Conventional Fixtures Strong Trouper Followspot

Interesting... The Zoom handle is on both the left and the right!
 
It's funny to a Trouper. I learned in the '70s on a Gladiator in one venue. Then I ran a Super for a long time before they bought some Xenon 2Ks. In one venue I ran a Trouper like in the picture. It was sold at auction about four years ago. I still have a couple of boxes of rods.
 
Hi everyone,
I'm a first year student doing Live Event Technology. I need some help with an assignment on the Strong Super Trouper between 1960-1980.

Does anyone know how much they used to cost?
Who their main competitors were? I was think Strand for a UK alternative.
And generally what they were like to work with? Any advancements during this period that improved them/caused any problems?
I'd be really grateful for any help you could give me :grin:
 
Strand had a patt 501 Sunspot Mirror Arc followspot check out the Strand Archive. Jon Primrose can supply a full data sheet.

I have never personally operated one of these. I have only stood and stared at a couple of them in the theatre I worked in as a teenager. They were no longer in use even in the mid 70s having being replaced by patt 93N followspots.
 
Sarah88 said:
Hi everyone,
I'm a first year student doing Live Event Technology. I need some help with an assignment on the Strong Super Trouper between 1960-1980.


I'd be really grateful for any help you could give me :grin:
Click to expand...


"Does anyone know how much they used to cost?"

Nope. The first 2 theaters I worked that used them had already purchased them as used, and I have no idea as to how much. I'll ask our projectionist. Also post this over on Lightnetwork.com as there are folks lurking who've been in the industry a few decades, work the R&R end and may remember.

"Who their main competitors were? I was think Strand for a UK alternative."

Not many in the US. The Strong Trouper, Super Trouper and Gladiator line all used carbon arc rods as the light source - Arc lamp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And as such there were only 2 other manufacturers of similar units in the US that I remember - Hall & Connelly and Genarco, both of whom were no longer manufacturing spotlights by the late 60's early 70's ?. All other follow spots available in the US used incandescent lamps - Century & Kliegl had very large 2kw &3kw units, but if you needed punch, were in a big concert/road house, arena, etc... you used a carbon arc.

"And generally what they were like to work with?"

They took a skill that is no longer found, in that you had to pay attention to the arc position and gap. As the carbon rods were perishable and burned up, resulting in a run time of a just over an hour, you not only had to hit your pickups and follow, you also had to make adjustments to the light. The Supers and Gladiators had self adjusting DC motors that drove the worm gear which in turn, moved the supports for the carbon rods, and as such and in theory, would keep the rods and arc in focal point as well as keeping the correct arc gap. If the building voltage was off that day (Sunday's matinee was always a pain after you got the unit set on Sat. nite), then the operator had to keep making adjustments, as well as doing a quick change to new rods when the original set had burned to the end. Thus there was a lot of skill involved. Other then that, the front end of a Super or Gladiator is almost identical to modern Strong and Lycian xenon units.

" Any advancements during this period that improved them/caused any problems?""

The use of the Xenon lamp (EDIT: Invented in the 40's, introduced by Osram for projectors - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_arc_lamp), spelled the death of carbons, though it took decades. Xenon has a color quality that is as good, if not better then carbons, is usually more consistent in light quality and output, doesn't need to be changed every hour and is downright dangerous to handle, so some skill is still required, besides remembering that the bright end is towards the talent.

The invention of the compact discharge lamp - HMI, HTI, etc... whose lamp is smaller (and safer to handle as compared to xenon), which in turn makes for a smaller housing, allowed the development of smaller units and a number of companies jumped on the bandwagon, Pheobus, Lycian, Altman, Robert Juliet, etc... The smaller units saw additional features added, such as DMX controlled dowsers, etc... but for really long throws, or when you need a lot of light, nothing equals a xenon.

Steve Bailey
Brooklyn College
 
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As with any lighting instrument of the day, there was not a published price. (I thinks there was a "list" price, but no one used that.) I bought a total of 12 from 1974 to 1983. Usually the "new" price was in the $6,900 range. Used, they could be had for about $4,500. All the units I bought were lightly used. As xenon entered the market, those first units went for about $9,000 and the price of the carbon supers dropped to about $3,600 used. As mandates about their use spread, the price dropped a bit more, but never went below $3,000 as you could put in a conversion kit for about $2,000. I am reciting these numbers off the top of my head, which has lost a few neurons over the years, but that should put you in the ballpark.
 
RE conversion kits, see the thread http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/lighting/8665-carbon-arc-troupers.html, specifically, post#24.

SteveB said:
... Xenon has a color quality that is as good, if not better then carbons, ...
Click to expand...
I would argue this point. As we've discussed in other threads, there's something unique about the quality of light from a carbon-arc that is unequalled in any other source. I think Gordon or JD suggested the carbon-arc has a continuous color spectrum, not unlike the theoretical black body locus, upon which the theory of color temperature is based. Xenon lamps have spikes in the SED curve, most notably in the green. The eye and brain automatically correct for this, but video and film do not.

I've run carbon-arcs and Xenons next to each other, and the carbon seemed brighter, and it wasn't solely a function of color temperature.

Lycian, if you're listening, I think it's time to resurrect the "Traveling Antique Followspot Museum," last seen at the 2004?/'06? LDI convention. I'd like to do more comparisons. Perhaps in Las Vegas in 2010?

Sarah88, also see http://www.regalgroup.org.uk/strong.supertrouper.html .
 
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I think the Carbons seem brighter due to the fullness of the spectrum. To use a musical equivalent, it is like a full chord as compared to two or three notes from that chord. The human brain has an uncanny ability to notice gaps! (Especially in A/B comparisons.)

I still miss them despite all the disadvantages! It was like a right of passage when you reached a level where you could competently run a carbon arc spot!
 
Unlike common thought the actual source of light in a carbon arc is not the flame but the crater of the positive carbon
In the crater a gassious ball of incandescent carbon and rare earths go through sublimation going from a solid to gaseous state without being in a liquid state
The spectrum is a continous line and depending on the rare earth mixture with either a crest in the low or high end of the spectrum
Carbons for film production have always been available in different colour temperatures
A discharge lamp such as xenon or HMI work on the energy of the excited electrons changing orbits emitting light
The gas and its fill pressure determine the lines of the spectrum that they emit on
As such some like a low pressure sodium lamp emit one and only one line of emmision at 590 which is what causes the bright yellow light and its accuracy and single line output allowed it to be the basis of one of the popular traveling matte processess in the 60 used mainly by disney
High pressure xenon or HighPressure mercury with other halides added produce a wide range of lines that are so close togather they appear almost continous but are not In some cases it can be compared to a low resolution digital audio sample
During the conversion of screening rooms from carbon to xenon many of the film lab technicians who would spend 10-12 hours at a time colour grading and timing split screen reels of film would complain of eye fatique in the xenon equipped booths compared to the carbon ones
There were also what were called flame carbons that allowed a portion of the flame between the carbons to produce light
 
I don't know the costs for carbon arcs pre 1980 but we bought four Xenons supers lamped for $5000.00 a piece in 1979. In the super range Strong was the industry standard and is still named as the default request in most riders. When you moved down to the trouper and Trouperette range there was a fair amount of competition.
Running a carbon as noted in other posts required a fair amount of skill to keep the rods running properly. You also have to be able read how long you had left before a change was needed so you could time when to be off for a little bit. The third part of the special skills was being able to quickly change rods. It was the mark of a good op to being the fastest to change and get back up and running.
 
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mstaylor said:
The third part of the special skills was being able to quickly change rods. It was the mark of a good op to being the fastest to change and get back up and running.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, the "Chop-Stick" method was good for re-trims in under 60 seconds. Using the new trim (carbons) you would open the holders, remove the stubs with the new trims as chop-sticks, Put the positive (Superex) in, close the holder with the negative (Orotip), put the negative in, lick your finger and flip the negative holder leaver closed before the spit boiled off, open the douser and rack the holders in so that both tips were on either side of the bead, close the door, close the douser, and strike! (Run on sentence was used to illustrate stress level.)

$5k? seems cheap. I thought that's what the xenon troupers were going for, not the supers, but I may be confused.
 
We got a good deal for buying four at once. I believe they were running about $6000.00 unlamped. I put the original lamps in them in 1979 and am the only person to ever put replacements in. We bought a 2k a couple of years ago and had to lamp that one too. Our original four were 1k/1.6k Xenon. We lamped them with 1k lamps.
To me the biggest difference between running a carbon and a xenon, besides the rod handling, was the carbons had all their controls in the center and you ran from the rear so you watch the rods. The xenon has their douser, chop and iris in the center but their gels in the front so you run it front loaded.
 
I'd usually run the carbon supers from the center. With a trim of nice fresh and dry carbons, they didn't take too much adjusting. An occasional trip of the left hand to the back to tweak the arc center offset when things were slow. It was also a neat trick for getting a bit more light on a long throw, moving the offset for a hot center. The troupers had the boom on the front, the supers had them in the middle. When the xenons came out, they moved to the front to stay. (Except the Glads.) The original xenon trouper used the same exact boom as the carbon troupers.

What I remember most is that each Super had it's own personality as far as carbon feed!
 
This is very much a long shot, but I'm wondering if anybody has a source for Super Trouper carbon rods. Production of them in the U.S. stopped entirely in 2002, as far as I know. I really could use a box of postives.
 
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