Buying a set of DMX LED Pars, 54x3w RGBW, to light a small stage.

S

stonehedge99

Active Member
Hi Guys,

Im just about to get a bunch of Led Pars. Im getting the 54 x 3w leds model, approx 10 nos. A chinese brand but reasonably good quality. They offered me 3 qualities and I chose medium level as this will be used maybe 10 times a year for certain specific small venue shows. If they outdo my pars or at least come close to half their power. I don't mind buying another 10 more. Im thinking of getting these because a few years ago led fixtures were pretty dull but nowadays they have turned out pretty bright and have vastly improved and have extremely low power requirements.

My question is....Will 10 nos of the above mentioned LED fixtures work as front or gen lighting for a stage where the venue has only a small stage of w25'x d15'. My regular par 64s will need a complete generator van at the venue etc and the venue is a little conservative kind of location if I'm putting it rightly. So I wanted to get 10 of these and put 5 on each side on T bar stands and I assume these things will run 4 on a domestic power strip. If any of you are using such lights and know about 54x3w fixtures please do advise. The nature of this show wouldn't require to light an area larger than 20' x 10' as that would be the main playing area. So if I get them on almost to the sides and at a 45° angle pointing downwards then would these suffice. Also I am not looking for an extremely intense kind of lighting. A tad bit subdued is ok.

Please advise. Thanks
 
I have a few 36 x 3w fixtures that are probably pretty similar that I bought on ebay for uplighting. Mine are a little shy of matching a 1k par, yours should be pretty close to matching one. Make sure you get the right beam angle for your needs.
 
I was looking at these... they seem to pull under 2 amps at full on, so you could actually put 7 or 8 of them on a 120/20 (and they actually have 120/240 power supplies, so you *could* use 240/20s, if you were so inclined). I'm hoping to grab one and play with it a bit this week or next.

But the questions are
  1. Reliability - how long will they work?
  2. Safety - how will they fail? Will it be (excuse me) theatrical?
  3. Mixing - what distance will they need to be at before you don't have pattern problems?
  4. Output - once they're at that distance, what will square law do to your brightness? And:
  5. Color Balance - if you're concerned about doing a full-mix white, how linear is the color temp, and if it's not good, will your desk let you put a map in to clean it up?
  6. Fan Cooled - if you're doing legit theatre, the noise of a dozen of these might be troublesome.
As far as will they throw enough light, the real question isn't "how big is your stage?", but "what's the slant distance from your pipe to the stage?" (You're not going to find these rated for Lux at Feet, unlike, say, Pucks or Chauvets)

Which fixtures were you looking at?
 
I'm always ifey about Chinese brands... In magic, most chinese are cheap knock-off's. Not sure if lighting matches this trend
 
Jay Ashworth said:
Almost *everything* is manufactured in China these days.

As was pointed out to me, the question is who the seller is.

Here's another version of that light, for almost $300, at which point I'd be buying Chauvets or Pucks, but at least these people rate the output:

Stage Ape Lighting... PERU LED PAR can!
Click to expand...

I'd just buy straight from China or ebay instead of buying from them. Their "warranty" ready to be pretty useless and at less than 1/3 of the price you can buy plenty of spares and have lots of money left for clamps, cable, stands and everything else you might need to use them.
 
Fair point. Assuming one knows how to buy from China. I don't. Anyone interested in starting a thread in OT going into the details? How, how much, how to move money; who's a good seller and who's not; how not to lose all your money? :)

Alas, the fixture I liked the look of at $100 was RGBW, and the Smart Guy in that Harmony thread convinced me that RGBA is a much better approach. And those aren't available RGBA. Looks like it's mostly Hotboxes at that level, and they're $150-250.
 
You can buy direct from China, but expect to order at least 1 pallet worth of stuff to make the freight cost worth it.
 
In general i have seen many fixtures bought from china and at amazing low prices that compete with similar branded products and are still running successfully. Many light rental companies i am familiar with in srilanka are running all on the chinese versions. As a poster above said. Almost everything for even the big names are made in China. Some of the honest chinese companies tell you frankly that a particular product comes in a cheap / mid / top range. Also many big name brands are manufacturing their lights in China. Then selling them under their respective US brand names which yields an increase in price due to shipping, their own branding, advertising, company stature etc and we all know these big companies have profit margins of about 200-300% on each product which includes their entire company running costs to survive. Buying it straight from the manufacturer circumvents all these expenses that ultimately the consumer has to pay for.

So id rather buy 10 mid level units and even if one or 2 fail, thrown them and buy replacements as that makes it more economic than having to pay 8 to 10 times the cost. In my experience in buying electronics from china etc its also a matter of luck. But we can take chances because even if we fail on a couple of choices, you will gain in the big picture. Incidentally costly or big name brands dont mean excellent products either. Ive seen name brands fail for no good reason. I had a media player which i bought to screen projections during live events. This was from a notable brand called MEDIAGATE, and the player just failed to run even moderate bitrate hd videos. Was a lousily put together product with even worse after-sales support. So for a replacement i cheaped out and bought a media player for just 1/3rd the price of the mediagate unit, directly from china. It was a no name brand. Made out of solid extruded aluminium. And it kicks A$$ till date. Has been running for a few years and plays extremely heavy bitrate and large HD video files without stuttering ever. The media gate used to cough and pause between HD playback and you'd have to reset it amid the show. Just a thought i wanted to share.
 
Les said:
You can buy direct from China, but expect to order at least 1 pallet worth of stuff to make the freight cost worth it.
Click to expand...

Hi Les,

The even better part is im not buying this from china. But from a huge importer/distributor who concentrates on large volume sales. I could say almost 70% the dealers in my country are getting their stuff from this company. And they keep a 50% margin and sell it. Buying straight from this importer is getting me a price of lower than getting it from China. :). Because the China guys want a larger price per unit since im only buying 10-12 units. They are cheap yet not the best possible price because. They offer it at half this price to companies buying in the 100s and have the strength to do that. So on that half price the importer slaps a price of maybe with 20% margin and it still works out cheaper than ordering from china directly. And here i can even go and demo/test each light if i can travel to a nearby state for this. Or i can even buy 4 to test the waters and then order for 8 more. The logistics charge is a pittance since its within my country. But if i order from china then the fedex charge is high and 95% customs will grab it and demand high import duty fines. This happened the last time i ordered from China directly.

Now the importer tells me frankly that there are 3 qualities. And the lowest is dirt cheap and the price only a tad more than a normal parcan. But they say its unreliable. The mid level quality they say is decent for people who want to use them for 12 shows a year maybe, which is ideal as my usage for this application would be similar only. And would serve a couple of years easily if treated right. But its not waterproof, which i dont need anyway and i do outdoor. The other is waterproof etc and a little expensive but still only the cost of 5 pars.
 
I bought fixtures on Ebay from a US seller and they are clearly from China. I have had them for about 4 years and have NO problems with them. They were well priced and work great and I have used them on several shows. They have even been left in the cold, heat, and banged around and still work with no issues. A lot of rental houses are even renting the China pars and I have been to several stages that have went with them. My fixtures are made of solid metal, it has been a great investment. Just because it's not a brand name fixture does not mean it is not a good item. I bought a couple to try, I was happy with them so I ordered more. I actually needed more fixtures for a show I was doing so I rented 8 Martin Rush Par1's. They did well but I was surprised that they were made out of plastic, for $500, plastic!!!!! I compared them with my China Pars and they were pretty much very similar in performance, not to mention that screws were already falling out of the Rush Pars when I got them and they were brand new from the rental house!!! I could have bought 8 China pars for $1,000 when one Rush par is $500, you do the math.
 
I've gotta run off to work but a few quick points:

1) It's not worth it, especially for short throw angles, to not go multichip any more. There are many good RGBA, RGBW, and RGBAW products out there that have a homogenizing lens system.

2) Be sure to get video of a 20 second fade of the Chinese product in question from the seller. This will tell you two things. One, does it flicker on video. And two, how horrible is the dropoff at the bottom of the dimming curve. I know a guy who gets most of his lights from China and he asks for video when he's unsure of stuff.

3) Despite what you may think, a lot of the US importers (especially the mid-range and up ones) actually have their own factories in China. They do this so they have more control over the components that go in to the fixtures. Now for DJ level stuff absolutely, they are just buying off the shelf Chinese products, picking a few important characteristics about them, and importing them.

P.S. I'm that "Smart Guy" from over on the Harmony Central forum with the ridiculously long two-part post. I still say RGBA or RGBAW all the way for low-end fixtures because the cool white on most low-end fixtures gives you very little in the way of color mixing usefulness. The amber, on the other hand, is often quite useable.
 
stonehedge99 said:
Hi Guys,

Im just about to get a bunch of Led Pars. Im getting the 54 x 3w leds model ...

Please advise. Thanks
Click to expand...

The trend seems to be more towards 7 - 15 diodes of 8 - 15 watts each, RGBW, or RGBA, or RGBAW, and some even have a UV diode.
The ones you're looking at are probably going to be ok. Not great, but good enough for a temporary use (i.e., not installed). However, the way LED styles are advancing, I would NOT count on them being available for very long. If you're going to buy, buy more than you need for at least these reasons:
1. Chinese direct sellers have some reliability issues. I speak from experience. I have 4 of 24 fixtures out for repair right now. I expect some will come back unrepairable, due to a lack of replacement parts.
2. The public desire and technology and other factors change so quickly that some of these products have a very VERY short shelf life. It is very difficult to get anything that was made more than a year ago.
3. Expect parts availability and seller support to be inconsistent.
 
soundlight said:
1) It's not worth it, especially for short throw angles, to not go multichip any more. There are many good RGBA, RGBW, and RGBAW products out there that have a homogenizing lens system.
Click to expand...

In the PARcan space? Cause I haven't see -- effectively -- *any* lensed product there. Well, perhaps over $500, but that's out of my price range.

P.S. I'm that "Smart Guy" from over on the Harmony Central forum with the ridiculously long two-part post. I still say RGBA or RGBAW all the way for low-end fixtures because the cool white on most low-end fixtures gives you very little in the way of color mixing usefulness. The amber, on the other hand, is often quite useable.
Click to expand...

And that argument stuck on the first try. Alas, the $100 fixtures I was looking at don't come in RGBA at all, so they're out. Annoyingly, while Blizzard has *one* model of RGBA Hotbox, they don't have a Rokbox that has Amber until you get to the 5- and 6- lights, that are at/over $500. <sigh>

I was sort of amused, though, by their "RGBAW/UV" fixtures, in both lines; *that*s preparedness. :)

Punches up the fluorescent gafftape spikes, too.

I'm happy that you chimed in, @soundlight, as it saves me the drive-by registration to ask you what you think has changed in the 2 years since that conversation took place.

Do you have any updated opinions on the state of play in the LED fixture marketplace, and on actual purchasable objects, compared to 2 years ago?
 
Last edited:
If you're buying direct from China there's a slew of multichip RGBA and RGBAW products to choose from.

As for what's available in the US from importers, the Blizzard Puck Q12A is still the best bang-for-the-buck RGBA LED fixture. It's got twelve 10-watt RGBA LEDs whereas the competition (ADJ, Chauvet) uses 5-watt LEDs in their similar fixtures (Flat Par QA12X and Slim Par Quad 12). From what I understand, the colors in the Chauvet and even more so the ADJ are going to be better, but the Blizzard has more output. I'm pretty sure that Chauvet's amber isn't quite as good as ADJ's but is a bit better than Blizzard's. I haven't seen all of those fixtures next to each other though. I think that the ADJ fixture uses the same LEDs as the Elation EPAR QA. The company I work for owns 96 of those and we are very happy with the colors we get out of them, from warm whites to cool whites to lavenders, ambers, and all the usual stuff.
 
Also, for the record: I looked through Alibaba this morning; RGBW fixtures are s drug on the market; RGBAs are *very* hard to find; most of the ones I did see are apparently (sloppy) copy-pasta from the equivalent RGBW... and the work is *so* sloppy, I wouldn't be happy I was actually going to get Amber.
 
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