LOR Controllers

[Guest guest]

I'm getting ready to order my first 16 channel LOR and my questions are:

Is the sale worth waiting for from LOR?

Do you save much by building your own from the kits by the time

you purchase the enclosure, cords and the board?

Thanks,

Dennis

[Guest guest]

Well, there's a lot of different options.

If you are in a tight budget and would like to save as much money as possible, I suggest you wait until the sale. (You can save $30 to $40 by soldering them yourself.) On the other hand, if that's not a big issue, I'd tell you to go right ahead and order the board. You can test out effects while you are sequenceing, and get an idea of your layout.

Some people have built the kits in 3 hrs...others, longer.

I personally don't have one, but many people do. If you are a wonderful solderer, that would be a good way to go. On the other hand, if you are just beginning, I'd go to an electonics shop and buy a small kit to test on.

I've heard people having problems because their soldering was a little messy.

About the enclosure, cords, etc. and purchasing them-

~You can buy JUST the controller (kit or assembled)...no accesories
~You can buy the controller and selected accesories (kit or assembled) (for example...if you could get cords cheaper some place else, then you could buy it w/ the cords, everything else)
~You can buy the whole 9 yards...controller, cords, enclosure, mounting hardware, etc. (kit or assembled)

Hope that helps

[i just realized that your last two lines are one sentence broken b/t 2 lines!...Well, you need the enclosure and cords anyway]

[Guest guest]

Thanks Luke,

I went to the manual pages of the LOR Kits and I was under the assumption that there was no soldering but only tightening of screws to connect the wires to the neutral, ground and hot connections. Am I all wet on this one?

Dennis

[Guest guest]

nettnut wrote:

Thanks Luke,

I went to the manual pages of the LOR Kits and I was under the assumption that there was no soldering but only tightening of screws to connect the wires to the neutral, ground and hot connections. Am I all wet on this one?

Dennis

You have the right idea, but are using the wrong term.

"Kit" = bucket of parts you have to solder together.

You are thinking of these products, right?

[Guest guest]

nettnut wrote:

I went to the manual pages of the LOR Kits and I was under the assumption that there was no soldering but only tightening of screws to connect the wires to the neutral, ground and hot connections. Am I all wet on this one?

The "hobbiest" boards are fully assembled boards. You just add the wires. I think these are what you saw. The "kits" contain a bare board and you have to solder on all the components. Then you add the wires just like on the hobbiest boards.

TED

[Guest guest]

May I add: Be advised that finding affordable and usable pigtails is a royal pain! [i'm STILL looking for some.] The ones they sell at LOR are the cheapest I've found so far; don't expect to easily find a cheaper sources elsewhere.

And if anyone can prove me wrong, PLEASE do so.

Joe

[Guest guest]

Joe, and all, you will not find pigtails any cheaper than what LOR sells them for.

[Guest guest]

Last year I purchased a lot of my cords from Light-O-Rama. I also pruchased quite a few from a place called B&B Trading. They were I believe as cheap or cheaper. They are good quality cords and have worked really well. You can check out their catalog and have one sent to your home at www.bb-trading.com. You can also call 1-800-647-9471.

[Guest guest]

zman wrote:

Joe, and all, you will not find pigtails any cheaper than what LOR sells them for.

Unless you're satisfied with buying the cheap "indoor" cords and cutting off the male ends, which is what many of us do. If you want the nice grounded ones, the LOR ones are the way to go.

-Tim

[Guest guest]

One Lite Shy wrote:

Last year I purchased a lot of my cords from Light-O-Rama. I also pruchased quite a few from a place called B&B Trading. They were I believe as cheap or cheaper. They are good quality cords and have worked really well. You can check out their catalog and have one sent to your home at http://www.bb-trading.com. You can also call 1-800-647-9471.

Not intending to hijack this thread but thought I'd better reply to this...

I tried to order some pigtails from BB-Trading a couple months ago. While they were very helpful, they are completely and "permanently" out of stock on anything suitable for pigtails. [They are a surplus place so maybe they'll get some more at some point.]

The point of my original reply was to impart to the original thread poster: "It may be a false sense of economy to NOT get pigtails from LOR along with the rest of the equipment."

Joe

[Guest guest]

Yeah, I should have been a bit more specific on my reply. The LOR pigtails are very high quality, and you won't find that type of quality any cheaper.

[Guest guest]

I went extremely low budget last year. I bought a $8 box from allelectronics.com (they're sold out of them now), a couple $2 surge protectors to use as the power cable, and some SPT cable and connectors to use as extension cables and that was it. The zip cable screwed directly into the board, so I didn't need pig tails. This was by no means a perminent setup, but it worked and was relatively safe. The LOR controllers were indoors so while they were inside the $8 box, they were not mounted and didn't need to be.

The boards were also kits and on sale during the May sale and the additional 10% discount for waiting a few months. So, I got 32 channels for less than the price of a 16 channel showtime controller. You can save a lot of money if you're willing to hunt down the parts.

[Guest guest]

I think I am goning to get the pigtails and the power cords from LOR and I had found the Encloser that LOR uses for their LOR1602W Controller. The link is found below.

http://www.enclosures4less.com/Product.aspx?ProductID=19045&CategoryID=4506

It cost 21.28 and has the exact part number as the sticker on encloser that came with the LOR1602W that was purchased from LOR.

Mabey this helps

Ricky