scrollers

I've done one show using scrollers in par cans at another high school. My Theater only has fresnels, 6 by 9s, and source 4s. Will scrollers work with any of the lights we have?

 

Source 4s for sure, you might find something to fit the other two, I've never shopped for those, though...

 

I know that at my high school, we have Wybron Forerunner scrollers on ETC Source 4's, so I know that that combo works very well. I've also seen scrollers on par 64's down here at the County College. As for the other instruments, hopefully one of the more lighting-experienced members on controlbooth.com can set us completely straight. I'm curious myself.

 

You can find scrollers for any light practicly. I would look at Chroma Q:

http://www.aclighting.com/Products/Chroma-Q/colour_changers.asp

I have used these and the seem to work the best.

 

Scrollers for S4's is a very big business. Most lighting arsenals on most broadway shows use scrollers with Source 4's. The problem is that they are expensive, and you may be able to find even another S4 for less than a scroller...as long as you have plenty of circuits.

 

In most cases, as long as the scroller's opening is large enough for the lens/light, than it's fairly easy to either get or make a mounting plate that will enable a scroller to fit onto a fixture no matter the type. Simple as using an old gel frame with the threaded standoffs that would otherwise mount a different plate in many cases.

In the case of a 6" Fresnel for instance, it uses the same gel frame as a 6" Leko and PAR 56, in other words, given companies such as Altman, L&E, Times Square and Strand still make fixtures on the 6" lens type, getting a plate to fit a 6" fixture no matter the type is fairly easy to acquire. Possibly not as easy as a plate for a S-4 but still just as easy and probably using the same type of scroller. Possibly not as large a scroller unit as is necessary to fit a 8" PAR fixture, but similar in design if perhaps a little less expensive due to the smaller size.

All the same, it should work fine given you do either get the right mounting plates or retrofit the plates to fit the gel frame holder.

Also of note is safety cable. Even on a S-4 Leko, safety cabling the scroller is still necessary. Also you might need to add a support arm to the fixture yoke in an effort to help support the scroller. Strangest thing I ever saw was a 10 degree S-4 fixture with a support arm coming off the side of the yoke and running to the scroller. All the same, it made sense in this situation.

 

The Source Fours are the most applicable fixture for using a scroller on. However, one word of caution, be sure to choose one company to get your scrollers and gel strings from and insure that when you swap out gel strings, all of the new gel strings have the colors in the same sequence from on string to another, other wise you could be in for a mess when you go to program a cue when you want a certain color wash. The two scrollers that I would recommend are the Wybron CXI and the Apollo Smart Color. If your school is willing to put some more money on equipment, try getting some Sea Changer Color Engines for the ETC Source Fours. The Sea Changer is a dichroic color mixing system that uses a hexachromic mixing system with CMYxG. This allows for a color palette with much richer colors and more vibrant light tones.

 

Apollo Smart Color scrollers, or at least the ones that I use, have adjustable mounting brackets to fit a wide variety of instruments. It's called the Universal Mounting Plate (mentioned above). This is achieved by having screws at the ends of each of the for pieces that actually make contact with the fixture. They work great for source fours and source four pars and other ellipsoidals and 6" fresnels (8 inchers are too big for our scrollers). To see how it works, check out the video at the apollo site, on the Smart Color page.

http://www.internetapollo.com/Products/ProductLine.aspx?pl_id=43

I also say Smart Colors over Chroma Q's. We have 12 Smart Colors and 10 Chroma Q's, and always use the Smart Colors first, because it takes much, much longer for them to get out of calibration. The Chroma Q's have to be calibrated by hand and at least once every week or two.

 

Is that a complement or insult?

 

That's always fun, too. I think that we just got a bad batch, and they're not the newest model, either. And they're bulkier.

 

When Apollo sold the Spectra Q scrollers several years ago (private label of scroller you've just mentioned), we would battle the problem of metal tabs being jerked off the ends of the strings. We found if we doubled up the J-lar or similar tape connecting these tabs to the header/tail, they would hold up a bit longer. After numerous rentals, the dealer would call us requesting hints on how to keep these little boogers on the string.

We don't sell these any longer...

 

at my community theatre we have Chroma-Q Broadway Scrollers and we just bought 4 scrollers and and 4 Source Four Pars. THey look good