I am involved with the lighting for a school. Our stock of generic Dexcel fresnels and profiles is getting very low as they are all just falling apart (I don't think they were of the highest quality 15 years ago!). We had about 20 650 watt fresnels for over stage, 8 1k fresnels on the FOH bar and 10 or so profiles. We are now down to 2 working profiles, 10 working 650 watt fresnels and no working 1k fresnels. We do hire a rig of intelligent lighting (both movers and wash lights before we bought our own) for our one big musical a year, and have the experience and console to run this. I am also rather concerned that within a few years it is going to become very difficult to buy the bulbs for the generics, which makes LEDs attractive. It is also nice to be reducing the amount we hire, so that the hire bill goes down, and that the standard of stuff the rest of the year goes up! In an attempt to update our stock and reduce energy consumption we bought 16 Chauvet colordash parquad 18 LED wash lights, 10 of which we have over stage and we have 6 on our bar FOH. The ones over the stage work brilliantly to provide a stage wash and the fact that they are color mixing makes life much easier, however there are too few to be used without being fleshed out by the rapidly dying 650w Fresnels. The 6 that we have on the FOH bar seem to lack the punch to really do the facelight- along with the color temperature not being quite right for facelight. My proposed solution is to buy an LED equivalent of the 1k fresnel (preferably color mixing), and move the 6 wash lights from the FOH bar to over stage- removing the dependence on the 650w fresnels, and providing better color temperature and more punch for the facelight. The throw is about 20 meters from this bar and the stage is 8 meters wide. The fixtures need to be well built and reliable- hoping for a 15 year plus lifespan, (they won't be moved around at all once they are up on the bar). My question is does anyone have any recommendations of suitable LED fixtures to do as described. My gut feeling is that it would require too many profiles to be cost effective, and that about 6 fresnels are probably the best bet, but I may be wrong! Budget is not great, which is why I am looking into this now, so that they can start putting aside some money every year until they can afford to do it.
