Concert tour lighting specialist Squeek Lights has expanded its rental inventory with the purchase of 36 ADJ Jolt Bar FX multifunctional strobe / blinder / wash / effect fixtures. The company, which specializes in delivering impactful lighting that complements the music and enhances the crowd’s energy, made the investment following positive experiences with other ADJ lighting fixtures and LED video products. The units are now set to go out on various tours this fall, providing lighting designers with a wide palette of effects to enhance their shows.
Squeek Lights was founded by experienced lighting pro Victor Zeiser, who continues to run the company alongside partners Ben Jarrett and Steve Kosiba. It opened its doors in the fall of 2014, with its first tours rolling out in early 2015. While also offering local rental and sales services, the company focusses on providing touring lighting packages to fit a range of venue sizes and budgets that all offer the latest technology and emotion-driven lighting to enhance the concert experience. The latest tool the company has added to its rental inventory to help lighting designers achieve this goal is the ADJ Jolt Bar FX.
“We had a demo of the Jolt Bar FX and thought it was cool, so placed an order for 12 units,” explains Zeiser. “But as soon as it arrived, and we had the chance to play with it, we immediately decided to order more! We really like it because it’s one fixture, but lets you create two layers of effects. It’s also very visual, because it’s so large, so we really love to use it as an accent fixture. For a lot of concert rigs you have your spots, your washes, your beams, and the Jolt Bar FX then allows us to add a layer of something extra – that is visually unique – which a lot of our clients really like.”
The Jolt Bar FX is a professional linear LED fixture that delivers huge output as well as the creative potential of brilliant bright white strobe/blinder LEDs combined with multi-zone color wash LEDs in one versatile unit. It features a central strip of 112 5W cool white SMD LEDs, surrounded on both sides by a total of 672 0.3W RGB color mixing SMD LEDs. This allows the same fixture to generate intense white strobing effects as well as vibrant color washes. Both types of LED are also grouped into independently controllable zones (16 white and 32 color), which means the unit can also be used to generate strobe chases and other ‘eye candy’ effects. The team at Squeek Lights chose to add the fixture to their rental inventory not only because of its unique design and creative potential, but also having previously had positive experiences with other ADJ fixtures.
“The first ADJ product we used was the 32 HEX Panel IP,” explains Zeiser, “because we were looking for a fixture that could fill a lot of roles for us, at a really cost-effective price point. We use them as strobes a lot, we like using them as blinders, the cell control lets you make a lot of great visual effects with them and, of course, they are fantastic as wash lights too. We have used them as side lights, as footlights, for visual effects and even to wash buildings, they are truly multifunctional. The IP65 rating is useful too; we don’t use them in the rain a lot, but they get their fair share of beer dumped on them and keep punching right through that. The magnetic frost filter is also a useful accessory, overall, it’s just a great fixture!”
An IP65 rated multi-functional wash / blinder / color strobe fixture, the 32 HEX Panel IP is designed for both indoor and outdoor use. It features 32 12W HEX LEDs (6-IN-1 – RGBWA+UV) arranged into eight individually controlled zones. It offers a 24˚ standard beam angle and is supplied with a magnetic removable filter frame that can be used to add a diffusion filter to increase the beam angle if required. It has an all-metal, black housing and is fitted with a versatile mounting system that can be used as either a floor stand or hanging bracket. Following a positive experience with the 32 HEX Panel IP, Squeek Lights’ next investment with ADJ was to expand their business to offer LED video for the first time.
“At the beginning of 2022 we decided that investing in LED video wall was the next step for our company,” states Zeiser, “so we made a purchase of 282 ADJ VS3 panels. What made us choose the ADJ Vision Series in particular was that we love the ground support system. While we do sometimes do full arena video walls, a lot of our clients like to take out smaller ground systems like the one we’ve setup here today [pictured top] that’s about to go out on a co-headlined tour with Joywave and iDKHOW. The Vision Series ground support system lets you quickly configure and setup a floor-standing video wall without using crank-up stands or any of that nonsense – it lets you do video wall in a way that you really couldn’t before. We really like how Richard Fong [Lighting Designer for the Joywave/iDKHOW tour] has used this to break up the video wall – the center screen [pictured] will be flanked by four separate 8×4 panel columns on rolling risers – which leaves space in the design to create more depth and to allow the lights to cut through in-between. Because it’s a co-headlined show, he’s also going to move the four columns between the two bands’ sets, to give each one a different look. It’s a great way of using video, and we love designs like this rather than the traditional single solid wall upstage.”
Featuring the highest quality LED binning as well as bright, clear output, the ADJ VS3 has a 3.91mm pixel pitch (128 x 128 pixel density) and features 3-in-1 RGB SMD2121 LEDs with a brightness of 1,000 NITS and a high refresh rate of 3,840Hz. It offers a wide viewing angle of 160° (horizontal) / 140° (vertical) and a high contrast ratio of 5,000:1, allowing for the delivery of exceptionally vibrant video reproduction. Each panel is comprised of four individual modules, which are front serviceable, allowing for convenient maintenance and repairs.
With three different ADJ products now stocked in significant quantities in the Squeek Lights rental inventory and having also used others for installation projects, Zeiser is now confident in the performance and reliability of the company’s fixtures. However, he wasn’t an easy sell! “I’ll admit that I was initially skeptical of using ADJ products,” he states, “because of the DJ association, but since deciding to give the company a try we’ve had a great experience. The 32 HEX Panel IPs just blew us away with their build quality. I don’t think we’ve ever had to send one of them back, they’ve proven really reliable. We’ve also had great after sales support from ADJ. When we got the HEX Panels, we had a lot of designers complain about the dimming curves – they jumped on instead of dimming up from nothing – but ADJ listened, and quickly released a firmware update that fixed the problem. We were very pleased that ADJ was willing to re-tool the firmware to make Lighting Designers enjoy the fixtures more.”
Squeek Lights Inventory of ADJ Fixtures
48 – 32 HEX Panel IP
282 – VS3 LED Panel
36 – Jolt Bar FX
Further information from Squeek Lights: www.squeeklights.com
Further information from ADJ: www.adj.com
