Let there be Light...and there was thanks to Jands!

Wednesday, November 7, 2007 || Jands

City Impact Church of Auckland, New Zealand has unveiled its new Sanctuary, a church with state of the art facilities that can seat 2100 people. City Impact deliver rock'n'roll inspired worship and thus require a high end lighting and audio system. For the Sanctuary, a totally new venue, the performance system design was provided by Mitech Design and Auditoria.

Oceania Lighting supplied and installed the lighting system including seventeen Jands HPX Dimmers (three portable and fourteen hardwired) installed in Jands 24RU racks and two Jands WMX Dimmers hardwired to run house lighting. Four Jands PDS 12R power distribution systems were also supplied along with four DD8 data splitters and sixty ETC Source Four PARs.

"We have used the Jands HP12 dimmers in our hire department for years and they have always been reliable, flexible and easy to use," commented Nick Abel, Oceania Lighting's Service Manager. "Because of their solid performance we looked no further than the Jands HPX dimmers which are really the new model of the HP12 dimmers. Internally the HPX is fairly similar to the HP12 dimmer; you still have the ability to drop them down to 120 volts and they have the same type of DMX addressing. The HPX has a good rise time of 220 microseconds."

In fact the major differences between the HP12 and the HPX dimmers are in the way they are constructed. The HPX is designed as a series of blocks so that customers can access a range of features and outlet styles without having to build a whole range of complete dimmer products. Simply put the HPX range is manufactured as a series of components that can then be assembled in any configuration as required in a very quick time.

For the operator, the HPX is easier to use than the old HP. In response to feedback from customers the menu options have been simplified and made selectable by a simple button press interface much like your mobile phone.

Rather than the old 240/120/60 volt selections on the HP the HPX lets you set the maximum dimmer output anywhere from 40 to 100% of the mains input. The dimmer can also be set up to run from single or three phase supplies from 100 to 240v and between 40-65Hz meaning it can be sold to any market worldwide. There have also been major advances in the filtering which make the HPX even better at rejecting mains tone interference from 'noisy' power supplies.

Ian Anderson, Mitech's managing director, specified the ETC PARs for their clean, even wash and easy to use range of snap-in lenses.

"We're using the ETC PARs as house-lights with their wide-angle lenses and we're also using them onstage with their other lenses," he reported. "They're a very easy lamp to use, they're lightweight and they're easy for the church volunteers to use."