ILC
http://www.intelligentlighting.com and Upstaging
www.upstaging.com are the major north side dealers, plus Preformance Lighting
www.performanclightinginc.com .
Than the Chicago area dealers would be Design Lab
http://www.designlab-chicago.com, Grand
Stage http://www.grandstage.com, Chicago Spotlight
http://www.chicagospotlight.com and TLC - sorry but I don't have a link but similar to ILC and Upstaging in every way to your extent.
As the major suppliers and dealers in lighting parts and supplies in the Chicago area. There are other companies with these supplies and lights just not as large in being more ma and pop dealers.
Company policy for most dealers proper would be, nope you don't get to try a
fixture for a period (Yea right you are a big enough buyer to matter in l"et me try it for a few shows than I decide if I want it." We get that from the manufacturers in buying around a hundred fixtures in this test drive option, have to step up your
purchase and budget a
bit to qualifiy in reality beyond at best rental if you can get it.) For the most part, you probably won't even be allowed to rent it unless they know you are compitent in using it. You can come in for a demo even some training and talk about it, but for most moving lights you would need to rent it than also pay a
programmer to both supervise the programming and ensure it's not abused. Sorry but that's reality and nobody is going to take the chance of the local crew dropping even a
Mac 250 given it's a demo
unit. ILC perhaps but also with supervision on the install.
Design Lab, Grand
Stage and Chicago Spotlight might be a little more lax in these policies however and be more flexible in show length instead of tour length or very short term rentals normal to the north side companies. This all beyond the fact that it's a busy summer in the industry and there is a good chance that there is no fixtures available for a day's demo much less a few weeks worth of one.
The above three Chicago sources are
stage and studio rental houses primarially specilizing in
stage type rentals, the others are production companies which also do sales and rentals to those that they can trust. You can buy from any company but for the most part a production
house will have a
bit more stringent guidelines about rentals to those not able to care for the fixtures much less the rental amount of time you would require as opposed to their own needs.
A
MSD 250/2 lamp costs me about $69.00 for you in retail about $95.00 this as the cheap and easy to fix part of the rental as opposed to a
dichroic or
power supply. Just not for the most part cost effective to rent to those that are not assured of knowing already what they are doing with it. We all have our cherity case schools and productions we give to, but for the most part still have to supply a trained crew to supervise the gear.
Look around and
call around to the above companies but don't get your hopes up too high in the company you want gear from doing a extended loaner or demo that allows you to have the
power of final choice of
purchase. Just ain't going to happen with companies that spend the cost of a
fixture per day just in lamps to outfit the inventory, much less labor involved often plays a major
role in the loaner.
Come in for a demo, perhaps work out a rental for a show if available,
call all eight major shops for feeling them out and pricing but don't expect to sit in the
power seat of I might or might not buy one.
Hope it helps.