News

21 Jun 2021

Road Test: Acme Stage Par 100 Colour IP

by Pat Chambers

Pat Chambers is a freelance LD that has spent most of the past decade touring the world with The Thunder from Down Under and Manpower. Pat has clocked up 25 years as a drummer, and 20 years as a touring production manager and lighting designer.

I was part of a team that recently upgraded the lighting rig at RSL Club Southport, along with entertainment booker and lighting operator John Martin and production manager Gary Walker. The venue was struggling to get the kind of whites on stage that videographers and photographers required at their corporate events, and the ageing rig of traditional fixtures and dimmers was beginning to become problematic to maintain and repair. Their old Parcans in particular were becoming harder and harder to find new lamps for.

John and Gary had both seen and loved the Acme Stage Pars when an act brought them into the venue last year. They both commented how much they looked and felt like a traditional Parcan. When the venue’s committee gave the upgrade project the green light, Acme distributor ULA Group brought in some demo units. As soon as they turned them on, Gary said “Yes, that’s it.” We ordered 29 colour models, and eight of the warm white variation.

All of us usually dislike LED Pars; particularly the ‘dotty’ look of the individual LEDs. As the Stage Par 100s have the single adjustable lens, they look almost exactly like a traditional Parcan. As part of the refit, we actually left some of the old cans up there, and the Stage Par 100s fit in beautifully. Their output is comparable, too.

I’ve been particularly impressed by the five position zoom selector. There’s a tab inside the ring of the can that slots into grooves. You just reach in there, move it to the position, and you can vary the beam angle to five positions ranging from 7° to 25°. It’s smooth and easy to change. You can fly the lighting rig in, change some beam settings, and it’s like it’s a different rig. The beams are great; from wide to very narrow. Even though we’ve got the front hung high and set wide, we are still on the middle setting, as we are upstage, and the coverage is phenomenal.

While we did have initial plans to use more of the warm white only fixtures, we discovered that the colour mixing on the Stage Par 100 Colours produced excellent warm and cool whites. We’ve ended up with four warm white and four colour models on the front bar, which is creating the right kind of white for the corporates. I’m more rock’n’roll, so I’ve ensured there’s also lots of colour up the front, and the stage is covered with plenty of punch. Once you add the warm whites on top of the colours, you have a crazy amount of light!

Control wise, we’re running a MagicQ PC Wing Compact and a touchscreen PC. On delivery, the fixture libraries were already installed and ready to go. I did half a day of programming, running the fixtures in full eight channel mode, and now there’s four pages of scenes set-up for John to play with.

I can honestly say there’s nothing about the Stage Par 100 I don’t like. The strobe function, colour saturation and output are all excellent. The look and physicality of the fixture is just like a Parcan, and there’s nothing cheap or gimmicky about them, which is pretty common in the LED par market.

Acme Stage Par 100 Colour IP – The Specs

Light Source: 1x 120W RGBA LED module

Luminous Flux: 1913 lumens

7°/11.5°/16°/20.5°/25° manually switchable beam angles

Variable speed strobe effect

Flicker-free management

IPX4 protection rating

Dust and oil-proof design

Product Info: en.acme.com.cn

Distributor Australia and New Zealand: www.ulagroup.com

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