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JohnD

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I'd love to know about Aryton fixtures if someone can visit their booth. Unfortunately I couldn't justify taking off another week of school for a conference this semester (already spending next week in Seattle)
 
If someone is interested in a challenge, how about dropping in at Booth 1859, the NeutrikUSA booth and ask if they have considered making more USA friendly PowerCon and True1 cable connectors. The problem is with type SO 12/3 cable which won't fit, especially in the True1 connector, type SJ, no problem BUT no go on SO.
 
Since no one has started this years version of this:
https://www.controlbooth.com/threads/what-do-you-want-us-to-report-on.38869/
Here it is.
Any full color LED fresnels.
Could someone take a look at the Robert Juliat Roxie followspot or any other "real" LED followspots.
Impression of the Roxie. It's a pretty good equivalent to my Altman Comets back in my theater. Nice quality light. Good dimming. The overall build quality of the fixture is good except for the way the gel frames open and close... That sort of concerns me (you'll see why in the video later). Dmx controllable for the dimmer. We shot a video of me using it which Dave will post later. If your throw distance isn't super far, it's pretty cool. Like I said, pretty solid equivalent to an Altman Comet.
 
If someone is interested in a challenge, how about dropping in at Booth 1859, the NeutrikUSA booth and ask if they have considered making more USA friendly PowerCon and True1 cable connectors. The problem is with type SO 12/3 cable which won't fit, especially in the True1 connector, type SJ, no problem BUT no go on SO.
So the expert from Neutrik had a very long passionate answer but to summarize:
-The code is out of date and actually refers to asbestos shielded SO.
-The code is vague on if SJ is allowed.
-Only your AHJ is qualified to say if SJ is acceptable.
-In many years of debating the topic, many have argued that by their interpretation SJ is not allowed, but no one has ever come back and said, my AHJ said I'm not allowed to use SJ.

He also said some very nice things to say about @STEVETERRY and the work he has done updating the code and hopes that will continue so that issues like this will be more clear.
 
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How about dropping by the Chroma-Q booth and checking out the ColorForceII? Fifty percent brighter than the original ColorForce and without the litebrite look.
http://www.chroma-q.com/products/color-force-ii.asp
I'm impressed with the color force 2. The sales guy referred to it as not a variation of the old one, but it learned from and built off of the color one. Really great output. No color shadows. The have a 20ish foot high drop lit with color force 2s. Top only, no up lighting and it looks great. Now they are using the narrowest beam spreader plate, and there are no gaps between fixtures, but it's really quite bright and impressive. One cool thing is the independent cell control for chases and effects. The cells are about 3 " across Anderson very bright. Combined with the narrow spread lenses, it's a really cool chase. They say 50% brighter than the original color source. Well worth looking at further.
 
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I'm impressed with the color force 2. The sales guy referred to it as not a variation of the old one, but it learned from and built off of the color one. Really great output. No color shadows. The have a 20ish foot high drop lit with color force 2s. Top only, no up lighting and it looks great. Now they are using the narrowest beam spreader plate, and there are no gaps between fixtures, but it's really quite bright and impressive. One cool thing is the independent cell control for chases and effects. The cells are about 3 " across Anderson very bright. Combined with the narrow spread lenses, it's a really cool chase. They say 50% brighter than the original color source. Well worth looking at further.

We had some come through with a tour a couple weeks ago and they looked really good. I'm not sure which lenses they had but they had no problems uplighting our 28ft tall cyc.
 
I've actually used the Whalberg winches for a floating globe effect. It's a good product, but it does have its quirks. If the unit loses power, it loses it's settings and you need to reset the top and bottom stops. Plan on running a an unswitched power feeed for the duration of your show. It's designed for more or less straight up and down applications, so if you're looking to recreate my floating globe, which required some extreme angles for the cable, realize that it's not out of the box compatible with this effect. All that said, once I figured out the limitations and how to work around them, the winches performed nearly flawlessly for our two month run.
 
Since no one has started this years version of this:
https://www.controlbooth.com/threads/what-do-you-want-us-to-report-on.38869/
Here it is.
Any full color LED fresnels.
Could someone take a look at the Robert Juliat Roxie followspot or any other "real" LED followspots.

Also looked at Ushio's Xebex Sai-300

It's not as bright as the Roxie initially, but has a much tighter beam angle 1.8 meter diameter at 15 meter throw vs 3 meter diameter for the Roxie. So they end up with similar brightness but significantly different diameters. Ushio's doesn't have DMX. Ushio is 5800k. Roxie can be purchased in 1 of 3 color temperature variations. Pretty similar in most other ways. Both are solid products worth a look.
 
I've actually used the Whalberg winches for a floating globe effect. It's a good product, but it does have its quirks. If the unit loses power, it loses it's settings and you need to reset the top and bottom stops. Plan on running a an unswitched power feeed for the duration of your show. It's designed for more or less straight up and down applications, so if you're looking to recreate my floating globe, which required some extreme angles for the cable, realize that it's not out of the box compatible with this effect. All that said, once I figured out the limitations and how to work around them, the winches performed nearly flawlessly for our two month run.

That's what happens when you use an incremental encoder unfortunately. They're pretty common in automation, even in really expensive equipment.

Were your issues with rigging the result on the motor pitching as a result of lateral forces or was it more a problem of additional force required for diverter pulleys?
 
Thanks @gafftaper and @porkchop .
I haven't seen any online prices yet for the colorforce II.
I'm looking at doing LED cyc lights myself and at this point I think I'm going with the Chauvet Ovation B 2805fc although I wasn't able to do a side by side comparison, I thought the Chauvet looked quite a bit brighter than the Colorforce II. Chauvet said its twice as bright as Colorforce 1. ChromaQ says the two is 50% brighter than the one.... So if both are correct, the Chauvet is what 25% brighter than the 2 (somebody check my math). Both were set up to wash a drop about 25' high. And did the job well, but the Chauvet fixtures had the added challenge of lighting a painted drop with a lot of dark gray and black on it. I'm pretty confident the Chauvets will handle my 19' cycle easily.

The ChromaQ cells are only 3" across where the Chauvet is about 5" per cluster group. Depending on what you are doing, that may or may not matter. Build quality appeared looked and felt good on both.
If you are looking at the fixture the chromaQ has tthe advantage of those individual cells with diffusers so each cell is perfectly mixed before you see it. The Chauvet is a bunch of individual LED's that go through a diffuser and mix in the air. For me this is not significant, but for some it might be. This also means there are no weird color shadows on the ChromaQ. There may be some color shadows on the Chauvet, but I didn't bother looking because I don't care, I'm going to wash a cyc with these, color shadows are not an issue. The diffusers seemed to be a little more high tech on the ChromaQ, with a two part diffusion to try to hit the top and bottom of the cyc differently.

Price, I don't know what ChromaQ is charging but the Chauvets are around $2,200. Given the price of the other ChromaQ products, I'm sure it's a LOT more than that.

As always, get demos and see for yourself!
 
Were your issues with rigging the result on the motor pitching as a result of lateral forces or was it more a problem of additional force required for diverter pulleys?

Slack in the cable due to the extreme angles was my problem. I'll PM you my solution since I don't want to give some of our younger, less experienced members a how to on equipment modification.
 
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