CtrlBth. helped w/ a great moving fixture purchase: THANKS! Now on to RGBA wash fixture questions.

rxh5015

Member
Hello ControlBooth,

You guys helped me make a great decision in the past and now that I am satisfied with moving heads. I am now looking for something to wash the stage because moving heads alone are too dark.

Background: We are a band that plays in small (bars/clubs) to medium sized (basketball courts) sized venues and parties. I have researched into wash lights and have decided to go with RGBA LED wash bars. But I am having paralysis as to which ones to get and which ones are worth to pay more for that just simple Chauvet colorstrips.

I have a couple of questions that will predetermine what fixtures i want to concentrate on and not have a list of all the available bars on the market. so....

1. What is the difference between a LED bar with multiple LED's than one with tri LED's. Does one offer more area coverage than the other? Is there an advantage to having a few more powerful LED's than multiple low powered ones? would they look really different on stage? Any other input is welcome as well.

2. There seems to be a lot of battery powered and wireless fixtures coming out. What is your input on these fixtures from ADJ and chauvet? Has anyone had experience with freedom products from chauvet or the GO products from american DJ? Do batteries really last the hours they claim? Do wireless DMX controls experience a lot of glitches? Please comment as much as possible as this is a very important requirement I am still indecisive on.

3. Moving bars. I stumbled upon moving bars such as the Chauvet Colorband Pix-M and the american DJ sweeper beam. I am leaning towards these mostly because I just love the fact that they are moving bars, and the effects can be more impressive on stage. I know they are different fixtures (one being a wash and one being a beam) but my ideal set up would be 4 sweeper beams and 4 colorbands. This is more of a monetary question. Are these worth getting? anyone had an experience with them and regret getting them? I may not be able to afford the ADJ color sweepers now (they are about ~$500. That seems a very high price considering that their white sweeper beams are ~$350.) BUt i am definitely considering the Colorband Pix M's.


Any input is appreciated. What bar fixtures would you recomend? go wireless or not? get a moving bars or not? Really open to discussion and suggestions. Budget is around ~$350 per bar. Maybe 400 if I really see the advantage of having fixtures. But of course the less for a great quality product, the better. I am using MYDMX 2.0 just in case that comes into play.
 
In the tri-led designs (or quad-led), each LED package has 3 or 4 LED dice in it, one per color. This puts them closer to each other to improve mixing and greatly reduces the color fringing you see at the edge of shadows. Just watch out for the power claims. Many (especially lower-end) companies call an LED with 3 1-W chips a 3W LED, even though you only get one watt of each color per LED.
/mike
 
In the tri-led designs (or quad-led)...even though you only get one watt of each color per LED.
/mike

Thank you for the explanation. So there is a certain advantage of one over the other. I think I will go with the tri/quad led set up. Great, this reduces my options by 2/3 products. =)
I will definitely take a look at the specifications sheets and make sure they have what they claim.
 
Does anyone here prefer the PAR wash LED's as opposed to the BAR wash LED's? I have been looking at the sticky that shows pictures of the shows you guys have and it seems like par LED's are proffered for stage? Is there a reason for this? They do look amazing.
 
I like the PAR set up myself. I personally just picked up a bunch of Blizzard hotbox 5's for about $250 a piece. They have RGBVW. I like the option of having a full UV wash whenever I want it.
 
I like the PAR set up myself. I personally just picked up a bunch of Blizzard hotbox 5's for about $250 a piece. They have RGBVW. I like the option of having a full UV wash whenever I want it.

I think I like blizzard lighting is great. But they are a little over my budget. I checked out blizzard par's and it seems like I would have to cary more fixtures and that means more cables and more work.

we are only 5 guys at the moment setting a whole rig (including soundcheck) in about 1-2 hours most. I want something powerful that I can set up quicker and without having to link a lot of fixtures. ie. i would prefer something like the ADJ ultrabar 12 rather than carry small Ultrabar 6's. Not that i want those fixtures specifically, just an example.

on that note. I did not know that there was RGBAW or RGBVW fixtures out there. Thanks for letting me know that. Although i don't see an advantage for us have UV light, i do see an advantage of having white on the fixtures.
 
I think I like blizzard lighting is great. But they are a little over my budget. I checked out blizzard par's and it seems like I would have to cary more fixtures and that means more cables and more work.

we are only 5 guys at the moment setting a whole rig (including soundcheck) in about 1-2 hours most. I want something powerful that I can set up quicker and without having to link a lot of fixtures. ie. i would prefer something like the ADJ ultrabar 12 rather than carry small Ultrabar 6's. Not that i want those fixtures specifically, just an example.

on that note. I did not know that there was RGBAW or RGBVW fixtures out there. Thanks for letting me know that. Although i don't see an advantage for us have UV light, i do see an advantage of having white on the fixtures.
They also have RGBAW+UV! And if you get even more expensive, ETC has RGBAWCI (Red, Green, Blue, Amber, White, Cyan, Indigo)!
 

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