Berkey Colortran

[BobJ]

Anyone know anything about this ancient Berkey Colortran system? We have been asked by a local high school to help them out with their lighting. They have this mammoth steel console that has two rows to 15 faders plus some cross fade paddles. All crunch and groan, and sound pretty unreliable. On stage they have a lot of lights and a very large cabinet that appears to have 3 3KW and 3 6KW dimmers (in all that space!) ND next to it a break out /x patch board that looks something like an old telephone exchange switchboard with dozens of leads, parking spots for same and above that I guess dimmer input sockets. All the wiring is in a real tangle and we're finding it hard to get any real info on it. One teacher claims she has seen "some" lights come up but is having trouble finding the individual that supposedly know anything about this system. So, rally around folks we need help.

[Junior8]

Dimmers anything like this? http://www.theatrecrafts.com/archive/documents/Colortran_Dimming_Product_Guide_.pdf

 

From your description I suspect its a two preset 15 channel analogue desk. I am sure Berkey branding probably pre-dates DMX

 

TBH the only Berkey I have ever used was a terrible numerical call up effort Colortrack????

[IRW]

Bob, Maybe you could post some pictures- it would probably help to work out what's going on.

[Jivemaster]

In early days it was common to have some dimmers and patch them into some circuits, after that was done the other lighting circuits were on or off.

 

Look into the concept of a switchboard with too few dimmers, see whether that's what you have.

 

I used to use a board with 24 circuits but only four or six dimmers (wirewound!).

[paulears]

Theatre royal norwich had a channeltrack memory desk. Pretty impressive for its time. I suspect you need a slightly older local to come and have a look. Chances are it actually works and just needs love and patience. Photos will help jog memories

[Just Some Bloke]

[snip] next to it a break out /x patch board that looks something like an old telephone exchange switchboard with dozens of leads, parking spots for same and above that I guess dimmer input sockets.

 

I imagine this is a way of having lots of sockets around the room that can be plugged into by your lights, then fewer dimmer circuits to run them. Each of the leads is fed from one of the sockets in the room and each of the inputs is to one of the dimmers. If you want to plug socket 17 into dimmer 1 then just take patch lead 17 and plug it into input 1. It's a way of using as few dimmers as possible but still having plenty of sockets available.

 

Thus, if you have lanterns rigged, take a look at the socket numbers they are plugged into and ensure that the corresponding lead is plugged into a dimmer. Try bringing that dimmer number up on the control board. If it doesn't work try plugging it into a couple of other dimmers. If it still doesn't work it's probably the light itself. Now try again with another and keep going till you find a "known good" lantern and a "known good" dimmer and now you can test everything to ascertain what is working and what is not. Just be careful that if everything is very old then it may be that your dimmer is working but the corresponding channel on the control board is not.

 

 

Hope that helps.

[Robin D]

Some 30 years ago I came across a BC hardwired 12 channel system in a Berkshire school where only 3 channels worked after a fashion. But the fades were not smooth even on those three.

 

I eventually discovered that a keen, but misguided, student had "oiled the mixer". A couple of hours with Servisol and we had ten channels working flawlessly. The others were blown Reyrolle fuses.