Theatre Upgrades

WVTheatre

Member
Hi everyone,

Our theatre is looking to replace our Wybron color scrollers (yes we still use those) on our ParNels with some type of LED fixture.

We are looking to purchase either an ETC Desire Series or ColorSource PAR.
The distance from the stage floor to the electrics is no more than 30 feet so throw is not an issue, we just want a bright, even light that can play nice with the colour temperature of our 750w tungsten Source Fours.

Also, does anyone have experience using the Source Four LED Cyc adapter? We still use three-panel RGB tungstens for our cyc and they are incredibly expensive to maintain.

Thanks for any input.

Justyn
Waubonsie Theatre
 
I've never used ETC's Desire Series, but I can tell you that I've had a great experience with their Vivid 11's. I'm only experienced with a relatively small range of fixtures, but for what it's worth, I can tell you about my experience with these guys. These things are super powerful and can cut through even when the stage is fairly bright, where a scroller would tend to get washed out. The Vivid 11's are great because they're a rectangular fixture that allows you to insert a wide array of vertical and horizontal spreads in order to completely and seamlessly cover your entire stage. In our theater, we use them as back/top light and they work great as a stage wash. They're very responsive and have an impressive color range. Unfortunately, theyre rather expensive, at about $8k per unit (at least they originally were)
 
I've had great success with the desire series of fixtures. 2 of the 3 theatres I work in use D60 vivid and a par/fresnel as down lighting (D60 for color, par/fresnel as white fill) the more saturated the color then tone back with the white. 1 theatre trims electrics at 25' the other at 18'.

1 of the theatres also has source 4 LED Cycs. They are awesome. More color choices for a fraction of the power consumption, and they blend a lot better. Before the led cyc we always had hot spots, not any more.

I'm in Wisconsin and from Middleton I will always prefer ETC.

I have also had experience with the Altman Spectra Cyc. Very nice fixture and extremely good wash.
Does that help? Biggest question is how much are you looking to spend?
 
Desire family and Color Source are both great; the Color Source is meant to give you bang for your buck; it's a beautiful, vibrant color mixer. BUT. This one is calibrated for a 5600K CT white point. When you are color mixing, this should be no problem. There will, however be some noticeable difference in intensity output, so you may need to adjust your levels accordingly. Also, if you are ever putting them in a no color with your other S4's, the Color Sources will be noticeably cooler.
 
I too have been very impressed with ETC's LED offerings.

With the Source 4 LED profiles, I think the main thing is to treat them as an independent product and not try to compare them to the Tungsten versions. They clearly do different things.

The Selador VIVID stuff is really good. Although a little old fashioned now. I haven't used ColourSource yet.

I have to say that for cyc options my current favourite is Clay Paky's ShowBatten 100AS. It's (IMO) a slight improvement on the Robe CycFX8.
It's a 1m long, motorised tilt and motorised zoom LED batten with high output LED cells. Besides the obvious improvements for colour mixing and ease of set up that it brings, the automated tilt and zoom can bring some really interesting effects to the cyc cloth.
 
The Vivid 11's are great [...] Unfortunately, theyre rather expensive, at about $8k per unit (at least they originally were)

That's way off. They can be had for $1175 online, and even lower priced than that if you get a quote from a dealer.

@JJBerman and I have worked in many of the same spaces so our experiences are similiar. The rectangular Selador units are great for top or downlight on a cyc. The Source Four LED Cyc's are give you more uniform coverage, but because of their size should only be used for top lighting a cyc or backlighting from above/below. They're way too tall on floor basesto uplight your cyc from the front without some scenery or other masking.

The 11" Vivid's may be your best way to go as far as ETC products are concerned unless you're already buying Source Four LED for other parts of your stage lighting and want to be able to swap lights around. You can get 11" Vivid fixtures for half the price of Source Four LED's. Other benefit is that if your line sets are butted up too closely together, it's easier to stick a Vivid on there without the fixtures getting whacked by adjacent battens than to have a Source Four LED pointed off the pipe facing your cyc.

Overall I've had great experience with Selador classic, the Desires, and the Source Four LED's. My only grievance is that the more mix-n-match you do, the more honky it gets for programming. Different flavors of these products have different LED arrangements and colors. If grab multiple types of fixtures during programming and want to mix them all to the same color, you'd have to use the color picker instead of the individual color parameters. If you start mixing the Cyan parameter for all your selected fixture types and some of the selected fixtures don't have Cyan, things get weird fast.

In general, my opinion can best be summed up as such: ETC's LED offerings are great and allow excellent color rendering that you pay good money for. If all you want to do is spit RGB color on something for flash 'n trash, there are many other offerings available on the market for far less cost. If you want to do lighting for theater and light people, and have flexible color options for all applications (people, scenery, etc) with dramatic smooth fades, then pay the top dollar for Selador classic, Desire, or Source Four LED.

Last note: Be smart about how you do your power distribution if that's not already built into your system. Do something like a LEX E-string to power a whole lot of fixtures over a distance so you don't have to stock an inventory of those blasted PowerCon extension cables in addition to stage pin and Edison extension cables.
 
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I've been super impressed with the ChromaQ ColorForce 72s. They've got a very nice dimming curve a similar footprint to a traditional striplight. I was very surprised at how well they lit my cyc, and were awesome border lights for a full stage wash in a pinch. A little pricey but tons of bang for the buck.
 
The 11" Vivid's may be your best way to go as far as ETC products are concerned unless you're already buying Source Four LED for other parts of your stage lighting and want to be able to swap lights around. You can get 11" Vivid fixtures for half the price of Source Four LED's. Other benefit is that if your line sets are butted up too closely together, it's easier to stick a Vivid on there without the fixtures getting whacked by adjacent battens than to have a Source Four LED pointed off the pipe facing your cyc.

Out of interest, why the 11"?

We use 21" and it works out cheaper per metre to buy the bigger units.

I'm struggling to see what the disadvantage to the bigger ones is.
 
Out of interest, why the 11"?

We use 21" and it works out cheaper per metre to buy the bigger units.

I'm struggling to see what the disadvantage to the bigger ones is.

Uniform spacing between cells. If you buy 16 cells worth of 21" units to cover your cyc or 16 cells of 11", the price difference is negligible but you're now locked into wider spacing between units and more "hot-spotting" between cells. Of course you now have more cables, more power drops, more cells to line up the focus of the tilt on. Some logistical disadvantages but better overall visual uniformity between hot spots and nulls between hot spots.

Especially important if you want to do side-to-side color effects without it looking clunky.
 
I've had great success with the desire series of fixtures. 2 of the 3 theatres I work in use D60 vivid and a par/fresnel as down lighting (D60 for color, par/fresnel as white fill) the more saturated the color then tone back with the white. 1 theatre trims electrics at 25' the other at 18'.

1 of the theatres also has source 4 LED Cycs. They are awesome. More color choices for a fraction of the power consumption, and they blend a lot better. Before the led cyc we always had hot spots, not any more.

I'm in Wisconsin and from Middleton I will always prefer ETC.

I have also had experience with the Altman Spectra Cyc. Very nice fixture and extremely good wash.
Does that help? Biggest question is how much are you looking to spend?
One of the fixtures that was suggested to us to replace our scrollers was the D40, but I came across the D60 and it seemed to do better. It is used for downlighting btw.

To replace our 1000w cyc fixtures, we were quoted some ridiculous number around $40,000, but if the Source 4 LED Cycs look as great as everyone say, we'll save a ton.
 
Desire family and Color Source are both great; the Color Source is meant to give you bang for your buck; it's a beautiful, vibrant color mixer. BUT. This one is calibrated for a 5600K CT white point. When you are color mixing, this should be no problem. There will, however be some noticeable difference in intensity output, so you may need to adjust your levels accordingly. Also, if you are ever putting them in a no color with your other S4's, the Color Sources will be noticeably cooler.
Do you know of any way to change the colour temperature? Might not want to do that with all of our S4's, which output around 3200K.
We bring in our television crew to cover events frequently and want to avoid mixing color temperatures as much as possible.
 
That's way off. They can be had for $1175 online, and even lower priced than that if you get a quote from a dealer.

@JJBerman and I have worked in many of the same spaces so our experiences are similiar. The rectangular Selador units are great for top or downlight on a cyc. The Source Four LED Cyc's are give you more uniform coverage, but because of their size should only be used for top lighting a cyc or backlighting from above/below. They're way too tall on floor basesto uplight your cyc from the front without some scenery or other masking.

The 11" Vivid's may be your best way to go as far as ETC products are concerned unless you're already buying Source Four LED for other parts of your stage lighting and want to be able to swap lights around. You can get 11" Vivid fixtures for half the price of Source Four LED's. Other benefit is that if your line sets are butted up too closely together, it's easier to stick a Vivid on there without the fixtures getting whacked by adjacent battens than to have a Source Four LED pointed off the pipe facing your cyc.

Overall I've had great experience with Selador classic, the Desires, and the Source Four LED's. My only grievance is that the more mix-n-match you do, the more honky it gets for programming. Different flavors of these products have different LED arrangements and colors. If grab multiple types of fixtures during programming and want to mix them all to the same color, you'd have to use the color picker instead of the individual color parameters. If you start mixing the Cyan parameter for all your selected fixture types and some of the selected fixtures don't have Cyan, things get weird fast.

In general, my opinion can best be summed up as such: ETC's LED offerings are great and allow excellent color rendering that you pay good money for. If all you want to do is spit RGB color on something for flash 'n trash, there are many other offerings available on the market for far less cost. If you want to do lighting for theater and light people, and have flexible color options for all applications (people, scenery, etc) with dramatic smooth fades, then pay the top dollar for Selador classic, Desire, or Source Four LED.

Last note: Be smart about how you do your power distribution if that's not already built into your system. Do something like a LEX E-string to power a whole lot of fixtures over a distance so you don't have to stock an inventory of those blasted PowerCon extension cables in addition to stage pin and Edison extension cables.
Thanks Mike. We use toplighting for our cyc, and sometimes add floor lights from behind to do different colours on both halves of the cyc. I haven't heard a single bad thing about the S4 LED Cyc. Seeing the spread, colour selection and coverage myself, I think our manager will be much happier buying a few of these.
 
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Currently working on a project of replacing conventional Fresnels and Cyc lights. Where I recommend the D40 and Altman Spectra Cyc. I have worked with both personally on designs and highly recommend both with this application.

Barry Nelson
 
The Strand PL cyc is also pretty smooth and pretty economical. Do a shoot out with S4 and look at to total price of rig.
Gonna post a second time to this thread:
Our Theater is equipped with an ETC Eos Ti and ETC Ion 4 universes total. We're about to demo our final two candidates before purchasing LED Cyc lights for our 30' H x 50' W white plastic RP (Philips Showline 660/640 and Phiips Selecon PL Cyc 1). Looking forward to seeing how both these fixtures deal with distance, array and especially height coverage. Our Theater offers flexible hang for rentals but over the years have stuck with standard hang positions for both overhead and Ground cycs.
We've demo'd ETC, Colorforce and Altman Spectra Cyc units, all have their good qualities, none have yet blown me away.
We're replacing 2k Altman Ground cyc (8 @ 3 circuit x 2 cell) and 1k Altman Far Cyc (8 @ 3 circiut x 1 cell) and have legacy clients that will need to match cyc colors from years past. Has anyone used either or both of these fixtures and can comment?
 

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