Rehab/change our Lighting Set Up-Advice.

[wheresgrant3]

This past May we lost our lighting guy/DJ of three years to a full time DJ gig at a club in NYC. He's a great DJ but his lighting skills were incredible and he brought our show up 5 notches from where it was without lighting. When he came aboard we supplied the lighting and controller... he supplied his knowledge and skills.

 

Here's the setup

 

15 ft AMDJ Dura Truss

2- FX Fusion Bars #3

1-FX Fusion Bar #2

1- LED Starball

4-Colorsplash 200b

2 color splash 155b

2- Black & Decker Strobe Haligen Flood Lamps (for blinders)

Anad a new addition from the spring 4 beam RGX laser (Chinese made)

 

[video=vimeo;30300933]

 

Now it's three years later and well... the truss is bent, stands are beat up.

 

-Par cans - 1 is not working, 2 are malfunctioning.

 

-Lazer semi functioning

 

 

So we need replacements as we are bring on a new kid to help run the lighting. He's a fresh slate, motivated, and eager to learn, but doesn't have much experience. So now we're thinking of changing the setup. The biggest problem with our current setup is the time and complexity of setup/tear down. We leave much of the truss prewired. Still it's a two man operations and many times the truss needs to be set up long before the backline is in place. We all agree we need to simplify with detracting from our stage show.

 

 

 

Chauvet has 2 new products that would greatly simplify set up ( 4 units to set up gives you 20 lights!!!)

 

[video=youtube;Fswt9nxr0-Y]

 

This set up would definitely make it possible for 1 person to set up in a reasonable amount of time. ( less confusing wiring)

 

Price is reasonable but we're just wondering about output?

 

4 bar par cans - $329 each Our manager has been looking at these lights... 2- Chauvet 4- Bar Flex LED Wash lights to replace the individual pars in our setup

 

6 spots beams $249 each Chauvet 6 Spot Tri Colors to replace the Fusion Bars which are getting a bit beat up and look a bit like a Police Cruiser lighting rack when not in talented hands.

 

We could sell our 3 fusion bar lights to help off set the cost if we decide to go this way. we would still utilize the star ball, laser, and par cans for front lighting. I want to 'enhance our show and not just replace what we have, whil still keeping things affoardable and easy to manage. Any ideas or opinions on current lighting gear that may fit the bill?

[BillESC]

I think your plan is a good one and should be a great place to start. Any thoughts on front lighting?

[wheresgrant3]

I think your plan is a good one and should be a great place to start. Any thoughts on front lighting?

 

 

We have existing par lighting to provide a 'wash' but nothing that I've been completely satisfied with. To start... we don't use Amber at all which makes for {censored} video recording. LOL

 

 

 

Here's another example of our current lighting. This will give an idea of how we have our front lighting set up.

 

[video=vimeo;42053035]

 

 

Any ideas and/or advice on improving things please feel free to contribute. Bill... I just cleared my PM Inbox!

[soundlight]

I vaguely remember recommending this system to you - not positive it was you guys, but I do remember setting some band up with the Fusion FX bars and remembering that it looked pretty damn sweet for what it was.

 

I think that for the 4-bars, anything other than the 4-bar TRI isn't worth it. The small LEDs of the other 4-bars just aren't bright enough to make it worthwhile. The 4-bar Tri, however, is pretty sweet. For frontlight, I'd recommend a pair of Blizzard Puck Q12+ fixtures per side - Blizzard's new RGBAW fixture with 6 RGBA LEDs and 6 RGBW LEDs. Bill pointed these fixtures out to me in a post on here and they look like a phenomenal fixture, especially for the money. They will look a lot better on video and will wash the stage nicely with 2 per side. I'd suggest mounting them on top of the speakers if you don't want to have dedicated lighting stands on each side.

 

Also, the Dura Truss is rather flimsy as far as truss goes, and I'm sure you've put plenty of miles on it. If you have the money to upgrade the truss I'd do that, but that can get expensive. I am of the personal opinion that truss looks a lot better than two stands on either side, but I understand how going with two stands would speed things up significantly. I wish that you could get the 4bar Tri without the stand, because Ultimate Support TS99B stands with the 24" extenders would be a lot better for 1-person setup and for height & strength as well.

 

I understand the simplicity of the 4-bar series, but I think that if you got some longer, higher-quality T-bars you could pre-wire them and put them in big, deep, foam-padded keyboard cases (with wheels on one end to simplify load in!) and have them ready to go when you take them out. This way you can customize the layout of the lights and not be stuck with the flimsy 4-bar style fixtures, and you could also get better stands. It'll run you a bit more money but it'll look a lot better. Not sure if this would work well with all of the lights, but at least you could have some flat pars wired up & ready to go when you take the lights out.

 

If you choose to go the custom route, I'd suggest 3 of the Blizzard Puck 3NX lights per T-bar, as well as one of your Fusion FX Bars with the LED Pinspots on it (which would not have much resale value used), and maybe a Chauvet DMF-10 to spice things up. Nice moonflower effect that depending on the color, speed of rotation, and strobe can be anywhere from a slow blue and white look to a crazy fast strobing color changing rotating multibeam look. Could blow your Starball out of the water in terms of output.

 

From what I have heard about the 6-spot and the Sweeper (fixed focus counterpart to the 6-spot), they really aren't bright enough. The single 3-watt RGB LED doesn't have the punch that higher power multichip LEDs do - think about it, the 4-bar Tri has 7 of the 3 watt LEDs in each fixture. They may look good alone in product photos, but I don't think the punch is there. If they'd used 10 watt RGBW LEDs I think it would be a much better product. I think that you should hold on to the Fusion FX bars with the pinspots at least - they'll come in handy.

 

I noticed you have a strobe on your truss - if you wanted to go LED for that, the new American DJ Freq 5 units look decent for LED strobes, and you can do chasing too (though you gotta watch out for that police light look). These will be a lot higher power than the Fusion FX bar strobes.

 

I know I might be coming at you with a bit much - I just get excited about these kinds of things, y'know? Luckily I get to work with the big brothers of the products talked about here daily.

 

Also, what're you using for control? Depending on what you have a new controller could make the new lighting guy a lot more comfortable with the situation.

[jdboyl72]

Grant, I agree with what Steven is saying about the 6 spot and Sweeper LEDs. I considered buying a pair after watching some youtube videos. I tested out the sweeper and it's just not bright enough IMO. With perfect atmospheric conditions such as haze, they looked okay but that's about it.

 

Regarding the Fusion FX 3's; I own a pair myself. I was initally using them like you guys (2 on the back truss left and right of the drums), I just didn't like the look and ended up not using them much. Considered selling them until I saw them going for like $90 on ebay. Now I use just 1 FX3 in the middle of the back truss, as high above the drummer as I can get it, and I think it looks great.

 

I also was not much of a fan of the 4 bar's until I saw the 4 bar tri; they are actually very bright. I still would not buy them for a variety of reasons. 1 being the DMX configuration. I like the option of mixing my RBG wash manually from time to time. At least in my mind, that would be much harder to do on those all in one fixtures. If you do go with 4 bars to save set up time, I would get the Tri's and use them as back llighting. With that said I would buy the Chauvet slimpar TRI 7's or American DJ Flatpar TRI 7's instead.

 

If I were purchasing front lighting today, there is no way I would even consider a fixture that is not RGBA with at least 5 watt diodes. Those puck Q's are highly recommended here, I would probably buy the American DJ version that just came out a few months ago(QA5 or QA12). Chauvet has yet to get on board with this type fixture.

 

For hard edge beams (moving heads), for your band, I wouldn't consider anything with less output than the Qspot 160 LEDs. I own 4 of them and really like them, but I wish they were just a little bit brighter.

 

Those rotating moonflowers that Steve is recommending (DMF 10's) are on my short list. Looking to upgrade from the 3 watt Pearl LED's I am using. They create that starball effect you guys have but in a much better and more versatile way IMO. And they are low cost.

 

Regarding trussing, I can't imagine not using a back truss. We use ours for lighting and to hang a back drop and banner. Initially we used the American DJ Crank 2, which was okay. Ended up purchasing 15 feet (3 x 5 foot sections) of triangular trussing and have not looked back.

 

You guys have a great show from what I can tell on video. I would not scale back on the lighting. Just try to figure out a better way of transporting the stuff both for gear protection and to save set up time. Bags, cases, and custom made trunks have been a good investement. I used my gear 63 times last year and it all pretty much looks new.

[jdboyl72]

Grant, those pics I attached show the Fusion 3 in the center above the drums.

[Mutha Goose]

I'm not saying the 6Spots are the best thing since sliced bread, but they are good for some effect. I would like a brighter alternative, but these do bring something to the show. The video below is with 2 of them. The other effect in the back is the 4Play.

 

I will add to the endorsements for the Q12s. The color quality is fantastic. I'm using them for fronts. Eventually I will be upgrading my RGB-Pucks in back as well.

 

 

[wheresgrant3]

Thanks so much for the responses. This gave me plenty to think about.

 

Yes Steve... you did recommend the Fusion bars. Actually you pretty much mapped out our entire setup. We went from this:

[video=vimeo;3829686]

 

To This:

[video=vimeo;36619219]

 

It's made a HUGE impact on our show. I appreciate the opinions on the 6-spots. That's a negative for us. We're taking them off the list. We're also keeping the truss and the Fusion bars but we need to replace the Truss stands. I love those Blizzards you recommended just not sure whether we have $1200 to buy them. So we may stick with the 4Bar Tri's. We plan to move the existing LED's to the front and provide more front lighting. Keep the ideas coming though. I feel we avoided a few mistakes by really reading your opinions. We want to move forward... it's just eliminating the time and complexity of setup and tear down that we're looking for.

[jdboyl72]

Grant, like you I own the Chauvet 200b's which I use for front lighting. Because they are like new and working okay, I could not justify spending the $1200 bucks to get the RGBA quad LEDS right now. I am buying myself time by supplementing the 200b's with par 30's on dimmer packs with amber gels. Everything is pre wired power and dmx. All I have to do is run power and dmx to each tree. It cost about $250 to get the pars and dimmer packs (American dj uni-pak). I went with the Unipak because it is less than half the size and weight of the DMX-4 by chauvet. This has worked great for me and I'm waiting about another year or so to purchase 4 new front lights. Hopefully Chauvet will have a quad RGBA fixture out by then. I find their products to be a little better priced. See the attached pic for a visual.

 

Jason

[soundlight]

Glad to know the rig has served you well! I thought I remembered setting you guys up. As for the 4bar Tris vs. the Blizzard fixtures, I really think that you'll want the additional durability and flexibility of 6 Blizzard Puck 3NXs. The prices break down the same: 4bar Tri, $600. Puck 3NX, $200. So with 2 4bar Tris or 6 Puck 3NXs, you're looking at $1200. That's MAP price, so make sure to ask around because you can definitely do better than that.

 

Plus, with the separate fixtures, you can put some on top of the truss and some under the truss for variety in fixture placement. Looks much better than just a line of LED PARs.

 

For frontlight, you can add as you go. You can do one Puck Q12+ per side to start with and then go up from there. Don't necessarily get these with the rest of the upgrade, but when you can afford them, get them to replace your other LED fixtures until you have all tri or quad color LEDs in the rig. You'll see a huge improvement in video quality because there'll actually be white & amber light on your faces & the backlight (tricolor LEDs) will be visible as the color that's coming out, not as individual red, green, and blue LEDs. (Purple looks purple on the fixture, teal looks teal on the fixture, &c. - no individual colored LEDs on the fixture face).

 

Also as I said before I think that a DMF-10 or two would be an ideal replacement for that starball and would also look more professional (no spinning clear lensed dome thing)

 

And as soon as Chauvet comes out with a Sweeper II that has 10 watt RGBW LEDs and actual colormixing per LED, that'll be my top recommendation for you guys. I'm going to probably email Chauvet's product managers today about getting something like this rolling since I think it'd sell well.

 

As for time & complexity of teardown, here's some tips to help you out.

 

Label your truss. Put a color coded tape mark on either side of each clamp and put a number on that piece of tape. For instance, one color for fusion bars, one color for LED PARs, one color for effect lights (punch lights, strobes, starball). Use colored electrical tape for this. Then put the same color tape and number on the fixture that will go there. So for LED PARs, if you had 6, you'd do yellow tape at each LED PAR location, put a number on the tape and a number on the fixture, on the same color tape.

 

Once you've done that for all fixtures, next is the cabling. You want this to be as stupid simple as possible. So, take all of your cables out of the truss. They're all going to go in from the back top side of the tri-truss now, and always come out the same hole in the truss they went in. So you'll have power and data cables along the back. This is why it's good to have fixtures with removable IEC cables - because it makes this process much easier. Each fixture gets DMX in/out and power in (maybe out if you're doing powerlinking). I wish I had a picture of this because it makes things so easy when you set it up right. When you put the cable through to the fixtures, leave a little bit of slack so you can move the fixtures around to position them.

 

So what you will end up with is a bunch of cables on the back. The only cables that go through the truss go right to a fixture in groups of 2 or 3 (or 1 for the punch lights). Now, use black electrical tape at approx 6" intervals to wrap this cable up, and wrap each little bit that goes to a light, too. Then use the color coded tape thing - you probably just need colors here, not numbers, as it'll be obvious which fixture it goes to. Wrap about 4" up from the plugs (so they have room to plug in to the fixture's plugs) with that color of tape.

 

When you're done you'll have one long "lighting truss snake" that will get neatly coiled at the end of the night in to a small Sterlite or similar tote. So when you set it up, all you have to do is put the snake on the back of the truss and push the fixture cables through the truss and you're all ready to hang & cable. This can easily cut a half hour to an hour off of setup time for lighting (WHERE THE *$@% IS THAT CABLE/WHERE IS IT SUPPOSED TO GO???).

 

You can get someone to make you a custom lighting snake for your truss but then you can't take it apart, wash off the electrical tape residue, and reconfigure when you next upgrade your rig.