Strand SL Coolbeams

[jjawinterhalter]

Hi Everyone,

 

First off, I love this forum; everyone is so helpful! So now I'm hoping you have some help for me. I recently took over as the tech director for a local performing arts center which previously had no one in the position. I've been here about 4 months now and have noticed what seems to be a pretty big problem. Out of 60 Strand SL's (36, 26, and 10 deg) close to half of them have sockets in need of repair. At first, I just figured that they hadn't really been reseated on a regular basis and that there was some arcing--a plausible explanation. But as more and more turned up this way, I started wondering if there wasn't something else wrong. Anyway, when I finally got to work and removed the socket from the base, I found that all the ceramic insulation was pretty much gone--there were just the two contact points on the leads haphazardly floating in the socket head. And they're ALL like that (to varying degrees.) Does this seem excessive to anyone else?

To give you a bit more background, the theatre itself is less than 5 years old, and the lights are closer to 4. To make matters worse, I'm a Yank (sorry.) And if that weren't enough, I'm also an actor (sorry again.) But any information you might have would be of great help.

 

Justin

[propmonkey]

sounds like the problem we have had with our colortran lekos. we onyl had 12 of them total and I only had to replace 2 sockets. I just had to replace them.

[gareth]

sounds like the problem we have had with our colortran lekos.

Propmonkey, your post would be a lot more helpful if you'd actually said what the problem was ......

[Bryson]

It sounds like either:

 

You had a bad batch of lampholders. Too late now, warranty is long expired.

You had a bad batch of GKVs (lamps, or bulbs for the theatrically-impaired) with "thin pins"

Or many of them have been that way for ages and no-one has noticed yet.

 

Anyway up, you'll need to replace them, and possibly all the lamps too if the contacts are too badly corroded to save. Bad luck.

[propmonkey]

if I remember correctly the guy who helped me this year said it was some rust in the socket. our instruments are pretty old. we also seemed to hae a bad batch of FEL's. between the dirty, rust, and bad lamps they arced.

[Martin]

It's definitely worth contacting Strand about this to see what they say. You never know!