Stage Lights

[mophead]

What if any, do you guys use for stage lights. Thinking of adding some lights to the list of stuff to haul. LED's now the best? Probably just looking at one bank of lights on each side of the stage. Don't want the old Par Can setup. Too big and bulky, heavy, and too many pieces. Saw some Chauvet at GC with a 512 LED display that looked like it might work.
The more simple the better.

[Phalex]

LED's are sweet! They're lighter, cooler, and don't burn out as soon as conventional lights do. You don't need gels either.

I don't think that they're as bright as conventional cans, and they are pretty pricey.

If you can afford them, go for it!

[jive1]

I have a Chuavet 4Bar on the way. Looks simple to carry and set up, and it's LED with a built in controller. Northern Sound and Light has the best price on them.

I'll let you know how they are when they arrive.

[nic salsus]

Originally Posted by mophead

What if any, do you guys use for stage lights. Thinking of adding some lights to the list of stuff to haul. LED's now the best? Probably just looking at one bank of lights on each side of the stage. Don't want the old Par Can setup. Too big and bulky, heavy, and too many pieces. Saw some Chauvet at GC with a 512 LED display that looked like it might work.
The more simple the better.

I've used the the Chauvet colorstrips and LEDsplashes and they work well as a "set and forget" fixture without a controller.

While LEDs are used more and more incandescent bulbs with a reflector (PARs, Fresnels, Lekos, most moving lights) are for good reason still the mainstay of stage lighting of all sorts. I don't find LEDs to be a very pleasing front wash but that's only my personal taste. Whatever you do the stuff ain't cheap and you should "try before you buy" on a rental before you invest. I'd think any adequate combination of colorstrips and LEDsplashes would be around a grand new. PARs are cheap.

[coolrunner989]

My cover band uses 3 banks of 4 LED lights each for some shows and they are awesome. Cool, bright, easy to hook up, not so fragile/breakable (one pane of glass vs tiny little dots).

[Nagrom]

I picked up the Chauvet 4Bar recently and used it a couple times.

Good:
- comes with and packs into a case the size of a electric bass case.
- fast easy to set up, 48 watts power consumption
- metal foot switch with decent length of control cable
- decent tripod included
- RGB color system

Not so Good:
- Foot switch & cord barely fit into case pocket, seems vulnerable to impact damage and bending stress on wire.
- other colors beyond red, blue, green are a blend (ie green+blue=yellow)
which makes the fixture look weird, not pretty like pars.
- tripod stand needs to be set off to one side, should really use 2-units.
- has a little thumbscrew to lock unit rotation, ships and packs loose so must be careful not to lose.
- power cord not very long, just reaches partway down the stand
- somewhat awkward turn-on procedure (energize with AC, wait a moment, connect control cable, then lift to position) otherwise unit gets confused.
- not user serviceable
- somewhat pricey

Still worth having, but would like to try 2 together

my $.02 after a couple gigs

[scottbass]

I bought two chauvet 4bars and this controller:

http://www.pulseonline.com/lighting33.htm

It's sweet! The lights are a bit brighter than PAR 38's, but not as bright as PAR 56's. After an evening of studying the manuals, I was able to set up the DMX controller system to give me 16 different scenes for different moods, solos, etc. 'Tis SWEET! The nicest part is that those 4-light LED systems each fit into a case that is about the size of a guitar case.