Stage Designs

Throwback: Pay the Piper

Bill Collins from Saxe Gotha Presbyterian Church in Lexington, SC brings us these cool multi-color-displaying pipes. (Originally posted September 2013)

This set was for their contemporary worship service.

The set wass built from 12” diameter cardboard tubes that were custom made to their specifications by Carolina Paper Tubes in Hendersonville, NC. The tubes were made 8’ long and they used a tube of a smaller diameter to glue the tubes together from inside. Once assembled, they were cut to length (4 x 11’ , 4 x 12’ , 4 x 13’ , 2 x 14’) with an oscillating saw. With the 13’ tubes and the 14’ tubes, they drew an ellipse on the tube and cut out the holes to allow the light to come out (6 holes on the 13’ tubes, 8 holes on the 14’ tubes). To line up all of the ellipses, they purchased a cheap laser level and attached it to the bottom of the tubes. They projected the laser vertically up the tube. Then they spaced out the ellipses evenly over the entire length of the tube and made sure that they left enough room at the ends so that the lights that were inside the tubes were hidden from sight. The reason they cut out an ellipse was so that when you looked at the front of the tube, you saw a circle.

All of the tubes were then painted white on the outside and the tubes with the holes cut in them were also painted on the inside. They cut a divider out of plywood and put it in the middle of the tubes with the holes to divide the top and bottom section to allow the light to be different in the top and the bottom.

The tubes were mounted on two bases that were made out of 2x4s and ¼” plywood. The bases were 11’ long, 2’ high and 2’ deep, and were painted black. They attached the tubes to the bases using two small blocks of wood inside of each tube that were screwed to the base and the tube.

Inside the top and bottom of the tubes with the holes there was a Mega Lite NE Color Par38 fixture to light the inside of the tubes. The lights in the bottom of the tubes were attached directly to the base and the cables were run through a small hole in the back of the tube. The lights in the top of the tubes were attached to a 12” piece wood that spanned the open end of the tube and the cables were run down the back of the tube. The cables were attached to the back of the tubes by drilling two small holes at the top of the tubes and at the bottom of the tubes. A zip tie was then used to secure the cables.

The front of the tubes were lit by 4 Chauvet Colorado 1 fixtures (2 per side) that were mounted in the ceiling. There were 4 Chauvet Colordash Batten Quad 6 fixtures (2 per side) mounted at the top of 12’ 2x4s that were attached to the back of the bases.

They had two 2’ sections of the tubes left, so they took and made a structure inside of them to mount their 2 Chauvet Q-Spot 560 LED moving head fixtures on. To give the tubes that were supporting the moving heads a little more stability, they attached the structure inside the tubes to a 50lb base that they had used with their truss in previous sets.

The drum set was lit by 2 Chauvet Colordash Accent fixtures. These fixtures were mounted on the drum riser in front of the drums, but still inside of the drum shield.

This set was assembled a period of about 4 weeks of them working after work and on a few weekends. It was all installed (including disassembling the previous set) in a week with them working after work and a Saturday.

Costs (NOT including any fixtures):

Cardboard Tubes: $250

Bases: $250

Misc (Paint, glue, etc): $300

Total: $800

Lighting used:

5 – Chauvet Colorado 1

4 – Chauvet Colordash Batten Quad 6

2 – Chauvet Colordash Accent

2 – Chauvet Q-Spot 560 LED

12 – Mega Lite NE Color Par 38

22 – Par 56

8 – Par 64

11 – Ellipsoidals

4 – 6” Fresnels

1 – Antari HZ500 Haze Machine

1 – NicolAudie Sunlite Suite 2 DMX Controller

DSC_2761

DSC_2772

DSC_2803

DSC_5124 DSC_2796

DSC_2797

DSC_2798

DSC_2800

Line Trees Parallax

One response to “Throwback: Pay the Piper”

  1. Josh Wyatt says:

    This is frickin genius!!! I LOVE IT!!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.