"We knew the time to replace our dimmers had come when the only way to stop lights flickering uncontrollably was to physically pull dimmer modules out of the rack," explains ENO's head of lighting, Kevin Sleep. "We also knew that we wanted the new system be reliable, to last for a long time, and to be flexible enough to cope with the wide range of crazy light sources that we end up dealing with on shows here."
He discovered the ADB dimmers almost by accident. "Some of our team were at ADB learning how to service our Warp moving lights. They came back saying 'you have to look at these dimmers'. When we went to see them, ADB showed us the dimmers fading everything from a 5K to a neon indicator lamp - it was remarkable what they could do. And as well as that, each dimmer could be switched to being a true non-dim under software control - amazingly useful not just as we add more moving lights to our rig, but for controlling HMIs and other things without having to worry about manually running non-dim power or swapping modules to be non-dims."
White Light supplied the dimmers to English National Opera, the system comprising 10 racks fitted with 884 3kW and 213 5kW DimSwitch switchable dimmer/non-dim modules giving a total of 1097 dimmers and each rack with main and backup control electronics.
White Light's Simon Needle oversaw the project, and comments, "The Twin Tech dimmers seemed to fit ENO's needs perfectly, particularly in terms of their solid construction and reliability - one of our service engineers, who has 35 years of experience supporting all kinds of dimmers, went to see them with an engineer's cynicism but came back raving about them."
The installation itself took place in a tight five week period carefully organised by ENO's Kevin Sleep and Ric Mountjoy, during which the Coliseum was hosting a number of visiting dance companies. White Light supplied the theatre with temporary dimming from its rental stock to run these shows.
White Light also acted as a staging post, collecting the new racks and dimmers from ADB in France and storing them at its Wimbledon base until they were required at the Coliseum, since space was tight at the theatre and getting the racks into the dimmer room involved careful planning to get them in to the building without disturbing rehearsals, then along a tight route to their new home. The installation itself was carried out by PTB Ltd, with whom White Light has previously collaborated on new dimmer installations at the Savoy and Lyceum Theatres.
The new dimmers have just completed their first show - a revival of La Bohème - where the installation performed flawlessly. "It's such a relief to be able to concentrate on the lighting without worrying about whether the dimmers are going to behave themselves!" comments Kevin Sleep. "Every part of the Twin Tech dimmers feels well thought out, robust and reliable, and every part of the project has been well handled by Raph Janssens at ADB, Nick Ewins at PTB and by Simon Needle and his team at White Light. We are delighted with our new installation."
(Jim Evans)
