Control/Dimming Small Auditorium Dimming/Control upgrade

[spiwak2005]

Thanks in advance for any advice/opinions.

We have a small auditorium (300 seats) used primarily for movies, lectures and recitals. It's just a small "apron" stage with a full stage screen as the upstage wall. Current lighting system is 12 lekos attached to the ceiling of the house for an adequate couple of washes and specials. Plus 3 zones of house lights. Plus some kind of strip lights over the upstage wall. It's run off a very old Lehigh Dimming and Architectural control system. (sorry I can't seem to make the picture rotate at the moment - quick snap from my phone)



Any guess as to the year of these dimmers? Possibly mid 60's when the space was built? Does it look like the 1st 4 dimmers (which correspond to the house lights and the upstage strips) are possibly 2.4k dimmers? The next 7 dimmers (possibly 1.2k dimmers) correspond to 5 pairs of lekos per dimmer and 2 single lekos per dimmer. The bottom 3 dimmers are for other lighting in the building. I don't see a lot of love for Lehigh equipment on here, but I haven't had to touch any of the dimmer modules in the past 3 years that I've been here and no one in our maintenance staff remembers ever "repairing" anything in over 10 years. Are these dimmers just tanks? Or is failure imminent?

Does a couple ETC SmartPack wall mount dimmers sound like a worthwhile upgrade? (a 12-pack of 1.2k dimmers and a 6-pack of 2.4k dimmers) Add to that a few Smartlink 5-button stations for dummy proof controls? And a Smartfade 2496 for a little more show control? Can I leave 2 DMX cables - one in the house and one in the booth - and just move the Smartfade to either location?

That's where I'm at so far. Thanks!

 

[josh88]

upgrading to new stuff is always nice, but not always needed. Have they given you a reason to replace them? Ie have you been having problems/do they all work/do you have enough for the space? This is just me but if my dimmers still worked and I had enough to do what I wanted I probably wouldn't do anything with them until they actually failed on me.

I see that you've got 10 currently and are looking at moving up to 18 total so I assume that means you'd like to expand your lighting options. Also what board are you currently using?

 

[spiwak2005]

You are correct regarding the dimmers - they are all working fine and it would appear that replacement modules are easily available from Lehigh. Turns out the dimmer rack was installed in 1982. I think there are actually 11 dimmers - 4 quad modules and 7 duals. The lekos are hardwired together in really awful pairs and I can't figure out how to fix that, so one idea was to cut the cable (they appear to be hardwired into some sort of relay boxes above the ceiling which is not really accessible) and reattach to 2 P&G so they can be two-ferred however I need. With new dimmers/extra dimmers in an accessible space, each leko could have it's own dimmer until need for additional lights arises.

The console IS the main problem in that we don't really have one. Everything is done from Lehigh's architectural control boxes and one "box with faders".



So how do I actually send a console DMX into these dimmers if I just try to replace the control side of things?

 

[mstaylor]

Get a licensed electrician to look at your electric and he can tell you what can be done to that. To use a DMX board with your analog dimmers you need a convertor box. It will take the DMX signal from the board and translate it to a 0-10v signal. Most analog dimmers are 0-10v, some are 0-15 and a few are something else. This needs to be determined before you buy a converter.