Stage Lighting: Very Expensive!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Boy Howdy! That's for sure...

[Randy Stankey]

But I'd still go for the 4 light Strand deal @ $1700 if they are the correct type of fixtures... That's only $425 a fixture for brand new.

FYI: Strand went Chapter 7 (bankrupt) in 2022.

https://inside.lighting/news/22-07/s...les-bankruptcy

On Monday, Dallas-based Strand Lighting, LLC filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand_Lighting

On Tuesday, July 11, 2022, Strand Lighting, LLC. voluntarily filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a Dallas, TX court. When asked about the filing, Signify stated that this filing is a part of the ongoing unifying branding effort to centralize its entertainment lighting products in a single legal entity, Vari-Lite LLC, and with focus on the Vari-Lite brand for all new entertainment products.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

FYI: Strand went Chapter 7 (bankrupt) in 2022.

https://inside.lighting/news/22-07/s...les-bankruptcy


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strand_Lighting

Yes Randy... I know. They were bought up by Phillips Lighting division. So, all the better being under the wings of a billion dollar company.
See link to Knight Sound & Lighting in Stow, Ohio whom is one of the Strand Dealers in the USA.... They also sell LED conversion kits for older fixtures as well. I had mentioned converting his buddies fixtures to LED back in one of my earlier posts to save money.

[Randy Stankey]

Good to know! Just about every venue I've worked in Erie uses Strand dimmers. We wouldn't want all these places to end up ass out because the company went tits up.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I forgot to add that Signify in Dallas, TX bought Phillips. So presumably Strand still comes from the Phillips manufacturing locations...

[Randy Stankey]

Strand dimmers and controls are good. The work well and I like them. As I said, lots of places use them.

Strand consoles that I used were good. They had a lot of features that were good. They had auto patch that allowed you to bring up backup lights in case a lamp burned out or something. Once pre-programmed, you could bring in your CYAs at the press of a button. If you had dimmers with two-way communication, if the console noticed a lamp drop out, it would bring in your auto patch automatically. It was also good at mixing colors. Program in all the gels in your lights then ask the console to set the stage to a color and the console mixed colors for you. Presumably, you would use primaries to mix with but if you had gels of known colors you could still mix them. If you had an R-01 and an R-60 you could come close to an R-35.

Many people preferred ETC consoles but I didn't like them as much. Inputting the patch was ass-backward in my opinion. The Strand, you could tell it whether to take the channel number first or the dimmer number. I will admit that I was more used to the Strand boards because I spent more time with them. I'm sure that there are a lot of ETC users who are the same way. Strand, ETC or whatever, I'd really like to see what consoles can do, these days! The ones I used probably seem ancient, compared to the latest stuff!

However, I'm not a fan of Strand fixtures at all. The ones I used were older but I didn't like the way the shutters and gel slots worked. The focus and alignment knobs were sloppy. The hardware felt chintzy. ETCs were much brighter. We had a few. They were older and well used. We started buying new lights, a few at a time, until we were using almost all ETC. I like them a lot better. Almost every place around here has at least a few of them. I wouldn't be surprised if they upgraded through attrition like we did.

Strand dimmers and consoles. Good.
Strand light fixtures. Not so good.

I'm glad to see that, somehow, Strand is staying alive. It would suck to have a theater full of dimmers and equipment with no guarantee of help if you need it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Never had any mechanical issues with Strand fixtures, unless someone dropped one. When a system is designed by an experienced lighting designer, as the systems I worked on were, the brightness of individual fixtures is pretty irrelevant. Fixtures are choosen so they meet the design criteria of the system they are going into. And keep in mind that LED fixtures do go down in output as the LED's age. So even comparing the same model one year old fixture against a five year old fixture, the maximum output is going to be different. But again, fixtures are rarely ever used at Max output anyway. Even if Strand did disappear, there is always Johnson Systems in Calgary. They make excellent retrofit computers for older Strand dimmer racks, and various retrofit items for ETC and others. I installed lots of their rack computers in older CD-80 dimming racks when I did this sort of work.

[Randy Stankey]

Never had any mechanical issues with Strand fixtures, unless someone dropped one.

I dropped an ETC off a 25 ft. Genie Lift! We were putting up about a half dozen of them on a stage with non-moveable pipes. I thought I had safetied them all to the man rail but one of the beaners didn't clip shut all the way and it wasn't secure as I thought. I went to grab the first one and the other one went over the side.

It left a nice dent in the stage deck but the only thing that the fixture needed was a new lamp.

For the CD-80 dimmer racks... If you need new SSR cubes don't buy them from the mfg. or a stage supplier! Get them from Mouser! The mfg. charges over $100 ea. but you can get the exact same product, name brand and all, from Mouser for nearly half the price!

If you do have to change them out, be sure to use plenty of heat sink paste. Virtually every one that I saw burned out had voids in the paste.

I'm sure you know all about this, Mark, but for the tribal knowledge of it, I'll explain. You have to clean off all the old paste, wipe both surfaces with alcohol then use brand new paste, fresh from the tube. Use a razor blade (a brand new utility knife blade) to make a thin, even coating of paste with no bubbles or voids before you fasten it down. Use a Q-Tip or a KimWipe to clean off the excess that squeezes out. If you do your job well, they'll last practically forever.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

We were not able to buy generic SSR's from electronic suppliers because they were speacially made for Strand for the longest time period. It may have been when Strand reorganized the first time that they lost the exclusivity on them... It's been a long time, so can't remember for sure what was different about them. I even tried a Similar SSR in one of the shop rental dimmers once, and they flat out did nothing at all. And YES on the thermal paste. Now Johnson Systems sells them with thermal pads, and that is probably a better idea. Just like a person should renew the thermal paste in a Desktop or laptop PC. Even the good paste dries out in about 5 years time. Used to see the same thing in QSC amplifiers that saw severe work outs.

[Randy Stankey]

I don’t know what they use, now, but the ones I bought from Mouser were the exact make and model as the originals. They were drop-in replacements and it only took fifteen minutes to do the job, once you knew what you were doing.

Vendor lock is one of the things I look for when shopping for new equipment and I don’t hesitate to tell a supplier if I see it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I started working on dimming systems back in 1998 and stopped in 2003. I was fortunate enough to attend two Strand Training classes when they were in CA. The first class was on CD-80 dimmers and the other was on consoles. The third, and last class was at a different and much nicer location in CA, but I don't remember where that was located. New equipment was manufactured at both locations. It was back then that the SSR they used was not an off the shelf part. I remember when I did the first Johnson systems rack computer conversion, and the designer came to show us the in's and outs of it, and he too acknowledged they were not "off the shelf" SSR's. If they were, he said they would stock them. Well, they do stock them today.
P.S., also attended two classes at Colortran in Portland. The first was when they were still called Colortran and the second class was after they were bought out by Leviton and called Leviton - Colortran. Not much had changed back then after the buyout, but today the Colortran name is completely gone. Colortran's SSR's were always off the shelf parts.

[Randy Stankey]

I started working part-time at Mercyhurst in about 1998-9. I started working full-time in 2002. New Year's Day was my first official gig. I moved on from there in 2013-14.

When I started, they had a stack of the CD-80 portables with a couple of channels that didn't work. When I asked, I always got the same answer, "I dunno'. They don't work." (Duh! ) One day, we were prepping for a show where we needed all the dimmers. I took the cover off the dimmer unit, pointed inside and said, "See those black things? Replace those and the dimmers will work again." They let me buy ONE. They made me buy it from Strand and they complained about the cost being over $100 apiece. I suggested looking at Mouser or Allied, etc. They were like, "Oh, no, no! You HAVE to buy it from Strand!"

Once I ordered it and got the thing in my hot, little hand, I looked it over, real good, and figured out the part number. I sneaked in an order for one the next time I had an order from Mouser. I tested it and it worked. When they found out that the ones from Mouser cost (from memory) something like $75-80 but the ones from Strand cost $110-20 they let me buy a dozen of them. Enough to fix all the bad ones in all the theaters on campus plus a couple of spares.

The heat sink paste we bought was silicone based. It was bought, specifically, because of that because the manufacturer claimed that the stuff didn't dry out. When I took the old SSRs off and looked underneath, it looked like somebody had just used their finger to slather on some paste before bolting it down. I was like, "No! You gotta' do it with a razor blade like you're laying out lines of cocaine!" If you make a nice, even layer with no voids the new parts will work practically forever even if the paste eventually dries out.

I don't remember seeing any pads under the modules I installed. If they had them, I would have used them but I always try to repair things as close to the way they did it from the factory unless I'm certain that my way is better.

Just for information, the Strand CD-80 rack modules take the same SSR as the CD-80 portable. Identical. Again, replacement is virtually plug-and-play.

All the dimmer racks we had came without the "Supervisor" feature. (Two-way network.) It would have required rewiring the DMX lines between the stage and the dimmer closet in order to make it work. I'm sure that most Strand dimmers sold today have it standard and I bet that's the reason why regular SSR cubes don't work. If the module can't report its status to the dimmer controller, the system probably won't let the circuit turn on.

I suppose, if the Supervisor feature is important, that's the reason why off-the-shelf power cubes aren't easily available from secondary sources. If they're trying to say that they want to make sure that dimmers always work the way they are expected, Strand has vested interest in doing that. If I ever found a way to use a part from another supplier and I was sure that it had the same specs (or better) I'd use it in a heartbeat. Like I said, I hate vendor lock! (I'm looking at YOU, Sony!) Nine times out of ten, companies source components from suppliers that make standard stuff and, with a little research, it's not hard to find out who was the original source. You just gotta' be willing to hunt around a little.

That's the reason I was so concerned when I heard that Strand had gone bankrupt and was sold off to another company. It totally sucks when you're trying to maintain some piece of equipment after the manufacturer has gone AWOL!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Randy,

Yes, the thermal pads are almost as efficient. They also last the live of the device they are on. I still don't use them... I'd have to stock too many different types of them...
Doesn't really matter now if Strand completely disappears, although I obviously hope they stay around. They were the very first manufacturer of light dimmers way back in 1914. Johnson Systems could cover all stuff except the fixtures, and the person running that company worked for strand for a very long time. So no doubt he has a line on ju8st about everything if anyone needed it.. And there are plenty of used fixtures out there. Below is a ling to thermal pads that I would use if I had to. Their thermal paste I have used on CPU's and GPU's.

[Allan Barnes]

RENT THE LIGHTS BEFORE YOU BUY. LEDs ARE NEW AND COSTLY AND USE LESS POWER....AS A RESULT OLDER LIGHTS ARE CHEAP TO BUY OR RENT. IF IT IS TEMPORARY SETUP ...USE "C" CLAMPS AND ATTACH YOUR LIGHTS TO THAT HAND RAILING. DO NOT "CHEAP OUT" ON PROPER AC CABLES or PLUGS.. 25 or 50FT LENGHTS ARE STANDARD... FIRE HAZARD TO USE CHEAP AC CABLES. Source-Four Lights are a good place to start.