Elation Platinum Beam 5R

[wirralmatt]

Can anyone who has used Elation Platinum 5Rs before give me the low down on whether they are any good please?

 

For context, it's a dry hire for a church environment. The church rig includes 10 Chauvet Rogue R2 washes, a load of white profiles (similar to source 4s), and some Core PARs as well as some sun strips and other bits and pieces.

 

The room is 8m high, 16m wide and 30m long.

 

I've never used any Elation fixtures before and I was wondering where they fit into the marketplace in terms of quality.

 

Thanks

 

Matt

[timsabre]

Any good, ummm, well it depends what you are intending to do with them.

 

They are OK fixtures if you can haze up the venue and just want narrow sharpy-type beams in the air. They are not good for much else, although they do have gobos they are very small and blobby looking and not really in focus - there's no zoom or focus control. The prism is only 3 facet so not much good for flower type effects. Like all beams you need to be careful not to hit audience in the face with them.

 

I would say probably not the right fixture for a church gig. The Elumen8 1RE beam does a similar effect but has 8-facet prism which is much more useful and you could probably get more of them for the same money.

Edit to add- this is the 5R beam fixture I am talking about. They also do an Platinum 5R Spot, never had one of those.

 

[partyanimallighting]

5R Spot or 5R Beam? The beams have an 8 way prism and the Spots a 3 way. I've installed the spots previously in clubs and, once they're regularly serviced, they're an alright fixture. Issues? Blown lamps, blown ballasts, when hung the PAN Hall sensor tends to collect a bit of dust on it and this leads to corrosion on the solder traces and the PAN will bounce and grate. Maybe one or two failed PAN/TILT PCB drivers. The rotating gobo wheel has a tensioner and the guide sometimes wears away. But once they're treated well, they're reliable enough.

[Salazar]

We have 6 of the Elation Platinum Beam 5R. They have about 16° beam. They are reliable and, compared to our VariLite VL1100's, fast moving if needed, but with much more fan noise than the VariLites, and of course, no shutters, zoom or focus, no colour mixing, etc...

 

They are reasonable useful with the frost in (which is all or nothing) as a backlight on performers. The star gobo with the 8 way prism is about the only gobo I use in them much. They are noticeably jerky if you ask them to move slowly. The dowser appears to be close to full open by 20 to 30% so fades tend to be uneven too.

 

They came lamped with PHILIPS-24988-8 MSD Platinum 5 R 1CT 160W which have a 2000 hr life and the fixture software will shut them down after 2000 hrs to encourage you to change the lamps before they blow up (I had one lamp blow up anyway). We now use OSRAM-54402-1 Sirius HRI 5R 190W+ (AA5474500HM 54402-1) in them as those maps have a 3000 hr. life.