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    troy@cbc
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Replacing Halogen Bulbs with LED Bulbs

Our maintenance staff want to replace all of the halogen bulbs in our auditorium can lights with LED bulbs. We have the house lights on the same Sensor racks as our theatrical lighting and we control it all with the Paradigm system and an ETC ION control board.

Can they work well? Do you recommend a certain brand or style? Are there any risk to the dimmers themselves?

The LED's do say dimmable but I know we would have to work on the dimming curves to get the most out of them.

Any help would be appreciated

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  • LED bulbs may be dimmable but the dimming characteristics near 0% may be undesirable for house lights. Most replacement dimmable LEDs will flicker and/or abruptly produce no light once the voltage drops below a minimum level. Those that avoid this while dimming down will still "pop" on when dimming up. It's very much a try-before-you-buy situation.

    The TCP brand seems to be getting good reviews on controlbooth.com.

     

  • in reply to sk8rs_dad
    I have been using TCP Elite Designer series lamps and it is touch and go with these. They work well one day and then they flicker another. I have a Sensor 3 rack and have tried different things but so far I have resorted to having to install an incandescent on the circuit to get them to perform well. Not fun when you have over 40 sections of track and I have to put a fixture in the corner with a 15w bulb and cover it with black out wrap.

    So even testing (which I did before I purchased) is not 100% fool proof.
  • in reply to Emilio
    Are you using a D20 module to dim the TCP lamps? If that's the case, and if adding an incandescent lamp to the circuit improves performance, then there may be one more setting to try: increasing the Zero Cross Blanking Time. This is in a special configuration menu*, so you'll want to give phone support a call and have them walk you through changing it.

    (*It's a rack-wide setting and adjusting it improperly can have negative consequences for other circuits, so it's not part of the general config.)
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  • in reply to Emilio
    Are you using a D20 module to dim the TCP lamps? If that's the case, and if adding an incandescent lamp to the circuit improves performance, then there may be one more setting to try: increasing the Zero Cross Blanking Time. This is in a special configuration menu*, so you'll want to give phone support a call and have them walk you through changing it.

    (*It's a rack-wide setting and adjusting it improperly can have negative consequences for other circuits, so it's not part of the general config.)
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