Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Les Kacev on July 27, 2009 at 4:32pm

Hi:
It appeasr that you are looking at PAR38's with 5mm LEDs rather than High Power LEDs. These work, but do not produce a high lumen output. Further, quality is important, especially as it relates to heat management. I have seen PAR38's with 5mm LEDs specified to last 40,000 hours failing after a few thousand hours. Also, one needs to understand construction. Many of these lamps have 5mm LEDs in series, so if a single LED fails, the whole lamp fails. So I would advise buying from a vendor you can trust who will support his product.

Permalink Reply by Brenda Siegelman on August 3, 2009 at 12:16pm

the MBT par pack has a little board included that has buttons for preset colors. you can run off the wall outlets, I draw under 1K for the whole stage an. I'd skip the incancesents. If you go with the preset board no programing required, (but you still contol what color, when) you get plenty of light output, no dimmers are needed, everything is smaller and lighter. The LED system even goes up and comes down faster.

Permalink Reply by Stan Romanowski on August 5, 2009 at 10:45am

Thanks guys! This is a weekend warrior setup; I get paid no extra cash for this. We play small bars,clubs and outside gigs. ( I'm king of putting a ton of gear in a half-ton venue!). The small par bulbs are @ 20 bucks each, pretty cheep. We have two led cans,forget the manufacturer;these 38 leds are almost as bright as the 170$ can if only one color is lit. I currently have 24 cans across the back. NO ONE in my area back lights the band any more. A couple of cans on sticks in front on auto-blink. Boring. The LED's on auto look like the old christmass color wheels to me,blue,red,yellow,blue... Were trying to re-creat a concert experience in small clubs. I like the look of colors changing as well as focus point in a show. I use NSP halogen bulbs the look isn't bad for cheep! I believe the real difference in lights,sound;hell,even musicians is who's running it.I see bands with a couple of thousand dollars worth of shiny new LED things and I've taken out 4 cans and made the band dramatic.

Permalink Reply by Kyle Bjordahl on June 20, 2011 at 3:28pm

What about getting dimmable LED Par 38s with high output diodes and just coloring them? It would give you more choice over color palettes, and the LEDs would likely not burn through saturated colors nearly as fast. This is of course assuming that you have cans with media frames...

 

I definitely agree with the NSP halogens, I've used them on lots of little industrials, they make great little ACL-like arrays!

Permalink Reply by Joe Cole on July 22, 2012 at 1:51pm

Not only what Kyle said but your lamp life and replacement cost should drop. 

Alternately I've been importing stuff myself and can get you high powered lamps with 12 1w diodes.  Color options are WW, CW, R, G or B....  in reality any color is theoretically possible based on wavelength but would probably require a large run order to make happen.  No brand names, no real markup, no company, just LD helping LD.