Having to light an act with a skinny budget and limited physical space is not the ideal gig. But the good news is that lately a lot of lighting manufacturers are helping out with a variety of lower wattage and lower-priced fixtures. Smaller fixtures have been manufactured for years, but I ignored a lot of them because they simply weren’t very bright. But with new optics and bulb technology, this is no longer the case. The advent of LED products has also put a new spin on things. One of the biggest costs for club owners is buying new lamps. This can be a huge expense for moving lights. Thankfully, the lamps in some of these newer fixtures are not as expensive as the older models. But it still is a big chunk of money to a band wishing to purchase their own fixtures. With LEDs, the chances are pretty good that your band will break up before you would ever need to replace a single diode.
—Nook Schoenfeld, from LD-at-Large, PLSN, April 2009
