LED Bar lights: suggestions needed

Chris,

I have experience with the mega bar 50, mega bar and mega bar pro. They all have a good throw (Better than I thought), of course each one is better than the model below it. I think the Bar 50's would work for ya as I use a couple of them for my show and have been impressed.

Ric

What sort of shows are you doing and what are you lighting?

I have to be a bit overly cautious this time around because any funds I spend take from funds I need later. I'm already committed to buying 8 Elation Opti Tri Pars unless there's overwhelming evidence to go for the ELED RGB Zooms(whenever they finally come out). With the price being pretty close to what I expected(a tiny bit lower), it ate my budget up, so I have to reserve funds for that purchase, but I do have additional funding for other lights for the show afterwards.

Live bands in local clubs. I have used them for foot up lighting and hanging from trussing, both have worked well. Right now, I have the mega bar pro doing about a 20' throw, the mega bar 50s doing about a 10-12 foot throw.

I'm thinking for budgetting purposes, getting 4 MegaBar 50s, but I'm worried about the throw. Have each set to more or less hit a zone from the front of the stage(Left, Left Center, Right Center, Right) Stage is 18-feet deep, but would be augmented/primarily lit by the 8 64 LED Pros.

The biggest problem is getting enough light at those depths because a fair amount of "action" is in the downstage area.

Chris,

I am doing my main front of stage lighting with 6 punch pros. I had a few areas that were dim so I added the Mega bar 50s, Mega bar and Mega bar pro. That was the trick, as it now does a great job of lighting the entire stage.

Well, I'll take that into consideration. I know I can brighten it up with more lights. The Mega Bar 50 is priced right to make it a relatively safe risk.

Chris,

I was reading some of your other posts and it looks like you did go for the Mega Bar 50s? Just curious how do you like them?

Ric

That's a good question. I talked about them in another recent post but let me recap anyways.

First off, they don't exactly punch through, but they did carry through the stage. Working as a footlight, I had to angle them down more than I expected to. None of this is a bad thing, as the intention of these was to help my 64 LED Pros. For that, they worked fine, but they could also work fine on their own, in fact I may utilize them to help with an ice-room scene to help light the ground fog.

Some things I definately like. I have some 5-foot Accucable, and these fixtures also have an IEC pass-thru power power. This was idea as I could simply connect powerm to the one on the left(my perspective), then chain power out to the other 3 using the 3 6-foot cables I got for like $2 each. Then with the 5-foot Accucable, it was nice a near perfect set-up. About the only thing better would have been to have a bundled signal and data cable, but that might be a future project with some cable wrap. Set up was fast and easy. Since I divided the stage into 4 zones, the 4 Mega Bar 50's hit those zones perfectly just based on spacing with that stage.

About all I can say is the consistentcy of the colors with the 64 LED Pros, the now 4 Mega Panels, and the Mega Bar 50's, it really takes stress down a bit. I am positive when I get some Elation LED's soon, I have the same consistency despite being different type of LED technology.

Also, the Mega Bnar 50 already has a 7-channe profile with MyDMX, which helped keep things going smoothly. The Mega Panel 7-channel profile as-is wasn't sufficient for my uses in the 3D Visualizer so I had to tweak it.

But as far as buying more Mega Panel 50's? I think for me, 4 is quite enough for my purposes. Still, I could see a lot of potential for this. Take a 10-foot i-beam truss. You could load at least 6 Mega Panels on each 5-foot span for a total of 12 for the truss as-is, but you could probably stick a total of 14 on there if not more if you wanted to and not worry about weight. Pre-addresss the fixtures, wire them for DMX and power, and to get it going all you need to do is run a power cable per 5 fixtures(a power strip can help) and get DMX in and out and you're done, just raise and aim.

I did have an issue with the first one I opened because an end-cap was out of spec with the threaded insert for the thumbscrew for a foot. Support sent me a new one, removed the 4 screws holding that in placed, swapped out defective for replacement and I was a happy camper again.

I used the lights at a second gig yesterday and they performed equally as well.

The compact size of the Mega Panel 50's makes them affortable and easily portable, although for a better footlight application, I would think some of the larger Mega Bars would be more ideal just from a size/coverage perspective. For a top/raised application, yeah these can do a good job with a small footprint no problem, as long as the lift is pretty decent(8-12 feet) and a bit of throw to prevent the RGB shadowing. As far as washing walls, yup, I can't think of a better light unless you need to cover much larger areas. Definately would work good for columns though for sure.

For the money and what I get out of them, I'm thoroughly pleased. Definately a winner.