Advice on new Lighting rig for 7 piece band

[Bothy Cat]

Our 7 piece band play in venues ranging from small clubs and village halls for 150 people up to larger venues and marquees up to about 500 capacity. We have for the past 10 years or so used a fairly standard portable set up on each side of the stage of 4 x par64 500w lamps on stands which has generally worked well, however the main problems we come against with them are regular problems with bulbs, leads being damaged in transit, and general bulkiness/heat generation in the smaller venues. We use the gear from the stage with a Ryger foot controller. We are thinking about a move up to LED system but have no experience of them and do not want to buy something more suited to a mobile dj or pub band, and would be grateful if anybody could give any advice in terms of getting something with at least as good a coverage as our current system as well as being easy to control from the stage and easy to transport etc. We would be looking for a full replacement kit including decent stands/foot controller and have a budget of up to £1000 all in.

Appreciate any help you can provide folks,

cheers

Mike

[Grum]

Don't think that just because LEDs are the latest thing that they're a move "up". If you were to replace what you have with LED units (within your budget) then you're going o be looking at swapping the parcans for LED parcans so you'll still have the bulk, you'll have twice as many cables to break (LED's will require power AND data) and in some cases you'll have even more weight, although this may be balanced out by the lack of a dimmer.

 

Another thing you need to look at is colour rendition, cheaper LED units don't tend to be too good at producing the nice warm light we've become used to from tungsten halogen lamps. This means that you clothes will look strange and your faces may not stand out as much as they currently do. You'll also find that cheaper LED units don't always match when displaying the same colour (only slightly but it can be annoying). Cheap LED cans aren't very good at less saturated colours either so yellows, ambers, lavenders etc are going to be difficult to achieve (especially uniformly across the rig). In my experience cheaper LED units don't last too long either especially if they're being toured even if they're stored in a flightcase during transit you're probably going to be looking at replacing an average of one a year in a rig of 6 maybe more.

 

The advantage you will have over tungsten will be the reduced power consumption which, environmental factors aside, is only really a concern in smaller venues or if you're paying the electricity bill.

 

Personally I would say you'd be better off spending £50 on a decent fan for each band member and pocketing the £650.

[schooltechie]

If you do decide to go for an LED upgrade, an issue I have come across with most of the LED batterns is that the sound to light chases are all very disco. In terms of light output I have found the showtec compact power lightset. I have one of these units on hire from SLX at the minute and very impressed with it. I would say as is said a lot on blue room, hire before you buy to see if it can produce the colours, the coverage and the light output you need.

[neil12 12 1]

LED the way forword, I tour with my mobile rig (sound and lighting) for other bands from pubs to larg festival events LED PAR64 from American dj have served me well over the last 3 years, none have needed repair/replacement The colour is exalent , they can be strobed too, I run An American jd MY DMX laptop system live but sceens can be written and opperated by someone on stage (drummer , keys etc) Idont know where you are from but if you are in the east midlands I would be willing to demenstrate.

[peza2010]

I think we need a bit more information on what you want out of your new lights...

As pointed out by grum LEDs won't produce the nice warm colour your used to, but is that even an issue?

Basically what I'm asking is, are you looking for just some basic colour washes/chases on stage or something a bit more "special" ?

[dbuckley]

If you're "moving up" to DMX controlled fixtures, you'll need more control than a set of Ryger pedals; suggest you look at the Lanbox, which you can control from "standard" MIDI pedal controllers. The Lanbox is a full lighting, but misus the control surface. You proigram it at your leisure using a PC or Mac, and then does what you want under control of MIDI pedals or several other forms of control. Some Lanboxen have contact closure inpout, so you can put a microswitch on the bass drum pedal and do sync to the beat.

[cedd]

Very quick thing to mention as well;

Lots of the "off the shelf" LED T bars have a flat panel light source with the electronis housed in the bar itself. I'd advise against using these unless your setup NEVER changes.

A bar of 4 "proper" LED PAR's can be stripped down to provide 4 uplighters if you need, or whatever else you fancy. A flat panel thing HAS to be used as a T bar. Far less flexible.

[paulears]

I can only guess at the style of music the band play - but once you move out of the all over wash and colour changes style then the next bit is usually having the ability to highlight each member of the band - so when the guitarist 'does their bit' you have enough control to be able to pull them out. Ideally from something overhead, but uplights might work depending on the venue. So what would you like the system to do? Do you want it to always look the same? How about drapes and maybe fibre optic star cloths? these can be really useful when you play places that don't look too attractive, and can make a big difference to the look?