Chauvet Professional Fixture Review

[JBKC21]

Hey all,

I've been coming around for years and always appreciate the real world reviews I see. It's helped me make some purchasing decisions in the past. 2 years ago I took the leap of faith and purchased several Chauvet Professional fixtures. Over time, I've added more.

Current inventory:

24 -- R2 Wash
6 -- R2 Spots
12 -- RH1 Hybrids
4 -- Stike 883
4 -- Strike 4's
4 -- Vesuvios
12 -- Colorado 1 Tri IP's

We are an outdoor covered venue, so these lights take some abuse from sunshine and the elements. We do "bag" the upstage lights after every show if weather is in the forecast. I've had a few R2 Spots require repair after getting wet... It didn't take much to hurt those, yet the R2 Wash's have held up perfectly.

I'm not a light guy, so I won't give long reviews of each product. What I can tell you is all the national acts we've had, with the exception of a few grumpy and spoiled young LD's have loved the fixtures. I'm starting to see more and more acts come through with something Chauvet Professional in their stage package.

The one complaint I have, and this could be the distance from our downstage truss to the downstage edge, but the R2 spots don't get used nearly as much as I thought they would by visiting LD's. I think the output at that distance is just a little to weak. Not a knock on the fixture at all.

The Strike series has been outstanding and the RH1's are killer. I'm hoping to sell the R2 washes and spots used and slowly upgrade to the MK series.

Between the outdoor stage and our other surrounding venues, we have over 400 Chauvet fixtures. Most all of them hold up great.

Basically, if you're looking to purchase new lighting and want to save thousands. Don't overlook the Chauvet Pro stuff.

 

[Apmccandless]

I second this. I used to work for a company that invested heavily into chauvet fixtures. I was concerned when I got there because I had had problems with the conventional fixtures I had bought from chauvet in the 2000's. When I left 5 years later most of those fixtures were still going strong. The colordash battens and pars took a beating. They were kept in house made road cases but otherwise were pretty abused. Wet and damp environments heat, cold, tents, you name it. We ended up buying more. In the end out of the 200 or so fixtures we had over the 5 years we had 2 series of problems. One batch of 30 batten fixtures came to us defective (would periodically go into strobe mode and do a factory reset) which chauvet replaced. Second, the colordash batten tri's, 30 percent (we owned 45 and 15 were dead) of those failed after about 5 years I was told it had something to do with too much heat causing the solder to become brittle.
That being said when I left and set out on my own I buy chauvet fixtures. I own rogue r2 washes and colorbands and they keep on going no matter what I throw at them.

 

[soundlight]

@Pie4Weebl and I have 86 Chauvet Pro moving heads and growing. R1 spots, R1 washes, R1 FX-Bs, R2 washes, RH1 Hybrids, Maverick MK2 Spots, NXT-1 moving panels. Great fixtures, very reliable. We're a touring house so our stuff goes out with bands in trailers all over the country and it's rock solid gear.