I did a show on May 21st, where the band did their own lighting. It's OK, they had a lighting operator. He was using some free software package. Did a fairly good job, video is on my web site.
Anyhow, they were using all Chauvet lighting. Yes, I know, we're not supposed to mention competitor's products. Too f*cking bad. I'm typing here, and feelings are the last thing I'm taking into consideration.
As we know(or if you don't, you will in a few seconds), I do have some Chauvet lights. I'm not 100% pleased with them, but I do like them. I won't go into all the "seamed to offer better bang for the buck" and what I ended up losing out on. This one is the opposite, based on what I saw.
First off, power. Routing power can be a pain in the butt. Sure, we can just pop a power strip in, but there are certainly better options. Like DMX with an in and out, why can't there be IEC power pass-thru? Well, there CAN be, and the Chauvet lights these guys were using have it. This makes for a very clean, reliable set-up that the band was able to mount onto trusses and leave in place rather gracefully.
ADJ, at least in current photos, is showing hard-wired power cabling leading from the fixture. While it is more stuff as far as individual parts, I think it's time to move off this hard-wired mentality and onto IEC cabling. if you want, move to how Cisco has a retaining clip to help prevent slipping. I honestly have a 2 5-foot i-beam trusses I want to do something permanent with using flat LED fixtures(ADJ only), and I want it to be as clean as possible, which will include stuffing cabling through the pre-drilled holes to hide as much as possible. I got the time, I suppose I could fish cabling through the trussing for power and custom terminate it, but I want a more elegant solution.
I'm also planning to upgrade to triangle trussing and work in 5-foot sections to make lghting more accessible and quicker to set and strike. It's a matter of money, which is not in huge amounts right now.
(especially considering if I land into a buttload of money, I'm going digital and getting an A&H iLive T-series and a Tascam X48)
I'm not here to slam ADJ. I think ADJ just needs to re-think some things about how their fixtures are terminated.
I had my Mystic break. It was the power cable, some retard broke off the grounding pin, so I had to replace the entire cable by buying an extension cable and "sacrificing it". This is NOT acceptable, especially out in the field. Yes, it can work, I'm fine with my repair, but if we had IEC cabling, I can just trash the defective cable(or mark it for repair) and throw a spare cable into production and no down time.
Also, fuses. Ys, they have their purposes. So do breakers. We typically use fuses to prevent against damage, while we use breakers to prevent drawing too much current. Yet, we can use breakers in the same application as well as prevent failures due to whatever.... You blow a fuse, and in my recent scenario, I was screwed. Who's fault is this? Well, ultimately mine for not buying spares. Stuff happens, fuses to blow. In this case, fuse blows, I'm down a fixture. Breakers are so much better in this case!
We can and should learn from our competition. I'm trying to push my lighting offerings, but I have a LOT of work to do in order to make this convenient. Setting lighting from a bunch of bags and parts takes time, far too much time, at least in my opinion. I want to pre-rig things up, and using LED technology, all I really need to do is connect up DMX leads and power and I'm ready to stand mount and get busy. I'll even go flat i-beam truss for now just to save time, but putting that together is a pain in the butt on site and takes up far too much time, but that's the nature of i-Beam trussing.
I think adding IEC cabling for power, IEC pass-thru for chaining power, and breakers over fuses are all things ADJ needs to consider for a great deal of their fixtures. This helps preserve ivestment, maintains higher uptime and gives us, the guys in the field, more otions. We gotta keep running. We're on the road sometimes and may not have the full choice of options. Building the options and tools into our gear helps.
Also, all DMX lights need to have a DMX signal indicator, even if it's just a flickernig dot like on a dimmer pack like a DP-DMX20L.
These options are possible for most fixtures. I think it should be investigaged and persued. I'm sure the modifications, based on scale, should require minimal re-fitting and be done without having to raise prices to the consumer. Yes, it will cost ADJ some money to do the changes, but as I said, in scale, it should avoid ADJ needing to raise pricing to consumers.
Since I'm mainly doing bands, I am not concerned about my "dancing" lights, the high tech FX. I'm concerned about wash and coverage and speed of getting things set. Trying to save time for my crew and myself are key concerns, along with the constant problem of power, which I am addressing via going LED.
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