Are you using the ETC Releve Spot? Would you buy it again?

np_pyro

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I am suggesting some lights to update a small theatre and as much as I want to like the Releve, it seems hard to believe it will be very useful given its low brightness.

The type of theatre is exactly what seems to be the market for this fixture, but looking at ETC's own photometrics app it is dimmer than the Colorsource Spot and even the Colorsource Par. I would think that it would have a difficult time being able to punch through your wash as a breakup or special.

It seemingly has other limitations like the lack of shutters, limited gobos, one way animation wheel.

Comparing this to something like the Elation Fuze Profile it is hard to justify the extra cost other than of course the awesome support from ETC and I am sure that it is a very robust (modular) design.

Of course I am only comparing things on paper. I searched around a bit for some articles or videos of Releve being used, but what I come up with is mostly just ETC marketing.

Does anyone have experience with this fixture? Did you find it useful? Is it not as bad as it seems on paper?

Thank you for your input!
 
Most of the people I've spoken to about Releve, including those normally favorable and close to ETC, have criticized that the Releve is comparatively more expensive for less fixture than you'd get from other manufacturers. If you're thinking about buying into that series, I would say the compelling reasons would be for ETC's support and for the modular nature of the fixture for ease of repairs. Beyond that, it's a fixture that, given it's price point, compromises on features.

Not to say it doesn't have a place in the market but I don't know that it'll rock your socks off.

I tend to think that the brightness component isn't as big a deal as you think, but it depends on what you're using it for. Remember that human visual perception isn't linear across the color spectrum so 20fc of deep blue is very different than 20fc of cyan or deep red, and additive mixing of LED's makes the fixtures great for intense colors whereas subtractive gels for tungsten always killed your output.

A demo in-person will always be more illuminating than trying to compare apples and flying saucers on cut sheets.
 
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Elation's Fuze Profile is a great fixture. Brighter, Lighter, Framing Shutters, Cheaper than Releve.
Mike mentions modular design for the Releve; Elation has moved all of there fixtures to a modular design as well, so you're set there.
 
Regarding brightness, Mike has a point about additive color being different than subtractive color. The Releve meets and exceeds the output of 20,000 Lumen white light fixtures in most colors.

The features that Releve has are very much catered and targeted at theatrical users, specifically in how they are used. Even colors in out of focus gobos. Perfectly smooth frost transition into R132. Rated for both Glass and Steel gobos from major manufacturers. The only fixture with patented motionless homing in under 20 seconds. Not to mention a zoom range that is actually useable in venues of all sizes where a 54 degree focusable wide can be incredibly valuable.

Because of ETCs priority for serviceability, the modularity of Releve takes on a whole different level than any other fixture in the market place. Honestly, it is like apples and cucumbers the type of service, support, and serviceability that ETC provides with Releve. Including a 10 year warranty on LEDs. Power supply replacement in 4 screws, MCB replacement in 4 screws. Designed so that any user of any level of technical skill can have a fixture back up and running in seconds. Yes, this does make it a little bigger, but it is worth it for users who are new to moving lights and don't want to be digging around inside of a complicated robotic system.

Lastly, Releve is engineered, built, warrantied, and serviced in the USA by the company that has been doing it for decades.
 
Not bashing ETC in any way, they own the lighting market because of quality products, unmatched service and rock solid reliability.

Unfortunately, the features I see on the Releve´ don't add up the value you get when you think of the price. For a heavyweight 24/7 install at a mall, theme park or vegas I could see the advantage of not doing an entire home function, the ability to service in place with components, 10 year LED warranty and easy psu replacement.

For the rest of us, we've always designed for moving lights with anticipation of failure and (gasp Ron;)) maintenance, and in most theatre, you mark a partially disabled fixture for swap, someone comes in and throws up a floater fixture and the broken one goes to the shop. No one is going to spend an hour on a lift doing a repair unless there's some sort of full time staff that has nothing better to do and would rather undo screws in the air or on a swinging lineset than they would on a bench.
 
I think we're also getting to a point in our society/economy/culture that we realize that 'Made in the US' doesn't always equate to the best product. I am not speaking specifics here, but in a global economy perspective.
Made in China can be very high quality; High End Systems is made in China with final QC being done stateside. Without that the products would be at least 20% more expensive than they already are, and their fixtures are premium priced as is.
Your Apple products are made in China, and we know those are good quality.
Its more about the quality of components specified, and the after sale support. Who can you call to have an issue resolved, because no matter where it's being made, there will be issues. We all know that.
Anyway, back to the conversation at hand, the Releve is a nice product, but I just can't justify the price with the feature set that is offered. At the end of the day, sometimes it comes down to what features are offered vs the next fixture because the quality is going to be very similar.
 
All useful comments provided so far, but all based on published data and 3 years old. Does anyone have actual experience with Relivé in a small theater. i.e. 10 - 30 foot throws, especially working in conjunction with original Source Four 120v 575W fixtures?
 
It'd be interesting to hear how many folks purchased them. They dont seem to be marketing them much anymore and I dont think they ever got any real traction in the market.
 
It'd be interesting to hear how many folks purchased them. They dont seem to be marketing them much anymore and I dont think they ever got any real traction in the market.
There was only a small sliver of time between the HES acquisition and Releve being released. Once HES got their hat in the ring, the Lonestar fixture was brighter (15,4000 lumens compared to 6,000), had shutters, weighed 20lbs less, could zoom down to 3.8° instead of 18°, had a prism and an animation wheel, and was at a similar price point. Releve then fell by the wayside in the wake of all of that. Mind you, the HES acquisition probably came along late in the development cycle of Releve, and about 18 months after it was released, Covid struck and the industry shut down -- and then Lonestar was announced as things were starting to trickle back online. That means there was almost 2 years of nobody buying new fixtures before Lonestar was shipping. Particularly in this era of LED tech improving, timing is everything. It's very different than the Source Four era where aside from the 750W lamp caps, there were extremely minimal changes to the product over its now 30-year existence.

Not dissimilar to the trajectory of Congo/Cobalt. Congo initially filled a gap between Obsession II and the original Ion when it came to moving light capabilities. Once Ion was released, the North American market didn't really care about Congo anymore. ETC maintained the lineup and improved it into Cobalt, but then the HES acquisition happened and it didn't make sense for ETC to maintain three series of consoles, two of which were rock 'n roll oriented, so they quietly dissolved Cobalt and presumably moved those R&D resources into Hog 4.

Completely unrelated to this topic, but ETC, if you're reading this, please finally kill off the CS PAR's and give me a CS PAR V. It's masochistic spec'ing projects with a mish mash of PowerCon/True1 cables. I'm already dealing with a wave of projects that were specified pre-CS Spot V and having to change lots of cables over to True1 across multiple projects. It would be nice to have total uniformity on this front. Crossing my fingers this will be an LDI announcement but not getting my hopes up.
 
Great coverage of the Relivé history, which helps me understand why there doesn't seem to be any actual experience with one here.
Unfortunately, there's one area where Relivé wins hands down, number of channels. I haven't studied the details, but Lonestar seems to want twice as many channels as Relivé. That's a deal-breaker for a small community theater with an ancient controller that works for us becuase it can handle both DMX and analog outputs. Given the way prices are going, it looks like waiting bit longer would be prudent. LDI looks like a good place to watch. Thanks.
 
If you're worried about channel count, than look into something without framing shutters.
 

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