L.E.D. cyc lights

we are looking into upgrading to leds for our cyc, we are debating between the colorsource cyc, or the cyc adapter for the source four led. What are your experiences with either of these fixtures and is one better than the other. Our cyc is 23 feet tall and 35 feet wide. We are open to any suggestions based on what other people have worked with as well.

You should try thr CS cyc. You might be gine with it - certainly if you csn do yop and botyom rows. But somewhere around 20' I feel drop off is to noticeable. But get samples and do a shoot out. Only you can know.

There's an app for that Just wondering if you've tried the iThingy or android ETC Cyc Tool?
For those playing along at home I ran across this:

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As always, you really need a demo of both in your space.

EDIT: The one slight difference between the two is in the blues. With the CYC there are two different blues, with the spot plus adapter you have to choose between the lite blue or the deep blue.
How much difference that makes you would have to decide.

We just installed the ETC CSCYCs at my theater and i have to say that these things are gorgeous. We installed 9 of them on our last elec. for a 18'x40' cyc, and are probably going to pull the outside pair because they go off into the wings. This is with the caveat that our last elec. is actually 8' away from the cyc due to dead hung space, and yes i know that that is actually outside of spec but it works without a lot of the scalloping.

The height of the lighting batten relative to top if cyc - as well as distance - both affect this.

I have not been a fan of the Cyc adapter for S4 LED's. The demos I have seen work, but I just really didn't like the design. It seems more like an after thought than a product. I really like the ColorSource Cyc, good pricing and colors are great. I love blends you can do with a top and bottom row that I saw in a demo. However your height seems a little tricky. It seems a bit high for a single row of just top lights, and a bit short for top and bottom row lights. But that's just me talking, so talk to a sales person and do the photometric math on that.

If you are open to considering other products. I have a 22' high Cyc and I installed Chauvet Ovation B2805 FC's about a year and a half ago. I love them and wouldn't trade them in. They are RIDICULOUSLY bright and have beautiful colors. I rarely run them more than about 35%. They are so bright in a night scene, I'll have them on at 3-4% and it's perfect... seriously! I've never used any other light at levels that low, but these bad boys do beautiful subtle things below 10%. They can get a little bit steppy right at the end when you are dimming REALLY slow and are looking for it, but no one except your friend the visiting lighting designer will ever notice it during normal show conditions. You'll find my review pictures, and follow up here about a repair here. Check out the second picture of what the house looks like with just Blue turned up to 100%... we are talking BRIGHT!

That said, don't take our opinions or guess based on an online video! When you are spending that kind of money, you deserve to see the product demonstrated on your stage. Call your favorite dealer and ask for a demo if they can't/won't help you, reply here and someone here (probably from the company will help you get set up for a demo).

Get Demos. We did a shoot out and while the ETC products were acceptable, we decided the Chauvet Ovation C-640 FC provided better coverage in our space. Do note that in all cases we decided that top and bottom was required to make us happy. Should find out next month if our request for money is accepted...

Top and botyom is great but is it practical in most high schools? It can seem worth it to me, but it seems the rare high school person asdigned to oversee stage finds it worth it.

We just put in the Showline 660's, and so far we're overjoyed with them.

We have some nasty stage-depth issues, and they're handling them ok, though we may put some of that Fancy Laser Diffusion stuff on them.

You can go insane with addressing, but ours are presently 6 strips wide, each at a different address, so we have 6 segments.

BillConnerFASTC said:

You should try thr CS cyc. You might be gine with it - certainly if you csn do yop and botyom rows. But somewhere around 20' I feel drop off is to noticeable. But get samples and do a shoot out. Only you can know.

Click to expand...

BillConnerFASTC said:

Top and botyom is great but is it practical in most high schools? It can seem worth it to me, but it seems the rare high school person asdigned to oversee stage finds it worth it.

Click to expand...

Good night, Bill, what happened to your keyboard?!

BillConnerFASTC said:

Top and botyom is great but is it practical in most high schools? It can seem worth it to me, but it seems the rare high school person asdigned to oversee stage finds it worth it.

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Agreed. Unless its a specialized performing arts HS with full time technical theater department staff, a ground row is basically just another thing to get destroyed by drama club kids building a set or orchestra teachers driving pianos around.

BillConnerFASTC said:

Top and botyom is great but is it practical in most high schools? It can seem worth it to me, but it seems the rare high school person assigned to oversee stage finds it worth it.

Click to expand...

Having a bottom row in my high school P.A.C. means one of two things. I would be always taking them out and putting them away, which would be a lot of extra work for every event. Or it means they would be damaged/stolen. It's a question worth about 10 seconds of deep thought. Top row only, is the only realistic option here. Which leads to what made me a big fan of the Chauvet Ovations B2805 FC's, they pack a ton of punch and on my 22' high cyc, I don't need a bottom row. No one has ever said there isn't enough color in the cyc.

Artistically I would love a bottom row and the ETC ColorSource Cyc's are VERY appealing to do that job. The idea of top to bottom gradient blends would be amazing and they do that job VERY nicely. But in my world, bottom row is not a realistic option.

Jay Ashworth said:

You can go insane with addressing, but ours are presently 6 strips wide, each at a different address, so we have 6 segments.

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This brings up a fascinating sub topic. I have 7 of the Chauvet strips, which could be addressed to 70 different cells! That's crazy! I have mine set at two cells per fixture (That's a little over 2 1/2' per cell) for a total of 14 cells. The vast majority of the time i'm using more than 3 cells at once, but it's a nice size if you want to add a little flair here and there. With the diffusion in that seems to be the sweet spot for us.

mjump said:

We just installed the ETC CSCYCs at my theater and i have to say that these things are gorgeous. We installed 9 of them on our last elec. for a 18'x40' cyc, and are probably going to pull the outside pair because they go off into the wings.

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Unless you have a pressing need for two units somewhere else, why pull the outmost units? Nine units (eight spaces) distributed over 40' is 5' on center. Maybe try 4'-6" instead. I also like how 9 divides by 3 better than 7: 3-3-3 vs. 2-3-2.

The Showlines we got have 18 pairs of pixels (2 rows of 18), and you can address them as 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, or 18 pixels, depending on which mode you pick.

Is this for a high school? The op does not say one way or another and they have not returned. Maybe we scared them off.

I have been off a couple days, (crazy right), The theatre is part of a high school but it does have a full time technical staff. Once upon a time we had a ground row until they were destroyed by said high school drama hooligans(they also tore our scrim yesterday). We are leaning towards the Cs cyc, but were still going to get a demo of both fixtures, both would easily do what we need so if we don't have to get colorsource4s then we wont.

If you happen to have time, could you shoot a little video during the demo?
I know the ETC demo sets everything up in the best possible way and although I understand how well the fixtures work when used properly, sometimes its also helpful to see how they work in less-than-ideal conditions too.

Presumably, if some kids purposefully tore your scram, you'll be suing their parents and either suspending or expelling them, right? Given that scrims tend to cost 5/10/20 Grand?

Maybe i'm naive but in schools where legs and scrims get torn and equipment gets damaged, it's usually from student negligence, not malice.