New ETC Fixtures (Including ETC FRESNEL)
- Thread startersoundlight
- Start date
The Girlfriend just directed a show for a middle school and they have something like 30 of them washing the stage. I'm watching the show today and helping out with strike so I'll give you some opinions tonight. From what I've seen of them I'm not sure if I'm a fan or not. I will say the first thing I noticed is they don't seem to suffer from the hotspot that the S4 pars do. They looked almost perfectly even with no change of intensity within the light they put out.
I haven't but a regional theatre nearby has. In a shootout with a Strand 8" Fresnel, it was brighter when fully flooded, however, it doesn't spot down as much. It also has an odd point in which is starts to flood back out with a drastic drop in lumens when spotting it down, thus it's hard to preset them to a spot.
Overal, they are great, brighter while using less power (they have them lamped at 750w). They haven't used them in a show with individual saturated gel yet so I couldn't tell you how that holds up.
The adjustable yoke has come in handy as well.
The only negative seems to be the giant "Accessory Holder Door". They bought barndoors from City Theatrical that are designed for the ETC Par and they only fit in the outer slot. This causes a large amount of spill out of the sides of the fixture. This can be alleviated by either a dummy gel frame in the inner slot or BlackWrap. Even harder to deal with, the Wybron color scrollers (unsure of model) prohibit this door from closing. They just had to shave off 1/8" from the scroller frame itself in order to allow it to close. Not a deal breaker obviously but still annoying.
Overal, they are working out great once the kinks were worked out!
Overal, they are great, brighter while using less power (they have them lamped at 750w). They haven't used them in a show with individual saturated gel yet so I couldn't tell you how that holds up.
The adjustable yoke has come in handy as well.
The only negative seems to be the giant "Accessory Holder Door". They bought barndoors from City Theatrical that are designed for the ETC Par and they only fit in the outer slot. This causes a large amount of spill out of the sides of the fixture. This can be alleviated by either a dummy gel frame in the inner slot or BlackWrap. Even harder to deal with, the Wybron color scrollers (unsure of model) prohibit this door from closing. They just had to shave off 1/8" from the scroller frame itself in order to allow it to close. Not a deal breaker obviously but still annoying.
Overal, they are working out great once the kinks were worked out!
tomlittrell
Member
Hi - re: the Source Four Fresnel - we realized quickly that the bottom accessory 'ear' was too thick for the Wybron scroller plate, so we've fixed that so the Wybron plate sits completely into the slot. Thanks for the great feedback. One thing we learned - if you want the beam characteristics of a Fresnel and good barn-door performance, you do it the classic way - with a Fresnel lens and a lamp in a spherical reflector. It only took a few years to make the system work with an HPL lamp!
Tom
Fixtures Product Manager
ETC
Tom
Fixtures Product Manager
ETC
I probably should have said that they were a part of the first shipment and purchased solely off of ETC's reputation site unseen. They had to make a purchase quickly before their energy grant expired and just took a shot at it. Glad to hear that the Wybron issue has been addressed. The designer for the first show that they got used in was hesitant to try them out at first but ended up loving them. After the first person used them, all the rest followed.
As much as I love a good Fresnel for some applications, for your uses (primarily concerts and some dance, yes?), I would think S4PARs would be better--brighter and less expensive. Plus the FRES7 only spots down to about an MFL.
Similar threads
