During the week, I run this magazine for a living. But on weekends, I still dabble in my other craft, lighting bands doing one-offs. I generally like to use about 60 movers and some key lights on a show. I’m not picky on what lights I get, because I’m playing mostly festivals with these acts during the summer. I take what I get. The beauty is, I get to test about every fixture made over the summer.
Last month, I had a show in a field somewhere off the beaten path in Wisconsin. The local lighting guy is proud to show me some lights he just bought. “Well, we got us some Sharpy knockoffs from China. Don’t know who makes them. Picked ‘em up last week for under $800 each. I will tell you this, The Sharpy clones match up with the same profile in your console.” Says my M.E. du jour. I see some unrecognizable strobes. “The strobes are these new units from Mega-Lite. Very affordable.”
Blink to Black
As it turns out, the Mega-Lite strobes had six cells and were just awesome tools for me. Probably the best investment the guy ever made, (he said they cost something like $300 each). The Sharpy knockoffs had no dimmer. They simply popped to full once I got to 30 percent intensity and could only black out. The rest of the functions were fine. But if you can’t fade out a scene…
Fast forward 24 hours, and I walk onto a stage that has some five-cell LED batten of lights that can spin in circles for days on end. It seems everyone now makes a version of the Ayrton MagicBlade. I love those original fixtures. And the ones I have today seem to be a great addition to my show, and I program them in everywhere. As I’m finishing up programming, today’s tech walks up to me and says, “Don’t worry. I will be on headset the whole show so I can take care of these lights.” My eyebrows raise. He explains, “Well, every time you come out of continuous spin mode, a bunch of them will lose their pan calibration. I watch for them and give ‘em a hard reset when needed.”
Unavoidable Tradeoffs
So there are tradeoffs. If you want to buy less expensive fixtures, they will probably be fine in a field in Wisconsin. Not so fine at the corporate show. I think affordable moving lights are great for installs where you are not trucking the fixtures every day. But if I have a serious show or a tour going out, I will stick with the brand names and lights that I prefer to use.
I was down in Mazatlán, Mexico doing a show in a parking lot, not far from the beach. The lighting company we had is pretty huge down there. I had about 100 moving lights, and 50 of them I had never seen before. They were all Chinese knockoffs. I spent some time talking to the owner of the lighting company. For years, he only bought Martin and Vari-Lite — top-of-the-line gear, he said. But he has problems because of where he works. His fixtures are often used outside and exposed to the salt air.
Within two years, all his circuit boards are weathered, and the cost to replace them negates much of his profit. It takes him two years of rentals to pay a fixture off, but he knows the designers want certain lights. So he keeps replacing parts. In order to stay in business, he came up with a plan. He buys Chinese knock offs at a fraction of the price. Within two years these lights stop working, regardless of the circuit boards rusting. So when they break he throws them in the dumpster and buys a fresh set. The money he makes off these keeps the rest of the inventory in working spare parts. This may be Third World logic to some, but it certainly made sense to this business owner.
For Nook Schoenfeld’s introduction to the Sept. 2016 issue of PLSN, go to www.plsn.me/201609ednote.
