Centerpiece Light – ADJ quad phase?

There have been some discussions about light on here and a series of articles on lighting on the blog.

Other than that. It’s a highly personal choice at always. What some consider beautiful, others consider cheesy and vice versa.

In my experience, these days the ADJ cans are good in quality and build. Some of the other products vary. They are always good moneywise, so even if you decide to get rid of them after using them a while, even if you lose half your money, it won’t break the bank.

Be aware that there is a VERY big gap between pro-lighting and prosumer/consumer lighting.

I have ADJ TRI 18s and QX12s or something. Nice LED cans, build is sufficient for what I want and since they are RGB and RGBA LEDs respectively (so none of those multicolor dots when you look at the fixtures) a pretty even color mix from the can to whereever it reaches. The same kind of can from a Pro manufacturer (starting with Elation up to the likes of Martin and above) will cost you at least double to quadruple of what an ADJ fixture will cost.

That need not be a problem, especially if you aren’t running them day in – day out for years on end and if you don’t take them on the road 5 times a week, but I am just trying to show you that it is important to get your expectations right in order not to be disappointed with whatever you decide to purchase.

I had something like the Quad, an OEM product from a big Dutch DJ supply company and I wasn’t impressed. Mostly because the light output is such that you really need to fog up a place to get that “light beam”  effect. Once the fog is gone, you end up with moving dots, which is ok but more like a mirrorball than something with beams if you know what I mean.

Hope that helps a little & greetinx.

If you want to go cheap and nice effects I still love the ADJ Revo III and IV. They are cheap, have a huge angle to flood even big dancefloors and the effect is very noticeable. Also standalone modes work really well compared to others, if you do not use DMX yet.

Just throwing it out there, have you looked at the Martin Acrobat or Raptor? 2nd hand prices are not too bad. Or even a Martin Wizard??

Have a look on eBay for Martin stuff. I have no idea what those moving heads are like, I use mac 250’s

ADJ is a great place to look for cheap lightning. And they are actually getting better and better IMO

If you choose to buy more high-end used lighting, I would still go with LED lightning. They are simply so much easier to handle, because you don’t have to worry about them getting heated, wait for them to cool down after the gig or handle them with so much care doing transport. I have a handfull of old lightbulp based effects that are basically retired and simply sits on a shelf at home – even though some of them are Martins

Best regards
Klaus

For moving heads I would not go below the ADJ InnoBeam Series. All cheaper moving heads I tested are either very loud, have limited angles, are not invertible, or have not enough output brightness, not to mention some are slow as hell (I mean c’mon we are talking 120 BPM + hehe).

I have not tested them in my test lab, but I have seen them in action several times. And while they sound good on paper the ADJ InnoBeams are by far the better lights. They are superior in micro adjustability, noise-level, overall output and color mixing and reaction time from what I could see.

Now take it with a grain of salt since the VJ might have also been not as good and may have operated wrong, but generally I never considered them after having seen them.