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TOTP back in day


Jamtastic3

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Hi BR,

just reading the moving heads recommendation thread and with all the talk about movers over conventionals I just wanted to ask something quickly.

Back in the days of neon lights and pinspot harvesters, TOTP in the 80's had massive banks of pars above their main stages, with each bank individually controlled. But how did they power them all? Were they all in series or did they have huge sets of dimmers sitting behind the wings?

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Hi BR,

just reading the moving heads recommendation thread and with all the talk about movers over conventionals I just wanted to ask something quickly.

Back in the days of neon lights and pinspot harvesters, TOTP in the 80's had massive banks of pars above their main stages, with each bank individually controlled. But how did they power them all? Were they all in series or did they have huge sets of dimmers sitting behind the wings?

 

Depends, some of them were series wired 6-lamp aero bars, some were series wired 110V par cans and others were PAR36 8 lights (which they still use). In any case dimmers aren't usually a problem in a TV studio, particularly those at TV centre (although in those days I think TOTP was at Borehamwood) as they nearly all have a saturated rig with no patching, resulting in between 500 and 1000 dimmers per studio - plenty for a few par cans.

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I believe they are ACL pars or some other low voltage lamp, wired in series to make 240V.

 

 

most studio dimmers are either 5k or 10k not your normal 2.5k

 

Ah this explains some things more clearly. I hadn't thought about dimmers taking larger power loads than the dimmers I'm used to.

Also is it easy to make a set of 240V pars? It sounds like a good way to have more pars in a rig than just patching say 4 x 500W pars into the one channel.

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