After a year of pestering @Ben Dickmann and @Ford on the floor of the trade shows, I finally made the leap and purchased a set of 7 Chauvet Ovation B2805FC's for my theater. After about two weeks of working with them, I'm VERY happy with them and know I made the right choice.
My first impression taking them out of the box is that these are high quality fixtures. They are heavy. Little things like the way you adjust the tightness of the tilt on the hanging brackets are just really well done. The programming menu is easy to navigate and easy to flip the orientation. When you power them up even at top fan speed they are still VERY quiet, yet you feel a decent amount of airflow coming through the vents. They are designed to be both flexible and easily daisy chained with inputs for 3pin and 5pin DMX, RJ45 EtherCon, and PowerCon on one end, and the outputs on the other end. Setup was a breeze.
With the RGBAL LED emitters, the light quality is beautiful! It does a dark purple that looks like UV. Thanks to the lime emitters Yellow, Amber, and Green really Pop off the cyc. After so many years of frustration trying to make a decent yellow, amber, or purple with my old gel cyc lights I'm in heaven.
They are FREAKING BRIGHT! I have 7 of the 5' 9" long version a continuous end to end setup, covering the entire onstage portion of my cyc. I seriously doubt I'll ever run them at 100%... in fact I think it'll be rare that I ever kick them up over 60%! I probabliy would have been fine with 6 of them... maybe 5 although there wouldn't be the wonderfully smooth blend with gaps between fixtures. So look at this. Here's 100% Blue only at 100% brightness. It looks good, but the picture doesn't capture how bright it really is.
So let's go up on stage and turn around to face the house. In the picture below, every light in the theater is off except the cycs.
Again, CRAZY bright! My sales guy tells me that he sold a full top and bottom set to a nearby college. The T.D. says he will probably never turn them above 30% because it's just too much light!
My initial experience with Chauvet Support was excellent. I had some issues with them locking on full and/or strobing at first, but a few emails and phone calls to Chauvet and we worked out that there were issues with power and DMX. Problem solved.
Finally the price can't be beat. Depending on how good of a relationship you have with your local dealer and how big of a package you are buying, you should be able to get them for under $2,000 each. I spent the last year searching the trade shows for just the right fixture and I don't think you can beat the combination of quality, features, and price right now. We cut our energy bill significantly. It's a little less heat for the HVAC to fight with and best of all I never have to change gel again.
My only complaint... The name is obnoxious. What happened to nice naming conventions like Colordash, ColoRado, Maverick, and Rogue? Instead it's the Ovation B-1965FC, Ovation B-565FC, and Ovation B-2805FC UGH.
So a big two thumbs up from Gaff on the Chauvet Ovation B-2805FC. Beutiful colors. Well Made. Good prices.
My first impression taking them out of the box is that these are high quality fixtures. They are heavy. Little things like the way you adjust the tightness of the tilt on the hanging brackets are just really well done. The programming menu is easy to navigate and easy to flip the orientation. When you power them up even at top fan speed they are still VERY quiet, yet you feel a decent amount of airflow coming through the vents. They are designed to be both flexible and easily daisy chained with inputs for 3pin and 5pin DMX, RJ45 EtherCon, and PowerCon on one end, and the outputs on the other end. Setup was a breeze.
With the RGBAL LED emitters, the light quality is beautiful! It does a dark purple that looks like UV. Thanks to the lime emitters Yellow, Amber, and Green really Pop off the cyc. After so many years of frustration trying to make a decent yellow, amber, or purple with my old gel cyc lights I'm in heaven.
They are FREAKING BRIGHT! I have 7 of the 5' 9" long version a continuous end to end setup, covering the entire onstage portion of my cyc. I seriously doubt I'll ever run them at 100%... in fact I think it'll be rare that I ever kick them up over 60%! I probabliy would have been fine with 6 of them... maybe 5 although there wouldn't be the wonderfully smooth blend with gaps between fixtures. So look at this. Here's 100% Blue only at 100% brightness. It looks good, but the picture doesn't capture how bright it really is.
So let's go up on stage and turn around to face the house. In the picture below, every light in the theater is off except the cycs.
Again, CRAZY bright! My sales guy tells me that he sold a full top and bottom set to a nearby college. The T.D. says he will probably never turn them above 30% because it's just too much light!
My initial experience with Chauvet Support was excellent. I had some issues with them locking on full and/or strobing at first, but a few emails and phone calls to Chauvet and we worked out that there were issues with power and DMX. Problem solved.
Finally the price can't be beat. Depending on how good of a relationship you have with your local dealer and how big of a package you are buying, you should be able to get them for under $2,000 each. I spent the last year searching the trade shows for just the right fixture and I don't think you can beat the combination of quality, features, and price right now. We cut our energy bill significantly. It's a little less heat for the HVAC to fight with and best of all I never have to change gel again.
My only complaint... The name is obnoxious. What happened to nice naming conventions like Colordash, ColoRado, Maverick, and Rogue? Instead it's the Ovation B-1965FC, Ovation B-565FC, and Ovation B-2805FC UGH.
So a big two thumbs up from Gaff on the Chauvet Ovation B-2805FC. Beutiful colors. Well Made. Good prices.