Dana_V

Just in case anyone wondered what would happen if a Hamer Special and a Gibson S-1 had a baby (and added a Bigsby).

Got another update yesterday.

In no order: Randy Jo Hobbs Peter "Mars" Cowling dUg Pinnick Tom Petersson Dusty Hill Honorable mentions (also in no order): John Entwistle, Geddy Lee, Phil Lynott, Billy Sheehan, Les Claypool, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Stuart Hamm, and a bunch of others I can't think of right now.

Thanks for picking up the torch on this one - you've done a much better job of explaining it than I have. And yes, it makes perfect sense. Here's a chart that shows the different light engine options for one of the fixtures the company I work for sells, the SolaSpot 3000. All LED-based, but with different outputs. You can opt for the "Ultra-Bright" engine for 37,000 lumens at 7000k and CRI > 70, or the "High Fidelity" engine for 25,000 lumens at 6000K and CRI > 95. It's a compromise: brighter with less accuracy or slightly less bright with better accuracy.

It's possible that the LEDs have a higher color temperature, making it look brighter – blue-white instead of the yellowish merc-vapor – but the actual light output (lumens) is lower, therefore the shorter throw. I discussed it with one of the optical engineers at work and he added, "It also could be that the LED looks brighter because the light distribution is wider, but the axis intensity is lower than that of the mercury vapor light."

For my 300th post, I thought it might be time to start an 0093 thread. I took the first picture myself, but all the others are from Trish - thanks. 😊 It started on Monday, July 10, 2017, at Shishkov HQ when I picked the wood for the top. There were several choices and Mike and I discussed the piece that he thought would work best with the color I had in mind. It's the one in the middle. April, 2019: the neck. And the body. June, 2019: the binding. More updates as they occur.

With the exception of some high-output projectors, LEDs have replaced any other form of light source in the professional touring world. All of the major manufactures' fixtures are exclusively LED-based. It just hasn't trickled down to our level yet. But anyway: Are you sure we weren't in the same band? (haha) In the early 80s my band used a massive setup of 500W PAR 64s (plus some other incidental lighting). Our sound guy was an electrician and would tap in to the breaker box pre-fuses. And yes, at least one of us would stand nearby with a 2x4 ready to knock him away from it if something went wrong (luckily, it never did). We had our own distro system. Maybe it was a little dangerous, but it sure beat tripping the breakers. We also made our own pyro, and it's really, really amazing that (a) nobody got seriously injured and (b) we never burned any buildings down. These days for me, though, it's all Chauvet, for better or worse. Four 4BARs with one band and two with the other. One person can literally carry all the lights in one trip. No more tripped breakers, no more tapping into the venue's electrical box, no more huge road cases filled with heavy lights and cables. And no more waiting for the fixtures to cool down before you can pack them up at the end of the night. It's smaller lighter, not as dangerous...but also somehow a little boring. And of course, no more homemade pyro. For old time's sake: homemade pyro, 1981.

Exactly. The viewing angle of a single LED is very narrow, and since the fixtures we're talking about are almost exclusively direct-view, even the wash fixtures create a relatively narrow beam. To create a proper light source, multiple white LEDs are assembled in a cluster under a lens. This is a light engine from a typical modern fixture, and you can see the individual LEDs under the lens: Once the source is established you can manipulate the beam however you want - color, shape, brightness (with mechanical dimming), etc.

Absolutely. Having said all that, and even though I work for a world-renowned lighting company, both bands I play in use Chauvet LED-based lights. They're lightweight, relatively inexpensive and we don't have to worry about tripping breakers in the bars where we play (like we did when we used PAR 38s). But man I wish they were brighter. Even video shot on a full-HD camera ends up looking murky.

The simple answer is they're just not bright enough. Unless you get into real pro-level lighting, the LED fixtures found in most club-level installs (American DJ, Chauvet, etc.) simply don't emit enough lumens. It takes a LOT of energy to create bright white light, and most of those just aren't up to the task. Traditional incandescent lamps operate on AC power and are constantly turning off and on at a rate of 60 times per second (60 Hz) in the US; 50 Hz in the UK and some other countries. Line power is a sine wave, so if you could see it in slow motion the light would actually be fading in and out 60 times a second. This is invisible to the naked eye, of course, but can wreak havoc with film or video equipment running at 30 frames per second. Remember the old lighting rigs in the 70s? Banks of PAR 64 fixtures (500 or 1000 watts each), creating enough heat to roast a turkey and pulling enough current to power a small city. Heavy, inefficient and power-hungry. However, a lot of theaters and other fixed-install applications still prefer incandescents - although ellipsoidals or Fresnel as opposed to PARs - because of the "warm" look created by lower color temperatures. The color skews more red/orange instead of the typical blue-white emitted by gas-discharge lamps. Plus, they're quiet - no fans or electronic ballasts make noise. Enter the gas-discharge lamp. Instead of a filament, light is created by exciting a combination of chemicals in a sealed enclosure between a cathode and anode. Similar to a fluorescent tube, but operating on a much higher level and generally not at 60 Hz - more like a 400 Hz square wave. This makes for a much more efficient light source. Before LEDs took over, this was the standard of the industry in pro lighting. Every rig had 575-watt wash lights, and some combination of 700-watt movers (moving yoke or moving mirror). Bigger stage? No problem. 1200 watts, 2000 watts...at 2500 watts you could shine a hard-edge image on the freakin' clouds at night. The drawback, of course, was it took a considerable amount of energy to strike (start) the lamp, so electronic ballasts (power supplies) had to be invented. And they could get pretty hot, so cooling systems - either fans or even a liquid cooling system - had to be included. But because of the efficiency of switching power supplies, gas-discharge-based fixtures didn't draw anywhere near the line current as incandescents (aka "conventionals"). Then LED-based fixtures came along. LEDs operate on DC power ("always on") and the brightness can be controlled one of two ways: by reducing the voltage to the LED element or by chopping it up into a pulse-width-modulated (PWM) square wave. However, most of the fixtures found in clubs and small venues are running at full brightness all the time, so the LEDs are running "steady on" all the time. But you're never going to get pro-level light without pro-level money, and most clubs and bars aren't willing to invest that much. LEDs have come a long way in the last decade and continue to get better, more efficient and brighter. All but the most old-school theaters have gone LED. Consumer-level stuff has gotten brighter but still has a long way to go in the cost vs. brightness department. I went to a show in a small club last week an the lighting was horrible. Four cheapie fixtures hung from the ceiling in front of the stage and the throw was so dim and short it was almost like no lighting at all. Anyway, I hope this helps. And yes, I work for a lighting company. Edited to add: I forgot to mention, another problem with getting white light out of low-cost LED-based fixtures is many of them don’t actually have any white LEDs - just equal numbers of red, green and blue LEDs. Theoretically, when you combine red, green and blue (RGB) light in equal amounts you get white. But because of differences in efficiency in the LEDs used in these products, you never get true white. The fixtures you see at a pro concert use a pure while light source and change colors by putting different colors of dichroic glass in the light path, the same way incandescent or gas-discharge fixtures work.

20.

I really need to see the rest of the blue monstrosity hanging in the left of the frame. I might also be curious to see the rest of the murder-shack of a house in the background. I'm thinking it probably looks something like this:

Remember that time Homer built a bed for Bart? I guess he builds guitars now.

He used "it's" where he should have used "its." I'm out.

That case. Oof.