How much LED in your rig?

[JSFox]

How much of your rig is currently LED? What percent of purchases in the next year will be?

How much of your current rig can be in total instruments, total output, and maybe even your guesstimate of how much of current productions are lit w/ LED (we recently put up a show with about 20% of instruments LED, but probably 50% was lit w/ LED since many of the conventionals were leko's used only very briefly.)

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Across the three facilities I work in we have 982 conventional and 219 LED (however, 70 of the LED's are Chauvet colordash accent RGBW's which are pretty anemic, but very handy for where they can be hidden). Since I really like color and shadow we are tending to use the RGB LED's pretty heavily so I'd guesstimate that over 30% of the lighting in any one show is LED.

Coming year purchases will likely be about 80% LED (S4 RGBx?, Colorado washes). Only conventionals will be some VL1100TSD's. Besides the RGB (or X7 or RGBWA or ...) capabilities, I really like being able to daisy chain power & DMX through a bunch of fixtures and not have to worry about channelized dimmer cabling.

 

[Amishplumber]

My rigs (for musical theater) are usually 10% LED, by fixture count, depending on size of the show. Usually I'll have 1 system of LEDs somewhere. Often my background set wash will be LED, or I'll have LEDs in as sidelights. Smaller shows sometimes get LED backlight. Never anything central to actor visibility, always some sort of accent.

Concerts are another matter though. Mostly LED there.

Only thing I could imagine buying in the next year is LEDs! Venues always have conventional fixtures, If I need movers I'll rent them. LEDs are the only thing worth having on hand at a moments notice in my life.

 

[sk8rsdad]

Our wash system is 60% LED by fixture count, comprising the top, sides, back, and cyclorama systems. Conventionals are used in the FOH, front, and side systems as well, mostly Source Four ellipsoidals and Source Four fresnels.

By inventory count, LEDs are about 30% of the inventory.

 

[JChenault]

Depends on the venue.

For a club environment the environment ( for new installs) is virtually all LED except for movers. ( and in the newer clubs we are starting to use LED movers as well). Chosen for energy use ( anemic power to the room ) and maintenance.


For an older venue where I do a number of musicals each year - we have 12 LED par cans we use for backlight - and about 80 - 90 other conventional and movers.

I'm curious why you are interested?

 

[JSFox]

I'm curious why you are interested?

I'm curious why your curious about my curiosity...

Just curious how quickly LED are making inroads in real applications in a variety of venue's.

 

[emoreth]

So far, the only things we use LEDs for are backdrop color and illuminating the drum kit. That's 30 Colorblast 12s. We run IMAG for everything, and the color differences between stage and screen are hard to miss, so I'm not sure whether I like the idea of adding more LEDs to our inventory. That said, our main venue is all long-throw and low-budget (for its size), so non-LED lights that give me good saturated color are hard to come by.

 

[DuckJordan]

1% and they are 8 par 26s

 

[JSFox]

1% and they are 8 par 26s

Hah. My first LED was an ADJ P36 that they sent me about 7 years ago. I actually found them kind of useful and bought a bunch of them. For darker scenes that needed color on a budget they weren't too bad.

 

[DuckJordan]

We don't do too much of our own shows. They are used for upwashes on walls for wedding receptions... Part of being a road house is getting nothing for gear and tons of dimmers/conventionals. Have one of the first Gio's but less than a Universe of dimmers XD

 

[Nelson]

The only LEDs in our venue are the signal indicators on our audio mixer! We have no LED stage lights whatsoever. This is simply because we have plenty of conventionals that work fine and no money (or strong desire) to upgrade.

 

[cpf]

Well, we've got:

- LED rack lights
- LED littlelites on order (fancy!)
- LED indicators on the amps
- LED flashlights
- LED night-lights sharpied blue backstage
- LED rope lights

 

[traxman25]

We use almost all conventionals simply because there isn't any money in the area to upgrade. We almost got some this year and then funding magically disappeared. We all want to upgrade, it's just a matter of finding the coin.

 

[hobbsies]

Midsized chicago theatre here...we usually have 10 american dj led pars as a dl or architecture accent system. Our board only has 192 chans so there's only so many intelligent fixtures we can have

 

[JSFox]

Thanks for everyone's input. Budgets are interesting things. For some folks it's budget that keeps them from getting LED's, for me it has often been budget driving me to LED's (I tend to like a lot of color so LED's are more efficient for me than others (and I don't expect to ever get asked to light "Twelve Angry Men")). Then again, it was tight budgets that drove me to buy VL1000's. Speaking of those twelve angry men, LED's (Seladors excepted?) certainly aren't a very good option for straight plays with natural lighting design.

 

[sk8rsdad]

LED's (Seladors excepted?) certainly aren't a very good option for straight plays with natural lighting design.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. There are lots of roles for LEDs, even crappy little LEDs in a lighting plot. I've seen low-end Blizzard Pucks used as uplights or downlights on sets to accentuate a bit of architecture. A cyclorama or skylight viewed through a window of box set can be lit with LED, and they would be a good choice for backing lights, or emulating the light from a TV set, or as a battery-operated light in a set piece. It's all about the right tool for the job and they are another tool in an LD's kit. Any saturated light could be provided by LED.

 

[JSFox]

I'm not sure I entirely agree with this. There are lots of roles for LEDs, even crappy little LEDs in a lighting plot. I've seen low-end Blizzard Pucks used as uplights or downlights on sets to accentuate a bit of architecture. A cyclorama or skylight viewed through a window of box set can be lit with LED, and they would be a good choice for backing lights, or emulating the light from a TV set, or as a battery-operated light in a set piece. It's all about the right tool for the job and they are another tool in an LD's kit. Any saturated light could be provided by LED.

Completely agree, poor wording on my part. Perhaps I should have said, "If I were doing a straight version of Twelve Angry Men I would likely not use many or any LED's." Then again, on second thought, I just might use primarily LED's if I were trying to get that vacuous pasty glow of florescent, but perhaps with a fine dose of several Kw of incandescent coming in through the window blinds.