Before 2010, if a lighting crew member said “sharpy,” it was probably in reference to a black felt pen (i.e., a Sharpie). Those felt-tip markers are still around, but these days, so are a lot of Sharpys — Clay Paky’s compact, lightweight and quick moving light fixtures with distinctively bright and hard-edged beams. Last fall, at LDI 2012, Clay Paky launched its Sharpy Wash 330, a little more than two years after the company’s original Sharpy fixture made its big debut at PLASA 2010 in London.
Beams Plus Wash
At a glance, there are some strong similarities in how the original Sharpy and the new Sharpy Wash look — and move. Take a closer look, however, and you’ll start seeing the differences.
With the Sharpy Wash 330, Clay Paky kept much of the original Sharpy’s outer looks, but re-engineered the inside and front end to offer lighting designers a fixture that can deliver a wider array of possible looks.
Unlike the original Sharpy, the front of the Sharpy Wash has a Fresnel lens with a motorized top hat for beam control. Inside, there are more new features, starting with Philips’ MSD Platinum 16R 330W lamp.
Efficient Lumens
Consuming just 330 watts, the MSD Platinum 16R is a discharge lamp with a short arc burner in a reflector system that produces 16,000 lumens of output in the 8,000K color temperature range. As a whole, the Sharpy Wash 330 consumes no more than 550 watts — allowing several to be placed on a single 20-amp circuit.
To offer designers more color choices, Clay Paky included a CMY mixing engine that moves in nicely at unbelievably fast speeds, covering the field with no shifting from white to a color.
Although the CMY color-mixing system can produce almost any color imaginable, sometimes a fixed color wheel is the best way to get intense, saturated colors. The Sharpy Wash’s color wheel offers 11 slots plus open.
The fixture’s 6.5° to 48° zoom range adds to the versatility of the looks you can produce. It makes you feel like you have the best of both worlds — a wash and a beam fixture in one.
Visual Twists
It might not be easy to get that excited about a typical wash light. But if the thought of what a wash light usually gives you the urge to yawn, the Sharpy Wash has a few tricks that might make you drop your jaw in a different way.
The Sharpy Wash doesn’t have a gobo wheel, but the rotating beam shaper is able to put some motion into the beam for some interesting dynamic looks.
Think of the beam shaper as if someone is standing behind a PAR and rotating the lamp. Only on the Sharpy Wash, that’s done through the fixture, and the rotating beam shaper can reach speeds that no stagehand could possibly match, allowing for a visual twist for aerial beam effects.
The Sharpy Wash also offers two frost filter choices, which work together with the nice, even field achieved by the Fresnel lens and zoom. They include the soft-edge and heavy frost filters. The soft-edge frost filter disperses the edges a bit more, while the heavier frost maximizes it spread.
Yes, any time you use a frost filter, some output will be lost, but to my eyes, after the frost filters were moved into place, there was not a significant change in total output. (Perhaps those with super-human vision would be able to tell the difference.)
What I did notice was that, when bringing in either of the frost filters, the look of the beam changed as the filters were sweeping across it. Not something every designer wants to see, maybe, but if you look at it another way, it might work as yet another effect that can add some motion and beam changes to aerial effects.
Other Goodies
Physically speaking, the Sharpy Wash has some other similarities, not just with the original Sharpy but many other Clay Paky fixtures, including the same ports and menu systems. The on-board menu display has a built-in battery system that lets you tweak the configuration when the fixture is not powered — a nice feature that Clay Paky has offered on its fixtures for quite some time.
The Sharpy Wash also offers both 3-pin and 5-pin DMX in and out connectors along with a single Ethernet port. The Ethernet port offers network control via Art-Net and MA-Net. The Ethernet port also gives users access to Clay Paky’s own system management and configuration utility, which is accessible from any web browser connected to the network. Think of it as Clay Paky’s own version of RDM. Personally, I would like to see RDM used instead. At this writing, it was not available, but Clay Paky says you’ll be able to download it at some point in the future.
A Multi-Use Focus
You can quibble about how the “sharp” part of the word, “Sharpy,” is at odds with what a wash fixture does, but put “Sharpy” and “Wash” together, and this fixture’s name does a pretty good job of communicating the combination of wash and beam options that it delivers.
Along with its “two fixtures in one” appeal, the Sharpy Wash 330 shares another distinctive touch with the original Sharpy: speed of movement, not just with pan and tilt (540°/240°) but with its quick-moving internal mechanisms. Not quite instantaneous, perhaps, but fast enough that you’d have trouble clocking them with a stopwatch.
While it will undoubtedly benefit from the momentum of the original Sharpy in the marketplace, the Sharpy Wash seems destined to take its own path to success. It’s already finding a spot on some pretty big tours. If you want it on your next gig, you had better get your order in soon — demand is high, and while the factory in Italy is pumping them out, supplies may be limited.
One Fixture, Multiple Looks
With a Fresnel lens, two frost filters, a motorized top hat for beam control, CMY color mixing engine, fixed color wheel, rotating beam shaper and 6.5° to 48° zoom range — not to mention the compact size and quick speed of the original Sharpy — the Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330 offers designers a lot more than the average wash fixture.
Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330
PROS: Compact, versatile fixture with quick pan and tilt movement, wide array of looks and effects, high, energy-efficient output.
CONS: No PowerCon pass-through; RDM currently not available
Size: 20.4” x 15.9” x 13”
Weight: 40.8 lbs.
Lamp: Philips MSD Platinum 16R
Power: 330W (lamp), 550W (total)
DMX: 22 channels max
Certifications: CE, ETL, cETLus, UL
Colors: Black, white, chrome, gold.
Optional: custom, flag graphics
Price (MSRP): $8250
