How many light strings?

[Jamie Ordoyne]

First year Newbie here!  Can you please provide me with some advice on how many light strings I should use for a 3 color 20' megatree with 32-48 channels?  I need to dedicate 3 channels to my star topper.  I was thinking about 36 of each R, G, & W for a total of 108 strings.   Would that look ok or be too shabby when each color would be on separately since there would be a 10" spacing between the strings of each color?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance for your help,

Jamie O.

[gmac]

Your tree sound exactly like I did mine only I set my spacing at approx. 4" ......I have a 10' dia base  the 4" was recommended to me by Darryl from CLS

[Santas Helper]

Jamie,

 

Back in 2009 I started on a bigger mega tree. Before I went to 33' high, my mega tree was 23' with the star.

My base is 18' wide and was designed for the 33' footer, not the 23' like in this pic. So the base in this pic is too wide but worked until I added hight the next year.

In this pic there is 48 strands of C6 LED lights. All my other lights/colors are off to give a better idea of how one color of 48 strands looks.

If your going for a smaller base, I think 36 strands would look just fine.

And my camera doesn't do justice for how it looks in person.

 

Edited September 18, 2013 by Santas Helper

[Santas Helper]

Here is a pic from 2011. Now the mega tree is 33' tall with 48 strands of each color (R, W, B, G).

Again, just giving reference of 48 strands with a 18' wide base.

[Jamie Ordoyne]

Jamie,

 

Back in 2009 I started on a bigger mega tree. Before I went to 33' high, my mega tree was 23' with the star.

My base is 18' wide and was designed for the 33' footer, not the 23' like in this pic. So the base in this pic is too wide but worked until I added hight the next year.

In this pic there is 48 strands of C6 LED lights. All my other lights/colors are off to give a better idea of how one color of 48 strands looks.

If your going for a smaller base, I think 36 strands would look just fine.

And my camera doesn't do justice for how it looks in person.

 

 

 

Here is a pic from 2011. Now the mega tree is 33' tall with 48 strands of each color (R, W, B, G).

Again, just giving reference of 48 strands with a 18' wide base.

Tom,

Nice!  Thanks so much for the info! I'm hoping to do some mini trees next year but I have to get this megatree up this year.   Few more Q's if you don't mind.  Do you have the different colors made into "superstrings"?  How many channels are you running on the megatree? and since I'm still learning this sequencing business, do you know where I could get some sequences specifically for the megatree?  I have seen some sequences on LOR and I didn't know if they can be adapted to just run a megatree.

 

Thanks again for your help!  I always appreciate it when someone helps out a newbie!

 

Jamie O.

[Santas Helper]

Jamie,

 

I made the super strings to keep in mind any failure down the road for easy of replacement if need be. I built blue/green strands and red/white strands. Also because I added different colors each year. So that's why I did what I did.

I'm running 16 channels per color. I have 3 strands of the same color per channel so if one strand failed during the season, I had two more to keep that channel active. This also gives a bigger sweeping effect on chases and makes sequencing easier. On a lot of songs, there isn't enough time to chase 48 channels without it being extremely fast and short lived per strand.

Get what ever sequences you can and adapt the mega tree part to your sequence. I know timing may be different on some sequences if adapting to some you already have/created but at least you would have an idea of what was done/used and the timing marks from start to finish per mega tree effect. It will save some time while learning.

Everyone has a different method but this worked very well for me.

Hope I didn't confuse you.

 

Tom