AC Lighting is a well known and respected lighting distributer. In this case, there are many distributers who have a house brand of lights they either specify and have made for them, or become the local importer for a smaller but established lighting company in another country. Tracoman for instance if I remember right started off primary as AC Lighting is, in being a stage and studio supplier, they brought in Coemar which became a success to the point that is their primary business now and the companies have joined. American DJ is similar to this in that they don’t manufacture their equipment, they are either importing something they engineer or distributing something already made. SMG and TechniLux are the same. To some extent, a company such as AC Lighting standing behind a moving light means the fixtures without a doubt will be decent in quality and have good service and support.
But nope, never heard of Tourspot/Tourwash in my case.
the Tour Spot/Wash have everything thing that the the studio colors and washes if I remember correctly, except no CMY on the spot. Frost, zoom, shutter blah blah blah, all the same stuff.
Ah ok, that makes sense about AC. I knew about tracoman and coemar (but for a while I wasn't sure why I always went to tracoman.com to find coemar products...)
oh and let me just take this time to say that American DJ=POO. I'm sure many agree?
(Well maybe if you have a $20000 budget for moving lights you could but thousands of their lights...but they would still suck)
American DJ is low-priced, entry-level equipment, targeted to young DJs and bands doing their own lighting on a very limited budget. While it is by no means what I would consider "theatrical grade" equipment, it also carries a much lower price than similar gear from "theatrical grade" manufacturers. For the target market, it's a pretty good deal - you get what you pay for.
The DJ/band market is a lot larger than the theater market, letting Amercan DJ make a decent profit while many theatrical-grade suppliers were struggling. They've used the money to buy some of these struggling "theatrical grade" manufacturers, among them LSC and Elation.
The deals helped these manufacturers avoid bankruptcy and gave them the benefits of American DJ's marketing prowess. At the same time, it gave American DJ a way to hold on to customers who were ready to graduate to more professional-grade gear.
The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. If you compare a $250 American DJ scanner with a $2500 scanner from somebody else, the American DJ scanner is really worth $250. Is the other one really worth $2500?
It's kinda different working at a church where the youth dept. has a limited amount of dollars and wants some cool lights, but a "cool" light to them is an American DJ disco ball. To me, that won't work, I want something a little less cheesy.
