Best LED for high school down wash

[DavidNorth]

I was curious about the R1 Wash so went and looked at the data. I will recommend, as others have, to get a demo. It's small and lightweight, but it also is not very bright and has a fan. We often forget about weight and fans. We also know that various reported data on brightness are not accurate based on color use.

Demo and demo several different makes and models together. Having remote access to beam size, pan and tilt are really neat, but ultimately, you need to light the performance.

Let us know what you learn as many folks are in the same position you are.

David

 

[venuetech]

I saw another thread where LED PAR Zoom fixtures were suggested. such as the Martin- Rush Par2 or Elation's Arena Q7 Zoom a number of others that i have been looking at. having a motorized zoom could be nice.

 

[StradivariusBone]

I had a neighboring HS TD suggest buying a batten worth of downlight and using it as a backlight wash to get a little more mileage out of it while I shore up the funds to buy more. Being in a school setting it is difficult to save up enough to buy everything at once due to how they operate.

I would definitely love to demo fixtures, but (and this will sound a bit stupid), I'm not exactly sure how to go about arranging that. The nearest rental shop to us is SEAL in Orlando, but they don't have any of the fixtures I've been looking at. I usually do business with BMI and Full Compass, do they ship demo fixtures? I'm not aware of any local dealers that would give as good a price as the big guys.

 

[mikeydoesstuff]

Call someone you know who is a Chauvet or Martin or whatever dealer. They can probably find a way to get you a demo, or at least themselves a demo set up to let you check out gear.

 

[RickR]

Call who you would like to deal with and ask them. Even if they usually don't, they might for a known customer. Worst case they say NO and you call someone else.

 

[Ford]

Please PM me your contact information, and I will arrange for someone to contact you for a Demo of the R1 Wash, and whichever other Chauvet Professional products you'd like to see.

thanks,
-Ford

 

[JimOC_1]

I‘m an amateur helping at our high school, not one of the more experienced folks here. But I did put up 9 of the Blizzard Lighting HotBox 7x 15W RGBW + UV (April 2014).

Proscenium opening is 25’. We have 15’ from the proscenium to the back drop. Normal staging uses from 10’ in front of proscenium to the back drop. The goal was front lighting for the back half of the stage, with these lights on the first stage electric at ~ 15’(H). (In the house we have 16, 575 GLA lamped lekos out 15’ to 30’ from the lip. Backlights are cheap 575 parnels)
We received a small grant with a limited time to use it. All I had time for was requesting bids with no time to demo instruments.

Although I like the HotBox, in retrospect I wish I’d added some $$$, and gone with Blizzard Lighting RokBox™ 5 18x15W RGBW+UV instead.
The directors were thrilled with the color flexibility because it fit their pageantry style (hence the UV). I struggle a little with white (having normally used no-color pink and blue for our mixed race performers, and some magenta for highlighting our current stars with darker skin). But feel we do ok with the lights. If we had gone with the RokBox I’d have more white intensity and need to mix in less of the colors for the overall brightness I often go for.

Zooms as have been mentioned, and Hotsticks (recommended by Bill Cronheim for another upgrade) may be useful.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[AshleyB]

Strad,

Curious what you went with and how they are working out for you! Our stage has similar dimensions (40' x 20' prosc. opening, deep stage, enormous apron), and I'm also beginning a funding campaign for new fixtures.