[K-Funk]

Hi I have 200euro to spend on a light that will single handedly turn around my failing roadshow.............................................................sorry ...just kidding!!!!


I will be looking to get a lightshow someday soon when my PA kit is paid off. Now and again over the last few months I have had a look at what's out there but get confuzzled about what to go for.

ONe thang is for sure I won't have a massive amount of money to spend, hence I have been gravitating toward LED lighting for cost and weight reasons. Most on here seem to diss the LED lighting market in favour of more expensive traditional lighting.

I wanna know is LED really all that bad or is there products out there now that can give you a nice impressive balanced looking set up of say 3 to 4 lights that will work nicely together.

Also DMX........necessary or not.

If the upshot of this thread is LED is gash go for something else then suggest a balanced low cost show.

ready steady go....................................

This post has been edited by K-Funk: 30 July 2010 - 11:08 AM

[Supersound]

depends on the gigs you are doing and the venue size,LED has its place but better(heavier lighting has more of an effect and looks more classy at upmarket gigs.
So to summarize,i wouldn't knot LED lighting entirely.

Paul

[Mark Hayter]

From a DJ point of view....LED is horrible blah blah blah, get moving heads etc

But from a customer point of view? most parties/pubs etc would be fine with LED lighting, maybe not so much for weddings where you want slow movement in maybe one colour like pink for 1st dance etc.

How about LED scans? I know a mate of mine who runs a successful busy wedding disco company using LED scans.

[Colin Cook]

I personally think it is down to personal preference, individual circumstances and common sense, Keith.

There is nothing wrong with the majority of the LED lighting if you just want light, and dont mind dots. They are light, powerful, cheap.

But - if you are wanting to do classy weddings, then something else is called for. Certainly 'cheap' doesnt do it.

Good LED fixtures with gobos etc are available, but they are at least as expensive as conventional lights.

For a wedding, loads of dots simply does not look good in comparison to a gobo.

Also, many of the LED lights work by switching one colour off to switch another on (such as the impossibleds etc). For some people, myself included this gives a pseudo-strob effect which I find uncomfortable to watch and gives me a physical headache.Others work differently.

Good quality lights dont have to be hugely more expensive, especially if you look around and buy used. The problem is, LED Technology offers manufacturers and therefore retailers far better profit potential so most are phasing out the lower end of the conventional market.

I even bought a pair of LED lights to do kids parties with. Then I realised that not only didnt I like them, but to be honest carrying 2 Twisters in instead wasnt really any more hassle at all, and as I use them for all my gigs it made sense not to buy additional gear.

The best thing is to get over to a shop and have a look at the LED ones, then try to have a look at some conventional lights. LED lights do have amazing colours though, similar to discharge lamps. Their power output is still questionable though IMO, but will improve hugely over the coming 12-18 months.

If it were me, putting together a lightshow for Weddings which I could also use for general parties, I'd look at my average gig sizes, my fees and set a budget based on that.

For example -

1 pair of used Twister 4HPs at £150 ish, and a pair of new Dynarocks at £200 ish gives a full lightshow for little money. Both are controllable and DMX-able, the Dynarocks also come with the little CA8 if you buy a pair. That's £350 for a good lightshow - same as I used for a couple of years.

Or, for a bit more money, a pair of the Twisters and a single Wizard - all used, total price under £500. This is what I use for most gigs now.

For Twisters, although I really like these lights you could consider as a viable alternative a pair of EVL Spins or similar. Or, for a little more money the Abstract XP Pro Extreme Range / Mad Power Flower which have separate gobo.colour wheels and discharge lamps.



In fact there are dozens of great combinations you could go for Keith. Used scanners/barrels from Martin, EVL, Abstract etc

Again, if money is fairly loose, you could do a lot worse than the iSolution range of products from Acme. They are rather large but very good performers, especially the HID ranges.


Now that loads of DJs have LED Dotty things I am getting comments from Venue managers that it is nice to see 'proper lights' again, and also contact from potential clients asking if I use those 'things which put dots all over'. Those alone are enough to put me off buying them, the fact I dislike them so much is another lol!

But - if you are doing just general parties, your prices are low-mid and you just want an average system which does the job, is cheap and easy to carry, then they offer a lot of advantages.

Actually Keith - if you arent in a hurry to get home on the Friday you are up here we could pop over in the morning to Mike at PhaseOne and you could have a look at his stuff. He has a wide variety of LED products in stock but is also a martin dealer so hopefully could demonstrate the EFX range to give you an idea of the differences in gobos, colour, movement etc.

This post has been edited by Colin Cook: 30 July 2010 - 11:40 AM

[LeBart]

- A started with 2 led-boxes ... now I use the as wall washers.
- then a 4 bar with 3 high power led pars and a ADJ led vision - i'm still very happy about this set and I still use it.
- lately there are new tri-leds on the markets which give you better color-mixing ... i bought a eurolite kls-800 (flat 4 bar) and i'm amazed with on the one hand the amount of light coming of that thing and the very good sound-to-light mode and on the other hand the easy of use and handling. And it looks very slick too. Had very good responses from clients about those flat small lights up on the stand.

For all par and flowery type effects i use led (ADJ mystic led) and I'm happy with it. For the moving heads I have martin hti-150s and I won't replace them soon.
The best thing about led ... it doesn't give of heath and you don't have to worry you trip the power breakers ... something that happened from time to time with large good old par64 setups

http://www.djlebart.be/album/ ... from pic 20 on you see the leds in action (not the kls-800)

[Stardust Disco Roadshow]

K-Funk, on 30 July 2010 - 12:07 PM, said:

Hi I have 200euro to spend on a light that will single handedly turn around my failing roadshow.............................................................sorry ...just kidding!!!!


I will be looking to get a lightshow someday soon when my PA kit is paid off. Now and again over the last few months I have had a look at what's out there but get confuzzled about what to go for.

ONe thang is for sure I won't have a massive amount of money to spend, hence I have been gravitating toward LED lighting for cost and weight reasons. Most on here seem to diss the LED lighting market in favour of more expensive traditional lighting.

I wanna know is LED really all that bad or is there products out there now that can give you a nice impressive balanced looking set up of say 3 to 4 lights that will work nicely together.

Also DMX........necessary or not.

If the upshot of this thread is LED is gash go for something else then suggest a balanced low cost show.

ready steady go....................................

Depends what LED effects you are talking about.

Anything that produces "dots" should have been left back in the 80s (same place my ex light screens needed to go).

If you're going for LED get effects that have a single source / high powered LED, with a gobo wheel and a color wheel. In effect the same as an Halogen / HID effect with an LED instead. For some reason it's taken most manufacturers a while to gasp the idea and they just stick 100 LEDs on a PCB and it looks shit! (like a mini light box lol).

The other thing with LED is the 40k hours is a myth. I have 4 of the X-scans. They are brilliant for the money and have 8 colors / 8 gobos / dmx / built in programs and are more than capable. However all 4 have been replaced due to LED failure in an year and a half (hardley 40k hours). By the way ADJ said I shouldn't discuss this, but what the hell lol. But since the replacements admittably no more problems. To get the LED replaced "out of warranty" will cost you around £100, and you won't be able to do it in situ.

There are some reasonable priced Halogen effects out there though. You can get the older Irock 5s for £225 each now. I've considered it.

RE DMX - Not necessary. You can get a basic controller that will give perhaps a slow pan, blackout, and sound to light mode which will do most gigs.

This post has been edited by Stardust Disco Roadshow: 30 July 2010 - 11:44 AM

[K-Funk]

Colin Cook, on 30 July 2010 - 12:26 PM, said:

Actually Keith - if you arent in a hurry to get home on the Friday you are up here we could pop over in the morning to Mike at PhaseOne and you could have a look at his stuff. He has a wide variety of LED products in stock but is also a martin dealer so hopefully could demonstrate the EFX range to give you an idea of the differences in gobos, colour, movement etc.

That sounds good.

As regards LED they don't all just do dots do they?? i take it if so then they really need fog to look their best??

Do things like the twisters and dynarocks etc throw out beams of light without haze or fog then??

Who are the twister 4hps made by Colin by the way??

[djtrev]

Now where could you go and get better all round advice than that..That's what makes this forum so good.
Thanks you guys

[Colin Cook]

No they dont all do dots, but most do, especially the cheaper end.

Beam-wise - no light is going to show bbeams unless there is something in the air to refract the light - e.g. haze, dust, smoke. All lights look better in haze, but not all venues allow use. In a way this makes the gobos even more important. To me anyway.

The better LED lights are as expensive, or more expensive than traditional ones.

Twister 4HPs were made by Abstract, but you will only find them second hand now. I have 4 I bought some 3 years ago from another forum member. They were used then too and are still going strong. Fantastic lights and to be honest I rarely use more than 2 of them now.

[Stardust Disco Roadshow]

K-Funk, on 30 July 2010 - 01:01 PM, said:

That sounds good.

As regards LED they don't all just do dots do they?? i take it if so then they really need fog to look their best??

Do things like the twisters and dynarocks etc throw out beams of light without haze or fog then??

Who are the twister 4hps made by Colin by the way??

They don't ALL produce dots, but most do.

By dots I mean lots of blue and red dots everywhere and nothing else.

A gobo effect will produce nice looking shapes which change to other nice looking shapes and change color too. This will be limitted to the amount of colors / gobos the efffect comes with. But it looks much nicer than the dots.

As far as I know there isn't any Halogen / discharge effect that produces dots lol.

But the majority of LED lighting does!

RE light beams - Any type of effect wether it LED / Halogen or Discharge you will only see the projected gobo / dots (for el cheaop LEDs). You will require smoke or haze to get the most out of any effect.

There are some good LED fixtures out there, but many more crap ones. Best thing to do is take that trip to the DJ shop with Colin and see them in the flesh.

[cellardwellers]

I'm waiting until Martin start making LED lighting before I move to it.

There are some reasonable tri LED real moon flower effects out there with half decent gobos. They may be worth a look. Also I do like the little moving heads by Toplite I think a couple or so of those would make a good show.

I find it a shame though that the light that I consider to be the best mobile effect the Martin Wizard Extreme has no real competion from any other manufacturer. I don't have one as yet but use possibly the closest thing I could fine made by another manufacturer the Abstract Moonray. I have a couple of them but they are not even close to the EFX or Martin kit.

It would be good if ADJ etc brought out LED Wizard type effects.

[K-Funk]

Currently I have a couple of old Geni scanners, They weigh a ton and get smoking hot. They look good with smoke but I have only ever used them in a fogged environment once. Without haze one just gives a kind of kaliedescope pattern and the other one looks like a cluster of springs from inside clothes peg in different colours.

Bit rubbish really and dots would be preferable to this haha!!!

I'll see Colin's lightshow in a couple of weeks so I'll reserve judgement till then

[Colin Cook]

Stardust Disco Roadshow, on 30 July 2010 - 01:25 PM, said:

They don't ALL produce dots, but most do.

By dots I mean lots of blue and red dots everywhere and nothing else.

A gobo effect will produce nice looking shapes which change to other nice looking shapes and change color too. This will be limitted to the amount of colors / gobos the efffect comes with. But it looks much nicer than the dots.

As far as I know there isn't any Halogen / discharge effect that produces dots lol.

But the majority of LED lighting does!

RE light beams - Any type of effect wether it LED / Halogen or Discharge you will only see the projected gobo / dots (for el cheaop LEDs). You will require smoke or haze to get the most out of any effect.

There are some good LED fixtures out there, but many more crap ones. Best thing to do is take that trip to the DJ shop with Colin and see them in the flesh.

Yeah - I agree with this too.

Even just a few years ago there were plenty of halogen lighting effects which used just beams of light without gobos. They were usually little squares rather than dots though, because the beams were reflected from a mirror dish which had square sections of mirror on. Things like the Acme Firebird, NJD Storm, Skytec Mushrooms etc - all of these aren't as old as we like to think. But then the world decided these were totally naff and moved pretty much exclusively to gobos. The Firebird was replaced with the vastly better Stormbird etc and the world became a prettier place lol! It is rather amazing that when the 'LED Revolution' happened it put the actual lighting quality back 10 years instead of taking full advantage of the technology to improve what we already had.

Keith - I'm actually just trying to catch up on my pics from the last few weeks as it has been a bit on the mad side, but was just editing these 3 and it seemed to me they kind of show what I'm saying. Imagine the same photos, but without gobos and with ickle red, green and blue dots everywhere instead.

 16 07 2010 01cs.jpg (73.44K)
Number of downloads: 54

 16 07 2010 03cs.jpg (54.33K)
Number of downloads: 58

 16 07 2010 02cs.jpg (52.82K)
Number of downloads: 43

[K-Funk]

Colin Cook, on 30 July 2010 - 01:57 PM, said:

Yeah - I agree with this too.

Even just a few years ago there were plenty of halogen lighting effects which used just beams of light without gobos. They were usually little squares rather than dots though, because the beams were reflected from a mirror dish which had square sections of mirror on. Things like the Acme Firebird, NJD Storm, Skytec Mushrooms etc - all of these aren't as old as we like to think. But then the world decided these were totally naff and moved pretty much exclusively to gobos. The Firebird was replaced with the vastly better Stormbird etc and the world became a prettier place lol! It is rather amazing that when the 'LED Revolution' happened it put the actual lighting quality back 10 years instead of taking full advantage of the technology to improve what we already had.

Keith - I'm actually just trying to catch up on my pics from the last few weeks as it has been a bit on the mad side, but was just editing these 3 and it seemed to me they kind of show what I'm saying. Imagine the same photos, but without gobos and with ickle red, green and blue dots everywhere instead.

16 07 2010 01cs.jpg

16 07 2010 03cs.jpg

16 07 2010 02cs.jpg

Nice pictures, really capture the emotion of the event. So what have you got going on there a Martin Wizard and two ?????

Do you get to control the gobos or are they random, can ou fix them on one image to suit the theme of the wedding, say stars or hearts??

[cellardwellers]

The only problem with your last pic Colin is the gobo in use. It looks like the bride has been condemed as a nuclear fallout zone!

In all seriousness three fantastic photos

[Colin Cook]

K-Funk, on 30 July 2010 - 02:06 PM, said:

Nice pictures, really capture the emotion of the event. So what have you got going on there a Martin Wizard and two ?????

Do you get to control the gobos or are they random, can ou fix them on one image to suit the theme of the wedding, say stars or hearts??

2 Twister 4HPs

I use them both on basic controllers so have no control over the gobo, as per Cellardweller's comment lol.

But - they are fully DMX-able so yes you can control colour and gobo on the wizard, and gobo (tied to colour) on the Twisters.

Reason being the Twisters have a combined colour/gobo wheel so for example the starry thing is always orange but that gobo is selectable. The Wizard has separate colour and gobo wheels so you can choose any gobo and any colour combination.

When I get around to doing DMX that will be one thing I'll be able to change.

[cellardwellers]

I do like to be in full controll of my lighting. I use all Abstract stuff which I control from an Abstract Club 64. It allows be to get some good mirror ball effect like the one below



Or



Taken on a phone cam.....as you can tell by the sound and video quality

This post has been edited by cellardwellers: 30 July 2010 - 01:30 PM

[DJDC]

[quote name='cellardwellers' date='30 July 2010 - 01:29 PM' timestamp='1280496574' post='140422']
I do like to be in full controll of my lighting. I use all Abstract stuff which I control from an Abstract Club 64. It allows be to get some good mirror ball effect like the one below



I too used a similar approach I had 6 NJD datamoons and used the controller to slow them down to create a mirror ball effect . The same effects every function got boring so last October it was time to change.

I brought 2 Chauvet colorstrips to use a room washes. As they run across the top of the 2.4m lighting bar they became something visual, although are very bright!

I then decided the 'white beamed' pinspots had to go I had dropped the RYBG gel many years ago as I felt it very 80's I had been there and done that back then. It was then the first time in 20+ years my rig had no par 36's.

I brought 2 Equinox Quadrilles which made a nice change they look good in smoke but in all the venues I've done since last November this has happened one. I also brought 2 skytec Polaris effects but these did not last past new year as I found they flashed too fast!.

These were replaced with 2 ADJ REVO SCAN LED's which I see as 'modern' equivalents to the old Abstract moonflower scanning effect, or Geni Wildblaze. I felt I needed something that moved. I would have brought the LED / Gobo version but could not afford 2.

I will say you cannot beat a proper scanner I had clay paky discharge units at one point, and Abstract futurescan M33 3's. the cheaper LED scanners are not in that league. Yes they produce dots, but in essance so did the datamoons they replaced (although the dots were gobo patterns) and like EVL and other versions they are limited if they produce 20 beams your stuch with 20 as you have 1 light source, at least with the LED's you don't constantly have 'dot' overload.

I finally brought a quadzilla as a centre piece, but am looking to sell this already as the overall effect is dot overload. What will replace it I don't know!

I like many other DJ's also have a load of LED PAR56's for uplighting the room. I have received good comments from my regualr haunts, and not had any negatives so I'm happy


As eluded to in the reponses think about the type of work your doing and what you want the rig to look like both from visually and projection wise, I worked in theatre designing lighting rigs, so well used to washes, gobo's and traditional bulbs, (halogen / discharge) if I had the money it would be moving heads with gobo's and led washes.

Look around and see what is the best you can get for your budget! Remember to Look at the effect from the customers perspective!

[DJ T]

LED lighting is good for some air effects and can compete against some high power discharge stuff.

http://www.facebook....id=427057106187

The centrepiece is a robe dominator xt. 1200W discharge The lights coming out above the folk near the door is an acme littled.

This post has been edited by DJ T: Yesterday, 12:03 AM