Awesome, I love to see old Vaudeville houses come back to life.
rental question
- Thread starterPie4Weebl
- Start date
lighttechie5948
Active Member
JD
Well-Known Member
Some notes about Aircraft Landing Lights- The 4559 is the headlight for the 747. That is why the strange 28 volt rating. ( Here's one site http://www.skygeek.com/latala.html ) I used to buy them at the Newark Airport in NJ, GE has a special distributor there for aviation lighting. I think in the 80's I was paying $9 each for them. Run them in sets of 4 wired in series, but remember, it's a solid 20 amp draw and you will probably be better off using a 3.6k dimmer!! Also, they need to be age and batch matched! Any imbalance can cause them to flashover and you will loose all four.
Now, as far as using them in a show: 1) Great for rock as the thick filaments can take a lot of abuse. 2) Don't stick your fingers in the back of the fixture!!! They are screw terminals running at line voltage! They don't need to be adjusted anyway because the beam is round. 3) They are SLOW! Due to the thickness of the filament, they have a lag coming on and a longer lag going off. 4) Fire warning! The very tight beam is also a very HOT beam. ACL's have fallen out of favor, but for the old-time Rock and Roll look, they are a must!
Now, as far as using them in a show: 1) Great for rock as the thick filaments can take a lot of abuse. 2) Don't stick your fingers in the back of the fixture!!! They are screw terminals running at line voltage! They don't need to be adjusted anyway because the beam is round. 3) They are SLOW! Due to the thickness of the filament, they have a lag coming on and a longer lag going off. 4) Fire warning! The very tight beam is also a very HOT beam. ACL's have fallen out of favor, but for the old-time Rock and Roll look, they are a must!
Haha, don't worry, thats of a paramount concern to me as well. When I first took the gig I assumed the venue would have a less than stellar but usable board, then I found out it takes three boards to run their full system, so I coaxed the community theatre group and then are alotting me $200 for a board, I got a rental quote of $140 for an express so I figure that spare $60 will go to converters and cables to make their system play nice with my board.
lighttechie5948
Active Member
what kind of express? I would stick with the 125 or the 250, the 24/48, 48/96, 74/144 have indivisual faders which if you wanna program fast cues you use the keypad. plus if you need faders the expresses have 10 pages of 24 subs (10x24=240).
So the Moral to the story stick with the Express 125s, The Expres 250s, or an Expression 3
Think you are missing the concept of using ACL's. A 28v lamp needs to be run in series - four of them thus a stage pin connector powering them up as if one 1Kw circuit of four lamps. It's like a lamp bar having four fixtures but powering up the lamps ion the bar in series without transformers - big heavy ones for each would be bad were it fixture per circuit in a super nova type of way. ACL' fixtures are a must in being wired in series thus it's never on a Soco bar unless that Soco bar plugs into a patch panel that does the wiring in series.
"ACL's are seldon used these days"... tell that to American Idol tour and any number of shows that go out with such lamps - almost half the shows leaving with PAR 64 lamps are going out with ACL PAR 64 lamps. Possibly more shows leave with ACL's than the rock and roll PAR can - this given the S-4 PAR has taken much of the use out of the PAR 64 bubble.
There is a thing about the ACL lamp, it's kind of like a beam projector in giving up some of the beam effect for cheapness. This also in having a slightly more narrow beam but one that's also unique. For the stage, not often used but than again, the right show and effect... nice to have around.
Ok I thought I posted this last night but I guess I never hit "post", so here it is again.
So something I found out which limited me from renting lights is the entire building and all of its tenants share one leg of 400 amp power, so as is the 24 cans which were hung over the stage were only 300 watts and very narrows at that. So I was really unable to get a nice even wash of the stage, I also had no position over the top part of the set so that area got not top light. I also found out when I got there that all their NSI dimmers don't use DMX so I had to burn the better part of a work day getting a converter. Also my front light positions ended up being skethcy giving me a decent wash at the center but towards the edges of the stage I wasn't able to get much coverage. I also had only one spot so for scenes I wanted to be dark aside from two spots I had to use my front light position which took heavily away from the mood in my opinion. The venues two hazers turned into no hazers when I got there which took away that effect I was hoping for but for one scene we got to fog it.
But as bad as most of that went I'm still kinda satisfied with how it went and we have some really awesome moments where I am really happy with how it looks and am kinda satisfied, I made due with what I had and it turned out okay, and with only two runs we pulled of a 300+ cue show.
No show pics yet, but here are some pics of some looks and us playing with the fogger: (also those gobos are from the accuspots, don't think I wasted 4 fixtures on that.)
So something I found out which limited me from renting lights is the entire building and all of its tenants share one leg of 400 amp power, so as is the 24 cans which were hung over the stage were only 300 watts and very narrows at that. So I was really unable to get a nice even wash of the stage, I also had no position over the top part of the set so that area got not top light. I also found out when I got there that all their NSI dimmers don't use DMX so I had to burn the better part of a work day getting a converter. Also my front light positions ended up being skethcy giving me a decent wash at the center but towards the edges of the stage I wasn't able to get much coverage. I also had only one spot so for scenes I wanted to be dark aside from two spots I had to use my front light position which took heavily away from the mood in my opinion. The venues two hazers turned into no hazers when I got there which took away that effect I was hoping for but for one scene we got to fog it.
But as bad as most of that went I'm still kinda satisfied with how it went and we have some really awesome moments where I am really happy with how it looks and am kinda satisfied, I made due with what I had and it turned out okay, and with only two runs we pulled of a 300+ cue show.
No show pics yet, but here are some pics of some looks and us playing with the fogger: (also those gobos are from the accuspots, don't think I wasted 4 fixtures on that.)
