ETC source four LED upgrades

[photonix]

Im looking to upgrade my source four zooms to LED. Has anyone experience in the colour upgrade compared to the white option. the question is whether the colour option gives out decent white at similar output to the original HPI lamp. I see the colour option operates at a lower wattage so suggests output is lower also. The safe option is the white LED upgrade, but the option of colour would be nice.

[J Pearce]

I've not played much with the new S3 Lustrs, but had a rig full of the S2 Lustrs at my last job.

Really really good. Very flat beam and able to focus very sharp. The gate diffusers are good at controlling chromatic abberation on gobos. White at 3200K is probably closer to a 575W HPL than a 750W, but white at 5000K is much brighter than a  750W HPL S4 with CTB gel in. The only time I felt I needed more punch was on the FOH units in the big concert hall (30m + throw), but I think I would have had the same issue with a 750W HPL, and using fixed lenses rather than zooms would probably have been a big help too (it really needed 10deg rather than 15-30s, and in theory fixed angle lenses are more optically efficient).

I've not played much with the white S4s, but be aware that they don't respond to gel colours in the same way that a HPL lamp would.

[photonix]

1 hour ago, J Pearce said:

I've not played much with the new S3 Lustrs, but had a rig full of the S2 Lustrs at my last job.

Really really good. Very flat beam and able to focus very sharp. The gate diffusers are good at controlling chromatic abberation on gobos. White at 3200K is probably closer to a 575W HPL than a 750W, but white at 5000K is much brighter than a  750W HPL S4 with CTB gel in. The only time I felt I needed more punch was on the FOH units in the big concert hall (30m + throw), but I think I would have had the same issue with a 750W HPL, and using fixed lenses rather than zooms would probably have been a big help too (it really needed 10deg rather than 15-30s, and in theory fixed angle lenses are more optically efficient).

I've not played much with the white S4s, but be aware that they don't respond to gel colours in the same way that a HPL lamp would.

I wonder how the ETC S4WRD LED Color Kit compares to the Lustrs, I see it is a RGBA without white. how is this option at producing white at various ocular temps, I have not found enough information on it as yet.

[J Pearce]

Got no experience with the S4WRD, so can't help there.

[Ynot]

I looked into this a few times over recent years and came to the conclusion that whilst dropping an ETC LED engine on the back of a tungsten S4 lens tube is quite feasible, (or indeed any of the compatible options from the likes of Chauvet etc) it was in fact a better choice to go with the lenses that are matched to the LED gear. The tungsten lens tubes are great in themselves, but to get the full benefit of the LED output you really need those matched bits of glass.

And compared to the LED engines, the extra cost of a proper lens is relatively small overall.....

You MIGHT find that if you by the LED backs, and sell the older tungstens as a whole, that may get you the wonga to invest in the LED lenses anyway.
Selling the backs on their own is a less-likely success story.

[Simon Lewis]

I was considering using 4WRDs but the photometrics seemed only "almost" as good as tungsten, it wasn't a particularly cheap upgrade, the supply chain was impacted and ETC warned that they couldn't be used in very cold temperatures (the user I had in mind was a particularly cold CofE building, where it was quite likely that the lights would go on well before the heating did). They are in the process of repurposing the Source 4s for occasional event use and replacing them with some higher output LED Chauvet fixtures.