Used Lighting

I was wondering if anyone knew of any good way to obtain used lighting? Since I graduated from my high school (which is a half hour from where I go to college), I have become heavily involved in trying to have our theatre and fine arts department grow. HOWEVER, we do not have alot of financial backing for lighting and equipment. Does anyone know of any places or ways I could get my hands on some used lighting or sound equipment? We can purchase used equipment, but not new. Ebay is too random to try to buy a good set of equipment from, and you never really know where the equipment came from.

Any ideas?

-silverbullet
 
And don't forget to go to the larger vendors directly: PRG, Upstaging, Masque Sound, ATK, etc.
 
4wall typically has some used equipment as well.
 
PRG is always selling gear. Seems like about half of our inventory is PRG now. We just bought some studio spot 575's from PRG in extremely nice condition for a good price. The deal was brokered through gear source.
 
Funny...this lack of knowledge is explained by my normally calling and talking to Mike in Vegas or his counterpart in New York...
"First rule of holes...when you're in one, stop digging." --Anon.
 
"Second rule of holes...when you're in deep enough, bury yourself."
 
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I would recommend calling your local shops. If you talk to the right people, you might be able to convince them that their excess inventory is wasting space and not worth the storage cost and your [inexpensive] purchase(s) will allow them cash to reinvest into higher profit margin gear.

This is a delicate thing to do right and convince a company to part with gear that may want to keep. I recommend going in during an open house, meeting all the employees, find out who's in charge of what and who you have the best feedback from, then go back during a slower time, possibly on a friday afternoon bearing a 6-pack, and discuss the finer points of their profit seeking mission and your part to help them increase the bottom line. It may take a little effort, but you'll be surprised how cheap you can get good reliable gear for. And I think I'd better patent this process, so you'd better do it soon before I demand a royalty for using my method.

I also like gearsource and lightbroker. Richard, formerly of Lightbroker, recently broke off and is also selling gear with www.burtrentals.com. Email them, and Richard is pretty good and locating quality and 'like new' gear. He's probably the cheapest way you can go while still being reputable.
 

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