Beamz LED pars - advice please

[kevs]

Upgrading a church hall to DMX control, looking to get some LED pars, I have to say cheaply as it's a local amateur group funding it.

Beamz have been suggested but I can't find any reviews, anyone have any advice?, should I stay clear?

I know the guts are probably the same as other makes, same factories etc but I'd like to be sure before spending other people's money.

[Stuart91]

I know the guts are probably the same as other makes, same factories etc

 

That's it in a nutshell. Hopefully someone on the forum will have specific experience with them, but from what I can see of them online they're going to be very similar to most of the other offerings.

 

So warranty / service backup becomes key. Also do you have any local sources to hire in more if required?

[david.elsbury]

What are you wanting them to do? Flash and trash/disco? Colour wash for panto? Nice tidy stage wash for theatre?

Those type of units are much more suited to the former; than the latter

[kevs]

It's a general hall - theatre, concert recitals, bands, talks, panto, discussions (about the only thing not in there is disco), small stage, small proscenium, from where the fixtures will be a beam angle of 30° will cover the stage vertically from setting line to proscenium top.

So I'm basically interested in reliability and cheapness. Beamz were suggested but I have not had any dealings with them, was hoping if someone could steer me right on reliability/warranty.

[kevs]

Perhaps I should have said the beamz make in general

[Jivemaster]

"Economy Chinese generic" lights are usually unrepairable for lack of parts after a year. They may last for 2 - 10 years but the first one to fail means looking for a whole new set unless you originally bought spares.

[pmiller056]

As others have said, this genre of lights are cheap and cheerful. There really is 'No User Serviceable Parts Inside', however if one of your group or congregation is competent with modern electronics, it is straightforward to swap internal parts around if needed. Internal repair to component level is much harder. Even if you do get a decent waranty, any warranty replacement may not be completely compatible with the rest of your stock because most of this type of light will have subtle batch dependant internal and external differences. If you do buy a set, always buy at least one extra (then 10%) for spares.

 

Don't get anything with a fan - the combined noise of several running together is irritating (unless you are doing rock n roll and disco) and totally wrecks any quiet drama. These cheap lamps are more likely to have cheap noisy fans fitted. Buy from a UK/EU 'bricks and mortar' supplier beacuse what you are buying should to be safe and any warranty worth the paper it is printed on. Unless you really know what you are buying, don't buy off any online marketplace because some of the stuff I've seen is dangerous and any claimed warranty is in practice worthless.

 

If you have always used tungsten lights and not used LED before... The RGB ones produce great saturated colours - much better than tungsten but. whites and yellows are poor and colour rendering can be dire. If you are using them in conjunction with tungsten lamps it's not really a probem. If you can, do so get some RGBAW ones because the whites, yellows, pastel shades and colour rendering are much better, to the extent that you may be able to reduce the amount of tungsten light used.

Edited July 15, 2019 by pmiller056

[graemeftv]

we manufacture led parcans here in the uk! but at the same price bracket you are looking at

 

spares on the shelf for 5 years +

 

rgbwa+uv 18 x 15 watt

 

thermostatic variable speed fan

gel frame holder- for adding frost

barn doors available

very robust ali housing

nice software and simple menu controls

menue display goes out after 20 secs since last button press

6 channel and 10 channel DMX mode

[TonyMitchell]

Avoid the really cheap PARs that still use single colour LEDs.

Someone bought a set of eight in for ISITEE a while back and it was notably amazing how poor they were, in terms of brightness (lack of), consistency from one unit to another (lack of) and general build.

The housing was of thin injection moulded plastic and the plugtop + hard wired cable weighed about the same as the head.

[kevs]

Thanks for all the help folks

[Jupton24]

At the school I work at we had some Beamz LED pars they were the worst buy in the world we barely use them we have 6 of them and 4 only function properly, 2 have the stands broken. They are very cheap but don't shine much light if you are going to place them on a rig. we only use them to uplight the curtains now and they don't do a good job at that either. They are a pain to set up as each of them require kettle leads and they can lose there DMX address quite often. I would strongly avoid. We ended going up with Prolights studiocobs for that need. there are other makes of Led pars out there but like said in the forum the plastic can melt if kept on for long enough the do have inbuilt fans but the don't often work. the only good thing that beams makes is there fog makers but that is about it!

[electronicsuk]

we manufacture led parcans here in the uk! but at the same price bracket you are looking at

 

spares on the shelf for 5 years +

 

rgbwa+uv 18 x 15 watt

 

thermostatic variable speed fan

gel frame holder- for adding frost

barn doors available

very robust ali housing

nice software and simple menu controls

menue display goes out after 20 secs since last button press

6 channel and 10 channel DMX mode

 

Got a link to any further information on these?

[Gerry]

 

 

Got a link to any further information on these?

I PM'd him, asking for details, after his original post but haven't had a reply.

Cheers

Gerry

[electronicsuk]

I PM'd him, asking for details, after his original post but haven't had a reply.

 

Hmm, doesn't bode well for future spares availability then. Guess I'll give it a miss!

[kgallen]

For what it's worth, my experience of the cheaper end is that I've been pleased with Showtec quality and reliability and very much less successful with LEDJ where I've had a mixed bag of high failure rate and other models with no issues. So I've gone off LEDJ and now buy Showtec.