A couple of questions and a try it

[LENNY RUEL]

Hi gang:

First I have a couple of questions...

A) where can you get the attach on C9 sockets if I'm wanting to make cords for randomly spacing curtain strobes? Paul at CDI says he doesn't carry them and I'm not coming up with them the places I've looked.

on mini trees or even all of them up to the mega what do you think actually looks better, white wire or green on your light strings?



Maybe something for you to try that has worked great for me.

I know alot of you use those twig trees and add more lights to them for your 4 to 6 or 7 foot trees.

Here is what I do and it's easy and stores good. I by the metal EMT conduit and make what I call tripod trees. Looks kind of like a TeePee frame. For 4 to 6 footers I use 1/2", 7 or 8 I use 3/4" and 9 or10 I use the 1". Its not very expensive, I think 1/2" is a couple bucks a stick and it takes three per tree. I make them half as wide as high so a 6' tree is 3 at the base. What I do is take the conduit and cut it to length. They are 10' sticks so if I make 6 ' trees I have 4' pieces left over. You can use this for your bracing or save it for a larger tree brace so you can utilze the entire piece. In this case I bought an extra stick for each tree and cut three pieces 30 inches long for my bracing. I only ended up with 18 inches of waste then.

I drill a hole in one end of all three long pieces for a 1/4"x 1-1/2" bolt about 1/2" in from the end and bolt them together just snugging up the nut. I take the outside two pieces and flatten the ends down with a hammer before I drill those. Then I stand the unit up and gently open up the tree legs to my approximate spacing of 3 feet. I then take my 3 braces and flatten the ends on all of them and drill 1/4" holes about 1/2" in from both ends. I mark 12" up from the ground and drill 1/8" holes for 1/8" machine srews where these three braces go, 2 holes on each leg. Screw all three braces to the legs and you have a good ridgid frame for a 6 ft tree that at this point cost about 8 bucks or so and took about 20 minutes or so to put together. Then just wrap them with your lights. You generally will have to use a wire tie for each wrap on one leg. I alternate legs and it keeps the spacing (of your choice) pretty uniform. You can use as many light as you want but at least 600 on a 6 foot tree already looks pretty good on a controller, lotsof flash or even on a static display. You have the open frame which allows all three sides to be seen from any direction. Tear down is easy. Just cut the ties, coil up the lights and either stack the frames on top of each other or break them down and bundle them together with tape. You can also paint them, I usually use black.



Lenny

[Haydenp]

I bought some C9 Sockets for SPT1 from actionlighting.com

http://www.actionlighting.com/item-detail.asp?ID=1407&MainCategory=&Sub=


and I have to vote for green wire.