Moveing head position advice

[0mgatr33]

Hi first post but been a bit of a lurker for a while. I work as the tec at a holiday park which runs evening entertainment in season and a variety of other functions out of season, mainly music, and am looking at adding some moving heads to the rig. At the moment it consists of entirely basic fixtures apart from some sound to light disco flowers and 2 ancient roboscan 805's which are only really used for end of evening discos. I am looking to get 2 mounted in the positions indicated in red in the picture below as I have a mounting point that was used for a pair of disco helicopters.

A pic taken from the back of the room. The tables are moved onto half the dance floor for an event we are doing next weekend.

Height is limited to 3.5m floor to ceiling so I know that I would not get a massive spot straight down (about 1.1m with a 18deg lens). Stage is 40cm high with a proscenium of 45cm above.

 

I am looking at something sub £700, possibly something like this or if I can find one at a decent price a used Mac 250 krypton but are these getting to a point where they are too old to be reliable? Also does anyone have any experience with Thomann B-stock? They would be mainly used in the discos but also I would like to be able to use them when we have bands and singers on, especially with the slow songs to make a change to just slow wash changes.

 

Control wise the all the stage lights are run from a Jester 24/48, not the ML version so I was going to use M-PC with an Entec Pro interface.

 

Any thoughts and ideas would be appreciated

[kieranemerson]

personally I use Mac 250 entours although they are discontinued you may still be able to find some second hand. Other that that you may be able to use some scanners with DMX control which would give a similar effect.

Hope that helps :)

[Grum]

Depends what you want to use the movers for, If you're looking for beam effects then they need to be upstage of what you are lighting (you'll also need some kind of a hazer ideally). If you want to use them as spots that you can re-focus around the stage then out front is good.

 

What kind of slow changes are you trying to create? The Kryptons don't do colour mixing so any colour changes are going to be far from smooth, if you're just after movements to create different looks then you really need the fixtures to be upstage.

 

Also, make sure your mounting points are suitably rated for the weight of your fixtures, theres a big difference between a small disco effect and a moving head.

[paulears]

The critical thing is as said - what do you want them to actually do? If you want to throw some colour around, then a pair of LED washes might be handy, but if you want gobos and prisms then maybe some LED spots would do? 60W ones are quite bright, but be aware they are fairly narrow angle devices. A slow colour scroll wipes each colour across which can look a little odd.l

 

Cost wise, I'm no quite sure if you want two for £700, or £700 each. You'll get washes for that, and just about spots. Thomann operate a no quibble refund system, so most of their B stock is just returned items in travelled boxes, and perfectly good - and all still has the 3 year guarantee.

[LXbydesign]

yeah - 2nd Pauls advice.

 

Look on Thonman for B-stock LED moving heads and you should find something within budget.

 

Or take a look at the Showtec Phantom 250 spot (£660 retail) and the Showtech Phantom 250 Wash (£540 retail)

 

Ive used these with an event company and actually found them to be pretty good! High on features and pretty good build. May not be the best if your lumping them in and out of boxes everyday, but for install - Id def. recommend a look at them.

 

EDIT - Ive posted up the standerd retail price but I know for sure you can get them much cheaper through a dealer or a bit of sweeet-talking!