Paul O

I'm looking to replace my ageing Stairville LED Stage Pars (18x3W RGB 40deg beam) with a new batch of fixtures for general stage wash duties. The Stage Pars have been really useful workhorse units over the years with a surprisingly good, even output with no colour fringing. The only thing that ever let them down was the steppy dimming at the bottom end. However after nearly 10 years of regular use in venues large and small they are starting to become unreliable so I'm starting to look at replacing them with a more modern fixture. As I mostly light amdram musicals my budget is quite tight and realistically I'm looking at fixtures around the £250 mark and ideally looking to buy 16 of them to evenly cover larger stages. I rather like the look of the COB fixtures with variable angle lenses and there appear to be three very similar models out there: Prolights studio cob 150W RGB LEDJ 150W COB RGBA Par ADJ Cob Cannon Wash 150W RGBA I've seen the Prolights units which looks very nice, the LEDJ and ADJ versions look to be very similar, but cheaper. Are they worth looking at or are they disappointing by comparison? Has anyone used the ADJ/LEDJ versions? Are there any other budget-friendly COB fixtures that are worth looking at?

Using the side balcony fronts will also help. Newcastle City Hall is a similar long narrow building (albeit much larger) and the side balcony positions provide a decent amount of front lighting

Thanks for the suggestions, I've sent off another couple of enquiries. The parts I'm specifically looking for are for my Mac 350 Entours which are "just" 9 years old and are still really useful fixtures however the plastic parts are gradually getting broken. I'm looking for: 1x Outer Fan Cover 23403050 2x Lid w magnet,smartMAC 62406160 (same part used on both SmartMac and Mac 350) Spares for the more common Mac 250 and 500's still seem plentiful but the less common models appear to have been dropped via the official support channels. I guess my only hope is likely to be if anyone has any old stock of parts or finding an old unit or two to cannibalise.

I may use them as a last resort if I can't find anywhere in Europe - their $70 shipping for a few plastic parts feels rather excessive!

Does anyone have any suggestions where I could try getting spare parts for older Martin Mac 350 Entour / SmartMac units - I've tried a couple of sources but they are reporting that parts have been discontinued and are no longer available. Does anyone still hold stocks of plastic parts?

It depends on the show, director, production style, etc. I do lots of musical theatre and tend to hide the lighting for older, more traditional musicals but usually have it in view for the more modern stuff

I regularly do this for small-scale shows as most of the audio guys I work with are friendly and helpful. Provided the multicore has individual screens per channel then it should be fine, if it's a cheap multicore with an overall screen only then the audio feed will pick up a lot of digital noise from the DMX. For bigger shows I tend to use one of the ethercon cables in the audio guy's multicore - definitely no noise issued with that!

If the dimmers are ancient, they are more likely to be analogue rather than DMX. Is there a demux in the installation somewhere?