While Stark and
Lycian make good dependable fixtures, I have more experience with the
Lycian brand and know either are worth the extra money above something made in Italy or China. Such foreign fixtures will work fine for a number of years, but once things start to go wrong it’s hit or miss if you can find parts for them. Much less a service center that will not only work on it but
send you an emergency loaner while yours is in for service.
Lycian at one
point offered to
send me out a huge 1290
fixture as free temporary loaner while one of ours that was dropped off a
truss was in for repair. Rush shipping alone will have been a pretty penny for them to
pick up granted it cost like $2,000.00 to get the thing realigned and $400.00 to ship it.
I don’t know much about
Robert Juliat spots so I won’t comment about them.
Altman and L&E make follow spots also of interest. The L&E version would be a
bit short on
power for your purposes - kind of like a
Altman 1000 but with a HX-600.
Altman makes the Satellite Voyager and Explorer spots in your range and like with
Lycian, Strong and L&E would probably
bend over backwards to keep a follow spot customer in their premium lines. In other words, they might offer up free loaners from their rental
stock where needed. While I have not used
Altman's
HMI sources, their fixtures seem fairly rugged for the money. If nothing else, the parts are easy to get and replace.
First, no matter what brand you buy, you might look into an article about
followspot photometrics and
intensity.
http://www.lycian.com/to_order/photometrics.html
Than at least for
Lycian, you can go to the following part of the website to range their various fixtures for your distance:
http://www.lycian.com/products.specs/products.specs.htm
Strong is at
http://www.strongint.com/
Lycian seems to recommend the following fixtures by the
Photometrics chart:
Midget, 1209HP Lots of schools around me use various versions of this budget
fixture. Good and dependable and easy to use. The
hot restrike 575w lamp for it is fairly dependable and forgiving for an arc lamp. A normal lamp is the Philips MSR 575HR with 750hr/49,000Lumen/6,000̊K in stats.
Starklite II, 1271 is one of the fixtures the place I work for uses along with the M2, 1290 and 1272. The 1271 has a separate
ballast which like with any 1200w
fixture can be troublesome but given it's not mounted on the
fixture it's easy to swap it out for a loaner while yours is in the shop. It also has interchangeable lenses so you can put it into different locations. The lamps for it are a
bit more tricky to install and temperamental than the above however. It's lamp ranges from 750hr to 1,000hr depending on brand and it's 110,000Lumens/6,000̊K for an Osram
HMI 1200w/GS. If you have a large program and use the spots a lot this might be a good investment otherwise the Midget would be a more cost effective
fixture.
The M2 follow spot with medium or long
lens would be the expensive high tech solution that still might be of interest. I say this because if the football team does not have a
followspot, your departments might be able to pool resources and use the same fixtures. I hear school distracts like the concept of sharing between departments. The theater could get some sweet revenge in making the
foot ball team pay in part for your new
fixture that you only let them use twice a year. You can swap out lenses between short medium and long
throw and use either a 2,500w or a 1,200w lamp. I believe the above 1271 lamp is the 1200w lamp used, otherwise it’s a
Mac 2K lamp. I don’t think we used it in 1,200w mode yet so I don’t know which lamp it uses yet. The 25,000w lamp used is 500hr/240,000Lumens/6,000°K which is brighter than a pro grade 2Kw Xenon follow spot lamp. Problem is that you would have to buy differing lamp housings and
lens assemblies and either different ballasts or no doubt even more expensive dual purpose electronic ballasts. In other words, it’s kind of like buying two follow spots for the price of only getting one. It also requires 208v
power as opposed to the above that’s 120v
power supplies.
With any Strong or
Lycian follow spot, you might be able to find some on the used
fixture market or even factory reconditioned. Because these lights are investments and good companies such used fixtures would could be made dependable as if new for less cost. Upon used buying them however, it would be wise to
send either brand, even an
Altman used
fixture back to the factory for a once over. It does not take much to get the optics off alignment or there could be unforseen problems with them that you want taken care of before you start to use them. That would be my recommendation - go used if you can find some of the above. Oh’ one more thing, rent what ever follow spot you want to buy for a show before you
purchase it. Get to know physically if it’s going to work due to the investment. That and buy what other similar schools are using so not only can you swap should there be an immediate problem, you might loan between schools for large shows. Otherwise comments from like schools on the value of their light might be of use for you.