acjuk Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 I know this is quite a hard question considering its arrival to the market; after I got the chance to use PRG's "Bad Boy" I am now wondering how does the new "best boy" line up to the brilliant Bad boy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bleasdale Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 If you have managed to get time with the Bad boy, why don't you just ring PRG and ask for some time with the Best Boy? While your there, I recommend looking at their consoles - V676 and V476. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam L F Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 As far as I can remember, getting your hands on a Best Boy at the moment will be rather hard, was speaking to someone at PRG the other day, aparntly they're out of the warehouse pretty much constantly for a while now. I'd have a look at this article, interesting read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewGrant Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 As far as I can remember, getting your hands on a Best Boy at the moment will be rather hard, was speaking to someone at PRG the other day, aparntly they're out of the warehouse pretty much constantly for a while now. I'd have a look at this article, interesting read. I was given a demo of these a couple of months ago in London. They really are superb! As far I am aware though there aren't very many of them around. The 6 (the only 6 actually produced at the time) we had were shipped straight from America and then back again after the demo. Very fast units, incredibly bright...brighter than units which much bigger lamps. Incredibly quick versatile shuttering and some pretty good effects. We were sworn to secrecy about them at the time and PRG staff played stupid at PLASA this year. Now they appear to have been announced hopefully I'm allowed to talk about them. They were demoed using the V476 which also looks very neat! From what I can remember they are going in to full production around about now and the plan is to have a couple of hundred of them in the UK by early next year (hmmm....round about just in time for a big sporting event maybe??) Cheers, Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ynot Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I'd have a look at this article, interesting read.VERY impressive.Whilst I suspect the review may have been a biased one, I failed to see ANY negatives at all in there.If all is to be believed, it looks rather like the Best Boy is going to be the pro tool of choice for large events in the not too distant future...! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I'd have a look at this article, interesting read.VERY impressive.Whilst I suspect the review may have been a biased one, I failed to see ANY negatives at all in there.If all is to be believed, it looks rather like the Best Boy is going to be the pro tool of choice for large events in the not too distant future...! I think it largely depends on whether this will fall in line with PRG's standard business model of only hiring the fixtures out. If they were on the market for purchase, I could see it quickly becoming the standard upper echelon fixture... They do so much right when they build fixtures, but they are really against selling them - a real shame IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam L F Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I think it largely depends on whether this will fall in line with PRG's standard business model of only hiring the fixtures out. If they were on the market for purchase, I could see it quickly becoming the standard upper echelon fixture... They do so much right when they build fixtures, but they are really against selling them - a real shame IMO. I say fair play to them, now that they've lost the contract for Vari-Lite (which I believe was a while ago? Someone will have to correct me on the date), the Bad Boys & Best Boys are probably one of the things which will make you want to hire from PRG! Also, I thought a good name would of been the Rude Girl, perhaps this could be to come. :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigclive Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I'm also completely with PRG on making their own lights and only hiring them out. They are fundamentally a hire company after all. If the other hire companies wish to make their own custom lights then there's nothing stopping them. The fact that PRG is actually an active hire company also means that they know EXACTLY what they want from a light and how to make it rugged enough to handle real life use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 I may just be a little bit bitter because our PRG over here is a very recent acquisition (Bytecraft, now PRG) and don't have any of the pretty PRG toys yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiffy Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 [snip] now that they've lost the contract for Vari-Lite (which I believe was a while ago? Someone will have to correct me on the date) [snip] It's semantics I know, but just to ensure that others don't mis-understand... Vari*Lite was sold to PRG, the finer details I cannot recall at the moment, however I believe that the R&D / Manufacturing arm of Vari*Lite was retained by Rusty Brutsché and Co, finally being sold off to Phillips at some point a few (?) years ago, while at the same time, Rusty became the 'Technology Director' or something for PRG. So while you are correct in that PRG no longer own the R&D / Manufacturing side of VL, they never actually 'lost' it, it was all down to mergers and acquisitions. Anyway, in the above paragraph, I mention that Rusty Brutsché is on the PRG Board... I'm unsure if he still is, however, the Bad Boy, and now the Best Boy, have Vari*Lite DNA running right through them, along with the Vari*Lite ethos of not actually selling the lights. I've always been in two minds about this being a good or bad thing, but then given the likely manufacturing costs (I've heard US$10,000.00 + as a conservative estimate), much less the addition of reasonable R&D and then Profit Margins, the fixtures would be prohibitively expensive either way. Vari*Lite back in the Series 100, 200, and 300 days was about building and owning the best fixtures in the market, meaning that your clients had to come to you for the best lights. The business then acquired Theatre Projects / Concert Production Lighting and so on meaning that if you were coming to us for your movers, then you may as well talk to us about the distro, dimming, generics and follow spots too. Oh. and the rigging, and Brilliant Stages can do the set for you, etc... Sound like any large Production Resource companies that are knocking about today? Anyway, all that is by the by. The Bad Boy was good, great in fact, and the Best Boy is an evolution of that. It's an incredibly good fixture, and there are no two ways about it, it is going to become the defacto 'large light' of choice for the upper echelons of the concert touring and live events market. I'm fairly certain that they are not done yet either. Whether they move into LED or not remains to be seen, but certainly I would expect a complementary Wash fixture to be on the agenda. Cheers Smiffy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewGrant Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 From what I can remember the Best Boy 4000 is in direct competition with the VL3000. It's called the 4000 because it's not a 3000! There was talk of a wash light one day appearing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kerry davies Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 Some time ago when PRG were moving from one side of Brum to their current location I saw a prototype fixture in the old place. From the specs and description I was given it was the bees knees in nodding buckets. Are the fixtures being discussed derivatives of that? If so Smiffy is spot on and they are descendants of the VL families. They appeared to be so over-engineered as to be commercially impossible to manufacture at that time, lovely things. If they are the same family you guys are in for a treat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smiffy Posted October 12, 2011 Share Posted October 12, 2011 I would suspect that the Icon M might have been what you saw Kerry, although at that time it could also have been the Bad Boy prototype. Cheers Smiffy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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