Are small cheap dimmers worth having

[stuartglen]

I've seen some dimmers that I am tinking of getting for use as floor dimmers/put lights in areas where our hard patch won't allow, our school rig has 2 main right angle prewired bars with the sockets diagnally paired across the square. Anyway my question is this

 

should I get multidoms like this

 

http://www.terralec.co.uk/__12_product_inf...12B9FBA056.html

 

or should I spend the extra £150 and get a betapack.

 

Has anyone had experience of these dimmers?

 

currently my school has 4 act 6 dimmers of which 4 channels are broken, not sure why but h+s say I can't use them. The dimmers are run by a strand mx 24 running through a strand DMX demux.

[Stu]

There is quite a few threads about the Multidims on the forum, have a look to see what has been discussed in the past.

 

I'm a fan of them, but only when used in the right situation. For my small rock gigs they are great as I can chuck up 4 pars with the dimmer and just worry about giving the stand (or whatever) hard power and DMX. But the weak dimmer curve might not be so good for your (I presume) more theatrical uses and merging into the current rig.

 

Plus remember you'll need to make up some IEC - 15A adaptors.

 

Also, look at Thomann for prices as they'll be dirt cheap (about £65).

 

HTH

Stu

[gareth]

Stuart, are you on the staff of the school, or a pupil? You don't say, either in your post or your profile ...

[stuartglen]

student, why is the dimmer curve weak on these, also do you know what shape it is?

[sparkyweb]

currently my school has 4 act 6 dimmers of which 4 channels are broken, not sure why but h+s say I can't use them

 

Why not get the dimmer repaired?

 

 

Personally, I would go for a betapack or strand rack any time. I see so many customers bring in "cheap" dimmers for repair, that have not lasted the time.

My £0.02 worth

 

Mark

[paulears]

Stuart - I think what he means is that the way these things dim is not quite the same as the more industry proven, industry standard, oh well - expensive dimmers do. This, on its own is quite livable with as you soon get the hang of profiling your manual fades to give a nice smooth dim out.It goes t*ts up when you have your strands and the cheapies working together. You get to the bottom end of the fader and you may find one is ahead of the other. Seeing the shape doesn't help much as to be meaningful you need to 'see' what it does with a real light attached. Adjustable dimmer curves take a while to set, usually by endless upsand downs with the appropriate equipment attached. Removing a par can and replacing it with a linear flood,might mean all your careful effort is wasted.

 

Are you sure you have the skills to spec these things for your school? I would assume that the order needs signing by somebody who will need convincing it's money well spent. If you have Act 6's - get them fixed, rather than invest in cheap kit that will get broken before the end of the year. Putting dimmers out locally is pretty bad news in a school - too many bits to get broken - the power feed, the DMX feed, the DMX link to the next one. A gadget lying on the floor with 4 cables going to it is pretty daft, if you can just run one 15A cable from a repaired dimmer?

 

Like if your cooker at home had a ring go, so you buy one of those single ring things from Argos rather than getting it fixed - silly!(and inconvenient)

[Guest lightnix]

<_< - This is a subject which has been covered before, as a very quick session with the search function would have revealed, had it been used.

 

Click here and here.

 

Please note that we have just added a total of one hundred links to the Lighting and Sound FAQs, leading to existing discussions on purchasing equipment for schools, churches and other small venues / systems. We will therefore be clamping down harder in future, on threads which repeat existing discussions on this general subject.

[gareth]

student

Hmm. In which case, the scenario is probably that, despite the language in your OP ("should I get", "I'm thinking of getting", "should I spend"), I very much doubt that you actually have any purchasing authority. It's all very well pupils saying to a drama teacher "It would be nice if we had some new dimmers" - but I don't know of any schools or LEAs which would give a pupil the authority to go out and actually manage any capital expenditure, nor one which would seek advice or recommendations from a pupil when it comes to deciding what equipment to buy.