Rant Alert!!!


As a dealer myself, can I just say that this is the sort of customer attitude which puts up the prices on equipment and gives every consumer a bad name. . Just bear in mind that if the unit is returned as Faulty and no fault is found that we are perfectly and legally entitled to charge you a "re-stocking fee", so you'll more than likely still find yourself out of pocket.

To return an item as "faulty", when you simply couldn't be bothered to do your homework or see a demo locally, before placing the order waste's the distributors time, the engineers time and the manufacturers time and ultimately this time has to be paid for somehow, and the only people who actually cover this cost are the people sending stuff back and buying the gear - i.e YOU the consumer.

If you've bought the product by mail order, then you are covered by the Distance Selling Regulations which give you 7 days to decide whether you want to keep the product. There are some restrictions in place for the distributor in order to stop this being abused, and you are still liable to pay the original carriage charge, and pay your own return carriage charge and make sure that the equipment is adequately insured and packaged. If the item is damaged on it's return trip, or not in the original packing and in perfect resaleable condition, then you are still liable to purchase the product or claim from your carriage insurance.

Be honest, if YOU made a mistake and don't like the product then return it under the distance selling regulations, don't return it as "faulty". Don't make the rest of us pay for it!, remember we are all Somebody's customer

I've seen the track90's in use, and have a catalog with them in but no price lists...they could be super expensive, or quite reasonable...Who's for option 1...?

Wouldn't cook a 16lb turkey though

Hmmm, how many people have a fully charged car battery lying around?. With regard to Battery Packs, I recently bought some solar powered garden marker lights which have 1 led fed from a pair of Ni-mh AA batteries. They last around 4 hours after a sunny day. I would hate to see how long they lasted with a cluster of LED's. The MR11 lamp I have has 35 white leds and still doesn't give enough light to read comfortably.

One the subject of Power Cuts..I live in a semi-rural area which is fed by a circa 1950's substation. On average I lose grid power for at least a few hours per month , I've got around this in the past by using rechargeable Fluorescent lights which use standard 18 Watt tubes and last for around 4 hours on one charge. These are also good for working on the car, or going into the loft and only cost around £19. More recently i've invested in a 1500W generator from Makro for £119, runs for 6 hours on one fill of unleaded and more than enough to run the PC, Central Heating Pump, Fridge and TV (yes the essentials! ). However since I bought it, we've had no power cuts....bloody typical.

Don't they have Gas in Torquay? .....other than after having to many curries!

Well said Gary, this bit is crutial to the use at present.


Have some of you not seen the LED colourchangers used in TV studios etc? They are very VERY bright and replace PAR56 type parcans very effectively. Obviously, colours are also spectacular. But these are very pricey at this time. As more are sold, prices will drop.

The cheap projection effects today are low output. This is a start, eventually they will have higher and higher output.

Buy me a drink when you win the lottery

Hi, firstly WELCOME TO -THE- FORUM

What was the nature of the venue managers complaints about the lighting? eg: Too bright / Shining into peoples eyes / too much strobing / too much smoke (if any) etc? I'm curious, and always pay more attention to complaints than I do about compliments.

LED's are less powerful than bulbs - thats a given fact for the moment. No doubt that will change over the next few years.

As Brian mentions above, some parcans are around now which offer bright output from LED's, but these work by using dozens, sometimes hundreds of hi-brightness LED's. As you can imagine, having dozens of lightsources (LEDs or bulbs) within an effect, would cause multiple images to be produced, and currently a lack of sharp focusing. However, I've no doubt that this will improve on single LED's in the future.

I've been looking into LED lighting (not directly ) for some time now, as I'm keen to replace several "ordinary" GLS/Pygmy and RO80 bulbs in certain disco, and domestic applications. Currently the most efficient single LED array thats around (in a bulb-like shape and size) is an array of 36 LED's, which offers a light output comparable to a 40watt "traditional" bulb. This is fine for some of my applications, but I'll have to wait for LED technology to evolve a couple more years before I can replace all my traditional bulbs with LED arrays.

Once again, Welcome the the forum.

Maybe this was due to the fact that the lighting was moving beyond the dancefloor and into the eyes of the audience and staff = complaints. Every lighting effect you list on your first comparison is a scanning or moving head effect which will scan well beyond the confines of your dancefloor.

I use halogen effects, but they are non scanning and all aimed at the dancefloor, and do not stray into the eyes of seated guests or bar staff . When I used scanners at private functions I also got complaints, I got rid of them - reserving their use for larger venues and now only use moonflower and ambient wall / ceiling wash effects and get no complaints.

However I sell both LED based and halogen effects everyday, and there is a big comparison between the output of an LED core and a 250W halogen or 575w Discharge Lamp - run the two together on the same rig and compare the difference between like for like effects. Yes, for ambient lighting LED lights have a role, but you couldn't use them in a large room or club environment, if that were possible every club and venue would be doing just that and saving £1000's a year on their utility bills

I had stock of an LED ambient water ripple lighting effect for months, and it simply didn't cut ice with DJ's because it wasn't bright enough, and at the same time the halogen version was flying out of the door!. Proof enough that DJ's just aren't buying them................yet.

LED Technology flopped when they tried to replace the domestic light bulb with them, and this is more of a commerical opportunity than DJ equipment as the old saying goes 'Every home should have one' but they don't simply because the light output isn't significant enough to offer a drop in replacement.

Yes, the day will come when it will be advanced enough, but that day isn't here yet. If it was then every car would have LED headlamps, Every street lamp would have rows of yellow LED's and every home would be lit by LED Table lamps and the energy hungry halogen or incandescent lamp would be resigned to history books.

I remember the early days of the energy saving fluorescent lamps, in those days these were considered too dim to be of significant use and were restricted to path lights and amenity lighting, nowadays people are using them for everyday use in their homes, purely because the technology has improved.

One huge advantage with LED lights is that their power consumption is tiny, compared to regular lighting.

For example: A lighting effect with a 250watt bulb will probably use a further 50 watts (approx - and keeps the numbers "round") for the running of its cooling fan, and the electronics inside. So, that lighting effect presents your mains supply with 300watts. You could therefore plug in 10 (well 11 really) of those units into a single 13amp wall socket.

IF they could make an LED fixture just as bright, and solve the focusing problems associated with LED arrays (eg: several LED's in close proximity to each other to make more light), you could feasilbly get the same amount of light output for one 40th of the power loading PLUS, no fan would be needed to cool the product as LED's run alot cooler.

Effects would be smaller, lighter, cheaper (less design issues with regards to heat venting etc), and since you could run more of them on your show, the companys could sell more, as it would be easier/safer for DJ's to use them in multiples.