlled straight through the breakerbox back stage.
 
Right now, I have 15/30 dimmers working on an ancient century lighting system(complete with patchboard). In our new theatre, I'll have 2 96 cd 80 racks and a 300 series.
 
We have 150 CD-80 dimmers, an IPS dimmer strip right in front of the proscenium between the clouds for top light (normally par 64s), and a single IPS dimmer strip (I think it was a demo model or something), and a portable CD-80 pack with 20(?) more dimmers that we normally take to the cafeteria for dances and other things. The houselights have their own dimmer rack and to be honest, I have no idea how many dimmers are in there. We have 3 DMX512 universes for effects and intelligent lights, but our dimmers are AMX. We have to use the AMX outs on our Strand 520i or a convertor box.
 
We have the following:

16 in our Catwalk
6 for our booms in the House
16 for 1st Electric
16 for 2nd Electric
12 for Cyc Electric
6 in Backstage Panels
4 in Stage Pockets
14 for House Lights

And 2 that are not wired anywhere (i don't know why).

We have a R40 strips that take up 4 dimmers on the first and second electrics, each. We are forced to keep these plugged in all the time, as the stage is used for some band and chorus functions.

We are constantly running out of dimmers and I wish we had so many more, but we're a public high school that has their priorities screwed up, so what do you expect.
 
Okay, this is gong to sound nuts, but in a blue moon its nice to only have fifty dimmers. it makes you think out side the box as far as design goes. with that said i could definately go for mor dimmers. I know thta they are a hassle to cable and everythng but i'm sortof fond of our schools three backpack dimmers. its nice to bring the dimmer to the light rather then the other way around.
 
kingfisher1 said:
Okay, this is gong to sound nuts, but in a blue moon its nice to only have fifty dimmers. it makes you think out side the box as far as design goes. with that said i could definately go for mor dimmers. I know thta they are a hassle to cable and everythng but i'm sortof fond of our schools three backpack dimmers. its nice to bring the dimmer to the light rather then the other way around.

Their accutly not backpack dimmers. Backpack dimmers are tiny one circuct dimmers that clamp directly to the yoke of the fixture (remmeber, we used them at gala verson 1.0). We have 5 shoe box dimmers that we clamp to the pipes.

The more you know :)
 

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