Club Lighting

[Panikos]

Hi guys. Im wrighting this for replies from you club lighters. What does a Night CLub thats looking to open in the future need to buy to have a full "Martin" rig. The sound system is installed and the rigging bars are aswell. Theres two circles in the middle and bars dotted around the Dance floor. I know that Dimmers will be needed and some sort of control Board. We are looking to use Martin "Wizard's", "Atomic 3000's", "MAC 300's" and "RoboScan Pro 518's". It is required that the lights are Sound controled, taking a live feed from the DJ's desk.

 

If anyone can help it will be great, Message back.

 

J

Depending on your budget and size I would go with 4 MX-4's and an atomic 3000, plus the martin Freekie DMX controller, and work around that. I've just recently started a small night club myself and that's what I've been using. I've bought all of the above (except the freekie) plus 2 ZR12 fog machines by JEM for $4000. If you want any more info on where I bought this email me at panikos@clubrev.com

 

on the question of terminating, my personal and limited experience with intelligent lights has shown that upto a few (say 3-4) lights everything seems to work fine, yet on occasion you see that little jerk in movement or a delay in response during a show that drives you insane. If you hate spending the 5 min to make a termination plug you can buy it pretty cheaply online and put it in your toolbox for whenever you need it.

 

I think I've already said too much so I'll stop :D :)

[dominicgross]

Dosn't alot of the new martin gear have built in termination??

[smeggie]

yep, the new toys have it in them somewhere, but it is faster to bring one yourself.

[Techno_Monkey]

Yeah it was terminated. It was the craziest problem we have ever had, we attached even just another cable (not attached to anythin) on the out put of the last fixture in the chain and 2 macs went completeley mental same happened when we used a terminator. Anyway the Martin cable is what caused our problems.

 

All good now tho, in the process of changing over to some better cable will hopefully do the trick

[Tomo]

My gut instinct says that it's unlikely to be the Martin cable to be honest.

If the cable is twisted pair and sufficiently thick conductors it shouldn't cause any problems, although a shield does help - but that's specified so Martin should have included it.

 

If it really was the cable, the chances are that there was either:

 

A connector badly connected - either loose in socket (Unlikely) or the cable coming loose from it.

A cable is bad condition - ie the conductor almost broken or fully broken and making intermittent contact.

 

In the latter case, it's usually caused by poor cable storage or people running flightcases over the cable too often.

 

Another thing to check is that you have the MACs in the correct personality.

Many older desks (especially ones designed purely for generics) aren't happy with moving lights in in 16bit mode as the playback isn't accurate enough for them, so you get little 'twitches' at random.

The Celco Explorer is one of them - switching them to 8-bit mode solved the problem.

[bhd812]

ok I have designed your size clubs for a long time and found some good and bads.

 

 

of course like stated before it depends on your budget sooo

 

minimac is a total waste, the colors are bland and the effects get old. not worth the bucks

mac250 is alot brighter. had alot more effects and it doesnt relly cost to much more then a minimac...depending on who you know.

the newer mac250+, k-ton, entour blah blah blah are all nice but they cost more so is it worth it to your club to use the add-ons they have.

the k-ton is amazingly bright and fast. the entour is the same but it had more gobos.

 

the mx-10 is nice but I dont think its worth much more. then again im not a big scanner guy soo

the mx-4 is one of the best budget scanners ever. awesome lamp lots of gobos/colors. and the best part is they dont mind if they get dirty.

 

the atomics are bright, I have two in my install and they are bright. maybe alittle to dangours for your club.maybe not

 

 

destroyers/wizards are the two brightest effects martin has ever come out with. buy them

 

 

as in controller you can get light jockey or the xciter, lj has alot of stuff and is cool but I am getting my xciter in this week so if you want me to tell you want I think I will

 

 

I dont like lj, im more of a board op then a computer greek. :D

 

fog? mag2000 is good, but I always went with highend f-100's in all my installs. they are simply the best machine.

[Techno_Monkey]

you may be right, however we had a lot of feedback from a forum on lightnetwork where we were told to avoid the stuff like the plague. just thought I would point out that problems may occur althought it may very well be fine as you say

[wodp]

Going back to an earlier post in this thread, whats the wiring config for the DMX presence tester? I'm guessing pin - resistor - LED - pin (can't remember which pins for 3pin and 5pin XLR). Same pin config for above as the terminator?

 

Dave

[Ben]

yup thats it except its pins 2 and 3, the way I always do it is as follows:

 

connect a 270 ohm resistor in series with a bi colour LED between pins 2 and 3, then just for good measure add a second 270 ohm resistor in parelle between the pins so that in an emergency it will work as a terminator aswell, and hey presto you have a tester

[Guest lightnix]

I've cured Martin glitchiness on a number of occasions by removing the terminator. Honest.

 

But once again, we drift OT...

 

Yes, it certainly would be a good idea to get a professional company to handle the actual spec. and installation side of things, hopefully while maintaining a well-paid Lighting Design Consultants role for yourself (buy a suit - no, really). Don't forget that there's far more money in clubbing than there is in the theatre.

 

Have a search through the trade magazines for articles on club rigs, to see not just what sort of kit other people are using, but how they are using it. People out there are doing some incredible things.

 

Also have a look at some LED fixtures for things like wall washes, specials and the like. I'm not a clubber myself, but hear and read a lot about club environments, where the lighting extends way beyond the dance floor to create an overall effect throughout the venue. Check out DMX controllable video stuff like IRAD and think about combining video elements with the lighting.

 

All this wiggly stuff is all very well, but the technology is twenty years old now. If you want your club to be not just up-to-date, but cutting edge and a little bit future proof then you may need to check out the newer toys.

 

Oh - and no Arcline please

[wodp]

Talking of wall washes, a rival club over the road has some colour blasters (guessing 250W, looks like SGM Colorlabs as I've seen them in another club in town) aimed at walls above bars and large patches of wall (about 8 of em around club). Our students union also has oil pattern projectors against the wall but they look cack. DJ booth in club I work at has some bluey purple (but not quite UV) halogens (3 of em) in a row aimed at back wall of DJ booth, with some normal 2ft UV tubes actually just above the trussing containing the parcans, M300s + 250s for the dancefloor. A neon wall is opposite side of room from dj booth too, which backs onto the front room.

 

Dave

[wodp]

Oh and while I think about it, we have the JEM Club Smoke system in all 3 rooms. Basically a service cabinet sits in our cloakroom (where coats and stuff get stored) with a 10L bottle of smoke fluid and then you run two lines out from there into each smoke machine (look on JEM stuff on martin website for more). Think you can have up to 30 or 50m runs of pipe to each smoke head. It's recommended to fit the service unit in the booth but we have 3 and by keeping them away from DJs tis safer I think.

 

Dave

[bhd812]

It's recommended to fit the service unit in the booth but we have 3 and by keeping them away from DJs tis safer I think.

 

Dave

I agree with you 100% on that. In one of my design's the remote for the f-100 is in the kitchen not the booth. the owner and dj's were pissed at first but I told them to run it off the timer. The dj's were pissed they had to walk to adjust it, but once I told the owner how much money youll save then he was quite.

 

1.1/2 years later this club went thru one 2.5 gallon of highend fluid, there on their second 2.5 gal now.....so the owner is really happy cause they were going thru a gallona month before.

[wodp]

TBH tho it doesn't make much diff at a weekend cos we have an enable button on our engima in the club dj booth called smoke which just fires up the smoke heads (we must have a mile of DMX cable running around the place) and the weekend dj knows where it is and what it does. I've no idea what our usage is but at w/es it seems to be gas the dancefloor out every 5mins for first half hour (which our heads do in about 20s) then every breakdown or so during the peak time trance stuff - the fact our air con clears the air is why its used so much. VIP area just runs its lights off a martin 2510 hooked up to the destroyers and smoke unit (think preset 12 is smoke) so dj upstairs can run himself.

 

Another thought re: environmental lighting - we have some martin ext200s around the front corner of the club outside walls (about 10 I think) fed off the same DMX multiplex as our club rig and a preset on the enigma cycles the colour slowly during start of the night but then faster once we have the dance stuff going in the main room. Our enigmas a bit shafted atm though so that preset has been edited to just send white all night.

 

Dave