Total newbie needs help

Hey man, it looks like you need a good basic stage lighting package for a small stage.....

Here is what you need to start off:

(front light)

A dimmer board with 2 dimmer packs $300ish

8 Par 56 300 watt cans $250. This includes lamps and gel.

2 Light weight 9' Tripod stands $100ish for the pair

$650... well under your budget. Buy some cases and some extension cords and you will rock a small karaoke stage. You can keep the pars and dimmer packs permanently attached to the crossbars and your setup/tear down time will be not long at all.

How large are your venues?

Tuckersound just listed a great setup. But if you are primarily at smaller venues the par 56's would be overkill, even though you could dim them you may not ever need that much power. But if your venue size changes frequently from small bars to large area's then go for that setup.

If you stay in smaller venues you can get smaller pars and may not need the dimmer or the board, you could just get a chaser, plug it in and let it go. But that means if your venues grow you would need to invest into more lighting.

It's all up to where you already play and also were you would like to play.

I say follow tuckersounds advice but modify it for your needs.

Kevin

Thanks for the advices. Now for the some real newbie questions. The systems looks pretty good for what I want. The venue is not huge but it's not small either. What I am looking for mainly is the expandability. Using that dimmer board/switches you have mentioned, how many more "lights" can I add to it? Can it expand out so if I were to do a medium size venue I can purchase more lights and go with it?

I bought two tripod stands for about what you have mentioned so that's all set. I may want to add another set of tripods with a truss for more lighting if needed for later, mostly for DJ gigs.

Another question, what does 8 par 56 300 watts mean? I know the 300 watt part. Is that a model number or some kind of code used in lighting?

Now for more questions, what is the difference between intelligent lights and none intelligent lights? Where does the par light you mentioned fall? What about chaser? What does it do? What is DMX? Is there software you can use on a PC to control lights automatically?

Sorry for a lot of dumb questions. Thanks so much in advance for your answers.

Ben

Let�s say you just kept with the same two dimmers, you could only have a total of 8 fixtures. Well in theory at 500watts per channel you could make it messy by running extension cords and such to get each socket up to 500watts but umm keep it simple.

So if you wanted say another 8 pars you would need to purchase 2 more dimmers. As for the board, it can control up to 16 channels so that should be fine. If you had only 8 pars and 4 colors in those pars then you would be using 4 channels. Dimmer one and Dimmer two would be set to channels one to four. Channel 1 for red, Channel 2 for blue and so on. But if you got another 8 pars and wanted different colors in those then you would start using channels 5-8 for dimmer 3 and 4. Or if the lights where separated by upstage and downstage you may want to use channels 1-4 for downstage and 5-8 for upstage. One thing to note is there is no amount of how many pars you can have on a single channel when it comes to the board and each dimmer can be set to channels 1-4.

Sorry but I overstated the answer to your question, yeah that setup is completely expandable if you are willing to buy more dimmers.

The 8 par 56 refers to eight par cans and the 56 refers to the size of the par, they go from 38-64 and each size is best suited for different lamps and applications.

Intelligent lighting is just lighting that the user controls aspects of. Rather then say just plugging in the par to a wall socket, with the dimmer board and dimmers you have an intelligent interface to control the par. You can turn it on at full power, dim it, create chasses with a series of scenes. The par isn�t intelligent but what controls it would be. A true intelligent light would say be a color changer. You can change their gel color and intensity at the slide of a fader. A color changer is plugged directly into a power source and the board tells it what to do. While with the par the board is just telling the dimmer what to do. Non intelligent fixtures pretty much work in 2 ways, on or off.

Yes their is computer programs that can be used to control intelligent lighting but I haven�t used one so... No comment

A chaser is something you can buy, plug your lights into and then the beats of the music will make the chaser cycle threw scenes. Such as par 1 and 2 on. par 1,2 off and 3,4 on. Chasers are great for plug and play but to have control over it you would need one that has DMX capabilities. With the dimmers and the board you can create your own chases and have more control, but it takes time to program, set up, ect. But its all up to you. I would go for the board and dimmers now, but when I started with lighting I'm glad I just got a simple chaser.

DMX is digital multiplex network. It's the language that controls intelligent fixtures and it has or had 512 channels. Each channel tells an intelligent fixture what to do. If you have a 2 channel fixture then channel one could be lamp intensity and channel 2 could be color. I think the 512 number has grown???

None of these questions are dumb. If I didn�t spend 5 years in theatre before I got into DJ, concert lighting I would have had all these questions and more. Hell, I did a few of them... But I will never tell which ones! You cant make me!

OK, hope I helped some and didn�t confuse,
Kevin

Kevin, I really appreciate your reply. It really answered my questions. Now I am beginning to get it. I am going to do some more research in to which controller I want. I saw a few that had interesting features, like mic-in or line-in for beat matching lighting, built in chase as well as large number of pre-programmed sequences. I am not sure which way I will go for now but more research will point me in the right direction I think.

I probably will start with 4 pars to keep it simple for Karaoke with the dimmer. I will probably need to add a few more if I were to do DJ gigs but that can come later along with more features.

I will keep you informed and will ask more questions as they rise. Much thanks again.

Ben

Ben,

Sounds like a great idea to keep it simple and just purchase what you need and expand when the time comes. Have fun with your new lights and feel free to ask any more questions becuase I need the break from history classes!


Kevin

quote:

Originally posted by tuckersound:
[qb] 8 Par 56 300 watt cans $250. This includes lamps and gel.[/qb]

Hi, can you tell me where I can get those 8 par-cans for $250? I searched the net and found that the American DJ par56 at 300 watts and including the lamps and gels go for about $45 each. For 8 of them, it would be about $360. Am I looking at a wrong place? Can you help please? Thanks.

Ben