Motorised gels for Par 64 units?

[robbo777]

Hello,

 

 

I am new to this forum and don't understand all the technicalities of lighting, so please go easy on me!

At out church (modern building) we have a lighting system that was professionally installed and works well for us.

This includes six Par 64 lamps with coloured gels which are attached to scaffold type bars which are fixed through the ceiling to the metal beams that hold up the roof.

 

There are times when we would like to run some of the Par 64's without any gels, but we'd have to build our scaffolding tower every time we wanted to take them off, then build it again to put them back on.

Is there such a think as a motorised gel system which can be attached to the front of a Par 64 unit so that the gel can be remotely slid backwards and forwards in front of the lamp?

I appreciate it may be easier in the long run to just add more Par 64 lamps without gels, but we are limited as to how many lamps we can get on each roof bar.

 

Thanks for any help anyone is able to give.

[spartacus]

Scrollers are what you want - however they will need to be DMX controlled and power (not dimmed) for them to work.

 

See the wiki http://www.blue-room.org.uk/wiki/Colour_Scroller

[Brian]

It would be cheaper to swap out the current units for LED units.

[paulears]

Indeed! Also you need to consider that once one of the colours burns out (the darker ones) you have to scrap the entire scroll, meaning fairly high running costs. The price of them is higher by quite a bit than buying more cans. It could even be cheaper to buy more ordinary cans and leave them in the extra colours or OW, dimmers permitting. Not remotely simple things. In a quiet setting you also need to be aware that pressing the button at the wrong moment will make everyone jump as they all reset ziiiiiiiiiiip!

[Stuart91]

+1 to Brian's suggestion.

 

Scrollers were a good solution for their time - when LED didn't exist or was ruinously expensive. There are still some niche applications, but if you are just looking for basic colour washes you are far better off going down the LED route.

 

Scrollers require a certain amount of "care and feeding", the gel will eventually wear out and need replaced, you also have bulb changes to think about. The gel scrolls themselves take quite a bit of skill to make up, better to get a firm to do it for you. And they need to be fitted

 

One other thing to bear in mind with scrollers is that they can be relatively noisy when the gels move fast. Not a problem in an arena where there's lots of background noise, but trying to do a subtle change during a quiet moment in a church service could be excruciating. With LED, you can fade silently between any colour combination. On scrollers you can only "fade" between adjacent filters on the scroll, i.e. you can't fade from red to blue if there is a green gel in between.

 

You could keep the existing generic Par 64s to use as "face light", with a light colour correction gel like Lee 201 they will give you plenty white light onto the faces of people on stage. Then add some LED pars to provide the colour wash alongside them.

 

Some halfway decent LED pars will probably come in for less than an equivalent number of scrollers would.

 

Whereabouts in the country are you? There might be members nearby who could help. From the sounds of your situation it would be worth getting a friendly firm in to give you a quote.

[dwright2104]

I will also suggest, keeping your current pars for white wash, and then purchasing LED pars for colour wash.

Someone said something about bulb life, if you can set your dimmers to go max 85% then it will improve bulb life.

[Don Allen]

I ended up with twenty scrollers to use with PAR 64's and 1K fresnels, but the gels strings were old and crinkled so were noisy and unreliable. I lashed out and bought a lot of gel to make new gel strings which made the scrollers usefull ( I still cringe now at the cost, 36 sheets of get plus gel string tape and clear gel for leaders). They had speed controls so that made them quiet, but as has been pointed out, the two colours you want to use are never next to each other in the string. You need two scrollers on two circuits to allow you to cross fade between the colours you want to use.

 

I sold them at a cheap price to a group that uses them within the scrollers limitations, and put the money towards led par's.

 

If you are using strong saturated colours, then led par's are cheaper in the long run. To get the best out of them, use a pc based lighting program that allows you to select the colour from a swatch book. I use LightFactory2.

 

If you have a limited budget and are willing to experiment, try and get some Strand colour wheels or a colour magazine or semaphore unit. Remember you are working with an 8 inch lamp. If you get very creative, you can use one colour wheel positioned between two lamps. Open white is usually the first colour in a gel string, so should be a colour in your colour wheel.

 

You will find it easiest to fund raise to buy some leds to be used to supplement your conventional lighting.

[jonathanhill]

It would be cheaper to swap out the current units for LED units.

 

Definitely agree, LED's will be easier to justify to the finance people, in terms of lower power consumption. You will also get 'punchier' saturated colours from LED.

 

Also you need to consider that once one of the colours burns out (the darker ones) you have to scrap the entire scroll, meaning fairly high running costs.

 

It is possible to remove just the burnt panel, and replace it with a fresh piece of colour. Care needs to be taken to ensure it is square and the right size for the scroller.

 

I lashed out and bought a lot of gel to make new gel strings which made the scrollers usefull ( I still cringe now at the cost, 36 sheets of get plus gel string tape and clear gel for leaders).

 

You do not have to use clear colour for the leaders, you can use any colour, it just needs to be cut to the correct size for the scroller type.

 

They had speed controls so that made them quiet, but as has been pointed out, the two colours you want to use are never next to each other in the string. You need two scrollers on two circuits to allow you to cross fade between the colours you want to use.

 

Generally, scrollers should be made up logically, with colours of a similar hue running from saturated to pastel, to a clear frame in the middle of the scroll, then pastels to saturates of another hue. That way changes between colours can be more subtle. However, this all requires good programming, and is not really suited to busking.

[Stuart91]

It would be cheaper to swap out the current units for LED units.

 

Definitely agree, LED's will be easier to justify to the finance people, in terms of lower power consumption. You will also get 'punchier' saturated colours from LED.

 

 

Depending on where the lamps are positioned, the maintenance may be more of a potential future expense than the power consumption. If you have Par 64 with scrollers, you will need to get up to them fairly regularly to replace bulbs and gel scrolls. If they are somewhere high up and awkward, this might mean hiring a scaff tower, moving chairs out of the way, and either staff costs or volunteer time taken up doing something that's entirely avoidable with LED.

[adam2]

I would agree that whilst scrollers are certainly possible, that LED PARs are the way to go.

Relatively affordable, no gell to purchase and fit, less power used, no lamp replacements.

As others suggest it is probably worth retaining some or all of the existing PAR lanterns for white or light coloured washes, LEDs excell at deep saturated colours but are not so good on white.

[Nicktaylor]

Indeed! Also you need to consider that once one of the colours burns out (the darker ones) you have to scrap the entire scroll, meaning fairly high running costs. The price of them is higher by quite a bit than buying more cans. It could even be cheaper to buy more ordinary cans and leave them in the extra colours or OW, dimmers permitting. Not remotely simple things. In a quiet setting you also need to be aware that pressing the button at the wrong moment will make everyone jump as they all reset ziiiiiiiiiiip!

Not strictly speaking true. My current strings were made to my spec by AC. Some years on and the deep colours on a few are burnt out. Bought a couple of sheets of required colours and replace d the bad colours , now as good as new I do have LED pars as well!

[Pete Searles]

Hello,

 

 

I am new to this forum and don't understand all the technicalities of lighting, so please go easy on me!

At out church (modern building) we have a lighting system that was professionally installed and works well for us.

This includes six Par 64 lamps with coloured gels which are attached to scaffold type bars which are fixed through the ceiling to the metal beams that hold up the roof.

 

There are times when we would like to run some of the Par 64's without any gels, but we'd have to build our scaffolding tower every time we wanted to take them off, then build it again to put them back on.

Is there such a think as a motorised gel system which can be attached to the front of a Par 64 unit so that the gel can be remotely slid backwards and forwards in front of the lamp?

I appreciate it may be easier in the long run to just add more Par 64 lamps without gels, but we are limited as to how many lamps we can get on each roof bar.

 

Thanks for any help anyone is able to give.

 

If you would like to contact me off forum we have some used scrollers and scrolls that would be very cost effective. 01494 838307

[Paul J Need]

Nods at Brian - sell your PAR64s, buy some decent LED Pars which, especially for the darker colours will be almost as bright as a CP62 lamp. You'll save in the long run not having to replace gel, service the scroller (as they will need a service at some point), less noise, smaller electricity bill so a win win win.

[paulears]

 

Not strictly speaking true. My current strings were made to my spec by AC. Some years on and the deep colours on a few are burnt out. Bought a couple of sheets of required colours and replace d the bad colours , now as good as new I do have LED pars as well!

You've done well then! I've never had that luck, and every time I spent £25 on the tape, I'd use just a few feet fixing a scroll, then lose the tape (or find somebody just used to to wrap parcels) and then have to buy another reel to fix the next worn out scroll. I also never did enough to get the knack - and just a mm or two off square can make them creep up the spool and jam. Horrible things!

[mac500]

Lanta fireball quads are amazingly bright bit steepy at the bottom end and really wide.