Stage Lights -

[brokencode]

I'd sure love to see some photos of your stage lighting. My band has had just a set of 3 static color cans forever! (15 yrs) Mounted then on the mains, very simple setup. They've worked well thru the years with color washes. We just bought 2 Chauvet 4 Bars, (has 4 Par 56S each) 2 Chauvet Color Palettes and 2 Mini Kintas. We are still trying to figure the best set up. Right now, we are using the 4 Bars with a Mini Kinta right behind the mains and the Color Palettes on the back wall for stage wash. The 4 Bar and Color Paletts are DMX'ed together and set for sound mode. The Mini Kinta are also set on sound mode but we have a remote to turn the power on or off. Forget the DMX controllers... I'm too old to figure out all that. We have a gig this Friday night so we're excited about having cool lights for the first time! Photos to follow.

Please show off your stage lights....

Chauvet Color Palette and Chauvet Mini Kinta

Too dang bright to photograph

 

[brokencode]

 

[Jeff Bonny]

With only a few lights one set and forget look works. Lighting for bar bands is always a loosing proposition financially.....keep it simple. What you're doing with them now sounds like the best use position-wise. Front light on your faces and fill to give the stage dimension. With just a few lights don't over think that part.

Something you might consider though is running some really basic look changes with a tablet or smart phone. These fixtures are pretty powerful little tools that you can get more out of than just one set and forget look. You'll need to spend around $300 on a basic [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] of some sort to get the lights to talk to the tablet. This will involve learning a little about DMX but it really isn't that hard. Think of a DMX universe as a 512 channel mixer with each light needing one channel for every parameter it has. Some moving head fixtures have over 50 different parameters and need as many DMX channels. Your ColorPalettes have 27 DMX channels but most of them are probably just overlapping RGB channels to allow fine tuning of the hue. Sorry if this is basic stuff you already know but RGB is Red, Blue, Green which are the primary colors you can use to mix to any other color. You can also run them in several more stripped down modes requiring as few as 6 DMX channels each that still give you basic RGB mixing plus intensity, strobing and whatever the auto mode does. I'd start there. The only thing you really have to know about DMX is how to assign addresses the fixtures. With two lights running 6 DMX channels each the first one would be addressed 001 then jump as many numbers as it has DMX channels to the next fixture which would be addressed 007. The control software pretty much does the rest. If you want your money's worth out of these things you need to do this.

I won't beat it to death more than I have but if you want more info let me know. I was a lighting guy for many years.

 

[BazzTard]

I did lights for a while, totally self taught by watching and learning. Did lights for some big bands just by being there. Even one of my fave American bands, Buffalo Tom ! A friend was doing their lights, when he needed to 'adjust his attitude', he adjusted it so well he never returned,I did the whole show,never used that desk before,seemed to go well, band liked it,so they said, got their CD autographed, not everyday you get to do lights for your favourite band !!

 

[rolandm]

Our keyboard player and his friend re-arranged our rehearsal area to throw our backdrop up and more correctly emulate what the stage will look like (our banner hadn't yet arrived). The bummer is, they didn't know how to turn on the four I had set for color shift, and they didn't aim any of the lights. Our light set is four small 86LED RGBW units per side. I set 2 each to wash, and 2 to shift color. It's very subtle but it does give a bit of shift. Very much a "set it and forget it" small bar setup. I'll have to get some better pics now that I have them aimed and all 8 rolling.

 

[drummer5359]

This is a shot of our setup that we were using. We just replaced most of it recently.

 

[Zephrant]

Where did you get that truss from? Looks very nice.

 

[Jeff Bonny]

Modern Studio Equipment makes so nifty pipe mounts that allow you to configure your own ladder (2 rail) or triangle truss using 1.5" ID aluminum pipe.
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Not the cheapest short term option maybe but considering that you can easily change your truss to different lengths and use them with curved pipe for some pretty cool looks these things are worth knowing about.

 

[BartmanPDX]

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Not the best picture as we hadn't turned on the haze yet, but it gives you the idea. Truss is an American DJ Dura Truss with a third truss segment -- cheap, but works. Main stage lights are 8 Chauvet SlimPar56 pucks. Also two ADJ Mega Bar 50s mounted vertically on the speaker stands under the speakers (you can see one on the far right). Effect lights are two ADJ Vertigos, a Chauvet 4play clear, and the four cheapo light bars I got off ebay several years ago that we use to line the front of the stage.

 

[4Mal]

Bart!

Good to see you surface. Hope all is well.

Mal

 

[Barisaxman]

We use some Chinese RGBAW led flat PAR cans. 16 across the back and 4 in front. 6 months in and so far they've been great, and light on the wallet. A few more gigs and they'll have paid themselves off in rental fees we've saved.

 

[Zephrant]

Does anyone integrate the speaker mounts and light mounts? I don't want to try to fit two stands on each side of the stage, one for lights and one for the mains.

Anyone have a link for the ebay LEDs they are using? I'd like to get something at someone here has tried at least.

Thx-

 

[rolandm]

I would warn against that. Vibrations from a full range cabinet might damage the more inexpensive lights that are out there.

 

[Zephrant]

Good point. Another idea shot down by physics...

 

[Jeff Bonny]

Meh, the vibrations from the top of a small/medium sized full range speaker cab are not going to damage anything but the cheapest most janky no-name ebay crap...and even that would probably be fine. They're a million times more likely to get damaged in transit.

 

[delta7fred]

I would warn against that. Vibrations from a full range cabinet might damage the more inexpensive lights that are out there.

We've been using cheap halogen filament lights with gel filters on op of our PA cabs for about 10 years. Bulb life is no different to static mounted lights (but as always YMMV).

 

[dreads311]

Disclaimer: I know approximately jack about light gear.
Our rig consists of our truss (duh), 7 LCD panels (5 on the truss and 2 for front wash), 6 movers, and 4 strobe strips. I have no idea about the controller its programmed with. Here's a couple typical configurations...

(on the last pic, the movers high above us aren't ours)

 

[jjk2007]

We have 2 light racks similar to these on each side of the stage. Work great and they're easy to set up and tear down.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/4BAR

 

[PCR]

We have 2 light racks similar to these on each side of the stage. Work great and they're easy to set up and tear down.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/4BAR

We run two of these most of the time. When we play outdoors at night, we run two of these in the front, and two more smaller pairs in the back.

Great lights.

 

[Pacman]

This doesn't show off our lasers much, but they're at the top corners. The projector runs a loop of wash stuff with band logos. Most lighting is supplied by sound guys, this stuff sort of augments the look.

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