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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => Lighting Forum => Topic started by: John Halliburton on January 27, 2020, 08:54:35 AM
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Good morning. After thirty odd years of being a sound guy, I finally started acquiring enough lighting to actually use my own for a gig. The threshold hit a couple of months ago when someone locally was selling off about three dozen ETC instruments at what I thought was "Too good to be true" pricing. Among the shelves were mostly 15-30 and 25-50 zoom ellipsoidals, a handful of various fixed ellipsoidals, and another handful of Pars. I wound up buying two Pars, and two 36 degree fixed. The LD at the Irish cultural center we work at bought six 15-30, two 25-50, and two 19 degree fixed to swap with old lekos in our 650 seat traditional theater space. We got to inspect and test all the instruments before purchase, even swapping out dead bulbs for working ones, and I got a free lamp socket assembly to a fixed leko gratis...with working bulb.
Prices were $50.00 each, no matter which model. Yes, some of the best instruments in the business for a song. Gloat over. For a charitable organization these were a real sweet find. For me, looks like I'm crossing over to the dark side(or light side in this case I guess) ;>)
Anyway, picked up a little Leprecon 612 board and a pair of their LD-360 dimmer packs.
Old school, right? But good gear.
Here's a photo from the first show. I only have AC cords for six instruments for now, need to buy some cable and plugs and make some more. Two pair of Parnells on each side as washes, bastard amber in the fronts, a blue and a red in the rears. There is a pair of LED uplights scrolling on the backstage wall on their own that the promoter brought in. Out front, a 36 degree fixed on each side about twenty feet from the stage and 10-11' high, both gelled with bastard amber. The standard pars I bought are not in use yet due to that lack of AC cordage.
Nothing fancy, but it certainly made for a much better looking stage.
Best regards,
John
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Awesome price on the ETC fixtures. For giggles check the prices at usedlighting.com (who has good used prices). Are the ones you got the older max. 575 watt units or the newer max 750 watt units.
The Leprecon gear is rock solid. Are they the older Microplex or DMX?
One of my favorite tricks with side lighting is to use opposite colors. If you have red from one side use cyan (blue-green) from the other or opposite blue use amber. Where both colors overlap you get a white colored light.
The next time you buy gel (OK, color media if you insist) may I suggest Rosco #039 Skelton (the famous LD) Exotic Sangria and also Rosco Ecolor #108 or Lee #108 English Rose. They are both magical colors.
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Congratulatons. If/when you have dancers, dance booms are a wonderful thing. Two booms per side (for that stage) with shinbusters, mids, and high fixtures will look great. Having shutters to shape the beam will give you well controlled lighting that you will be a joy to use. (Do you detect some envy here?)
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FYI, when you need lamps I recommend the "X" version for longer life. For example, the lamp will be called a HPL750X. They are rated at 2000 hours vs a standard HPL that is rated around 500 hours. I think you loose a little color temperature at 3000 degrees kelvin instead of 3200 degrees kelvin but unless you are doing TV work it should not matter.
On a related note, a few days ago I ordered a dozen lamps for Source Fours as spares. I suspect this will be our last order as I think that within 5 years we will change to an LED lekos. The S-4s are our last incandescent fixture we use.
Good morning. After thirty odd years of being a sound guy, I finally started acquiring enough lighting to actually use my own for a gig. The threshold hit a couple of months ago when someone locally was selling off about three dozen ETC instruments at what I thought was "Too good to be true" pricing. Among the shelves were mostly 15-30 and 25-50 zoom ellipsoidals, a handful of various fixed ellipsoidals, and another handful of Pars. I wound up buying two Pars, and two 36 degree fixed. The LD at the Irish cultural center we work at bought six 15-30, two 25-50, and two 19 degree fixed to swap with old lekos in our 650 seat traditional theater space. We got to inspect and test all the instruments before purchase, even swapping out dead bulbs for working ones, and I got a free lamp socket assembly to a fixed leko gratis...with working bulb.
Prices were $50.00 each, no matter which model. Yes, some of the best instruments in the business for a song. Gloat over. For a charitable organization these were a real sweet find. For me, looks like I'm crossing over to the dark side(or light side in this case I guess) ;>)
Anyway, picked up a little Leprecon 612 board and a pair of their LD-360 dimmer packs.
Old school, right? But good gear.
Here's a photo from the first show. I only have AC cords for six instruments for now, need to buy some cable and plugs and make some more. Two pair of Parnells on each side as washes, bastard amber in the fronts, a blue and a red in the rears. There is a pair of LED uplights scrolling on the backstage wall on their own that the promoter brought in. Out front, a 36 degree fixed on each side about twenty feet from the stage and 10-11' high, both gelled with bastard amber. The standard pars I bought are not in use yet due to that lack of AC cordage.
Nothing fancy, but it certainly made for a much better looking stage.
Best regards,
John
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That looks great John! There’s definitely appeal about the warmth and natural look of a halogen fixture. The nice thing about everyone moving to LED is that you can score these lights for little to nothing! So long as you don’t mind the extra power draw they’re an excellent bargain for an industry standard that doesn’t break the bank. You’d need to invest north of $1k to touch similar performance with LED. There’s a reason why I still use halogen fixtures, even along side the modern stuff.
If you ever want to add some color mixing, be on the lookout for some SeaChanger color engines. They turn up used often enough and get you full CMY mixing on your S4 ellipsoidals. That, and there are so many other bells and whistles you can buy for S4s that you’ll never run out of uses for these. Glad it worked out for you!
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FYI, when you need lamps I recommend the "X" version for longer life. For example, the lamp will be called a HPL750X. They are rated at 2000 hours vs a standard HPL that is rated around 500 hours. I think you loose a little color temperature at 3000 degrees kelvin instead of 3200 degrees kelvin but unless you are doing TV work it should not matter.
On a related note, a few days ago I ordered a dozen lamps for Source Fours as spares. I suspect this will be our last order as I think that within 5 years we will change to an LED lekos. The S-4s are our last incandescent fixture we use.
These are all marked with the "750" labels externally, but bulbs are all 575watt. The Leprecon gear is all the multiplex 3 pin, although the board has a DMX jack as well I believe. For what I paid, I don't think I'll lose sleep over a lack of DMX.
To John Fruits-thanks for the gel recommendations. So far, this is the gel collection:
02 and 04 Bastard Amber
353 Lilly Lavender
382 Congo Blue
27 Medium Red
All Rosco. I'll have to double check, but I think the front pars are the lighter 02, the lekos out front are the 04.
I'll definitely be experimenting once I get the needed AC cords made up for the third pair of pars, which are their standard units, currently with the wide lens(no others came with when I bought them used). Actually, I am going to order a bunch of 16/3 SJOW and make up a new set just for the dimmer to instrument runs. Really no need for 12/3 SJOW which is what I had available. Save weight, still have a safe ratings cushion current-wise.
Best regards,
John
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That looks great John! There’s definitely appeal about the warmth and natural look of a halogen fixture. The nice thing about everyone moving to LED is that you can score these lights for little to nothing! So long as you don’t mind the extra power draw they’re an excellent bargain for an industry standard that doesn’t break the bank. You’d need to invest north of $1k to touch similar performance with LED. There’s a reason why I still use halogen fixtures, even along side the modern stuff.
If you ever want to add some color mixing, be on the lookout for some SeaChanger color engines. They turn up used often enough and get you full CMY mixing on your S4 ellipsoidals. That, and there are so many other bells and whistles you can buy for S4s that you’ll never run out of uses for these. Glad it worked out for you!
Thanks for the suggestion-I haven't even started to look at accessories available outside of gels.
Best regards,
John
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Thanks for the suggestion-I haven't even started to look at accessories available outside of gels.
No worries - the nice thing about the Sea Changers is that outside of things like diffusion, you don’t need gels! The dichroic wheels also don’t fade and burn like gels do over time, so they’re worth the cash if you can find them. Good luck!
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Another color from Rosco - Follies Pink. Almost anyone looks good under it, even me!
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Old school, right? But good gear.
Sometimes old school is just what you need. If you've got the power infrastructure to handle it, it's a heck of a lot cheaper to use traditional lighting than quality LEDs. It would take a LONG time for the electrical costs to make a difference for lights that are only on a couple hours a day.
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Another color from Rosco - Follies Pink. Almost anyone looks good under it, even me!
Well, that's the polite name. I was told by an older stagehand that it was titty pink.