Clay Paky Alpha Spot HPE 575

[Enfield]

Hey all I'm an LD at a local Houston church.
My boss wants me to recommend some moving lights for purchase and I have my eye on the alpha spot hpe 575, I've read they are reliable and a great light, the problem is that I need to see them in action. Is there anyone out there who might have some of these lights that I can view live in Houston?

Thanks

 

[porkchop]

575's are pretty good units, a little under-cooled, but pretty reliable. Keep in mind there are two styles of lamp bases. If you're looking at new fixtures you'll be fine but if you're looking used watch out for a lamp base with two 1" x 1 /2" x 1/2" standoffs with a lamp holder that screws into the top of the standoffs. The new style lamp base is a whole assembly that's harder to disassemble, but a lot better on the lamp and ignitor wires. Old style lamp bases can be swapped out with new ones by the user, but in order to really do it right you usually have to change out the ignitor because the factory doesn't usually leave enough slack on the ignitor wires.

 

[Enfield]

Awesome, thank you. I didn't know about the slight change for the lamp base. I'll look into the change.

 

[porkchop]

If you have any trouble identifying the base I'll dig out the tech bulletin. It doesn't say much about why they did it, but has lots of pictures and shows the installation process.

 

[soundlight]

The Alpha 575s are some of the oldest-design units in the Alpha line from Clay Paky. I was talking to some of the ACT Lighting guys a couple of months ago and they said that since the price of new 575s and 700s was so ridiculously close they were hardly selling any 575s and mostly moving the 700s. I've used the Alpha Profile 700 and that is one fine fixture. I know that Clay Paky optics in general are fantastic, and this fixture definitely lived up to that. So if you've got a line on some used units that you know are in really good condition, go for it, but otherwise bump up to the 700s.

I would also like to recommend an LED solution though. We recently had the folks from Robe in our shop for a demo and they showed us the new DLS/DLX fixtures. DLS has framing shutters, DLD replaces the shutters with a second gobo wheel. The craziest thing is that these fixtures don't have an arc source lamp - they have an RGBW LED source. We put a MAC700 (another great unit to look at for used fixtures, absolutely bulletproof and unbelievably reliable) up against it, and the DLS was brighter in every color except white and very light tints. In white it was brighter than an MSR575-based head. Definitely give them a look (Robe Robin DLX Spot). The Robe USA office is in Florida, you can have your local Robe dealer set up a demo. I was doubtful at first but left the demo completely sold on the units. And you won't have to keep buying those arc source lamps.

ETA: Looks like the Alpha 575s have been discontinued, so I assume you're buying used. Still, give the Robe DLX a whirl, I'm sure that someone would be glad to bring one out to demo.

 

[Chleby]

Disney on Ice will be in Houston at Reliant Stadium in about a week and a half. We have about about 20 Alpha 575s in out rig.