LED par cans for school

[mattlad564]

Hi guys,

 

 

 

I am a student at a school and have just been give the responsibility of running lighting in our school hall. we are looking at buying some new LED par cans, most likely 56's.

 

was looking at stairville. what are peoples opinions and do you have any other suggestions?

 

 

 

many thanks

[Alec97]

I would highly recommend these http://www.thomann.de/gb/stairville_led_par56_pro_24x3w_black_rgb.htm if that's what your looking at. I have 4 of these and several other 64's all stairville with 1 or 3 watt LED's in them and I've never had any trouble with them. They have massive output for their size too.

 

Alec

[Russ83]

In this price range I can't fault the basic Stairville 151 PAR 56s. Most of the other LED PARs have a beam angle of 25 degrees or less which means you need a lot of them to evenly wash a stage in a drama studio or hall. In my case the 45 degree beam of the 151's means you can wash an 11m by 6m stage with 12 cans. Light output is equivalent to 3x or 4x 800W floods but you have the advantage of full RGB.

 

Things to watch:

They come with an EU plug from Thomann so you need to budget for a competent person to fit a new plug and test them.

Make sure your desk will support them either as a fixture if using software like Chamsys or you have a desk where you can repatch the faders (Fat Frog, Jester etc).

Make sure you have a DMX feed to where you want the fixtures and that you have enough cables to link them all together.

Power can also get very messy as not only do you need mains rather than dimmer feed on the bars but you need cables and connectors to get it to each fixture.

The DMX settings on these fixtures only let you use addresses up to 118 and not the full 512.

You do get some colour fringing (R, G or B shadows) from a single unit but I've never had this cause a problem in a show.

 

If you want a similar fixture but with some more up-to-date electronics then have a look at the LED Par56 MKII RGBW or the RGBA. Light output on the colours is similar to the 151's but you have additional amber or white for general cover. You also get full 512 DMX channels and can select how many channels each fixture uses.

 

I've had some of the 151's for about 7 years now and despite looking rather battered they are still in working order. Out of the 12 I've had one LED die and another has a corroded dip switch after it was left in the rain! I've just put 12 of the RGBA's into the grid and doing their first show in a couple of weeks.

[ianknight]

Personally, I wouldn't bother with PAR 56's in your situation as the beam angle and overall intensity will likely not suit the environment. Being a relatively small unit - PAR 56 LED's are ok at head height on a small stage or mounted on a goalpost truss over a small stage but on a school stage they would be lost.

 

I would suggest looking at larger units using COB's or 4/5 element LED's - yes they will be a little more pricey but you will need proportionally less of them for your coverage.

 

Names to look our for via Google that may be worth considering are "Stagg King PAR 10", "LEDJ Intense LEDJ254" and "LEDJ Stage Colour Quad LEDJ107" - I've had experience of them all (mostly because we sell them and install them but I didn't want to labour that point) and they're all compact, bright and not horrendously expensive and will give you some useable light on a school stage.

 

As Russ said above me - ensure your desk can cope and that you have enough sensible ways of getting hard mains to them on the rig - they really can not be run through dimmer channels.

[Russ83]

Personally, I wouldn't bother with PAR 56's in your situation as the beam angle and overall intensity will likely not suit the environment. Being a relatively small unit - PAR 56 LED's are ok at head height on a small stage or mounted on a goalpost truss over a small stage but on a school stage they would be lost.

 

Very much depends on the setup Ian. In both our studio that uses 500W lamps and main hall that uses 650W/1kW lamp the PAR 56's are very effective.

Here are a couple of shots (taken by Kev Davies) showing just 6 PAR 56's on the back bar.

 

http://www.rcstudios.co.uk/files/BCP1.jpg http://www.rcstudios.co.uk/files/BCP2.jpg