Martin Mac 250 Entour or Chauvet Q-Spot 575

[KevinE]

Chauvet are one of these companies who badge up chinese products under a common name. They're big in the mobile DJ market and (by the size of their adverts in Night magazine) are eager to push their image more upmarket. Many of their intelligent products are or were rebadged Pearl River products, but it changes all the time.

 

Martin of course have a long pedigree in the industry and are one of the 'establishment'..and for good reasons, ie good backup, consistent performance and quality, easy maintenance and well written owners manuals.

[Skumling]

I just need to get some practical advice as to which ones you feel would be the best to buy.

 

I own 4 pcs. of Mac 250 Krypton - basically Entours with just one gobo wheel, 14° beam angle instead of 17° and without tilt lock. But in most ways the same fixtures. I am very happy with them (I use them for efx-lighting for bands), and they haven't given me any kind of problems yet.

 

However I've come across some other fixtures, which I have noticed get a lot of credit on other boards, namely the Elation Design Spot 300.

 

In comparison to an Entour you get:

* MSR 300W lamp instead of MSD250/2

* Electronic ballast instead of magnetic

* Iris (5%-100%)

* Frost

* RDMX (probably not too important for you)

* CMY colormixing in addition to the static colour wheel

 

And in Europe it seems like the Elations' just a little cheaper than the Kryptons, and certainly some quid cheaper than the Entours.

 

As others (gareth) have pointed out often, there is big difference in how you should treat peoples input, whether they have years of practical hands-on experience, or they've just "seen something flashy in the school" or "read it on the 'net". In this case I haven't seen the fixtures in the real life, but if I had to make my choice today, I would definately go for a demo of the Elation ones.

 

I like Martin very much, and the support is super - however I would just love to have CMY mixing and Iris in my Kryptons, and in "Mac-world", you have to step up to the Mac 700 to get both of these features. It is my perception, that Elation is a "real" company with their own R&D etc., and not just another pseudo-provider who badges Chinese fixtures. Not that I don't think that there's Chinese parts inside the fixtures, there might very well be.

 

I don't know anything about who distributes Elation in .uk, and how the availability of spares etc. are, but maybe someone else here on the board could enlighten us here?