cheap led par cans

B

Benjamin D. Hill

Freshman
Jan 14, 2011
49
0
6
Lancaster, Ohio
overthehillrecords.com
I recently bought 8 htl pro par 64 www.Theprohtl.com.
I got them for a ridicules low price.

One can come with the green leds broken and another can has screws missing that were holding on to a heavy important component that was now hanging by the solder joints.

It took about an hour to get the green leds working. It had a bad solder joint on the circuit board that I just had to reheat so that it made the connection.
The second took 5 minutes of putting in new screws in.

I can’t tell if this is a rant about cheap Chinese stuff or not because when I bought it I knew that there was going to be something wrong. Perhaps I have become so used to broken stuff from china that fixing it is part of the purchase or am I just so cheap that I need therapy.
 
Re: cheap led par cans

so how much did you pay for them. Did they have the dip switches on the back, would you buy more. I am in the market for 12 of them
 
Re: cheap led par cans

mike maul said:
so how much did you pay for them. Did they have the dip switches on the back, would you buy more. I am in the market for 12 of them
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I can't comment on Benjamin's suggested units, but we've been buying Blizzard 3 watt, RGBAW (Rocklite). There are issues with "dimming" and crossfades that do NOT sufficiently emulate conventional lighting for theatrical use, and at some point I suspect Blizzard will either come out with new firmware or new units that address these problems. For most rock show lighting where things tend to be either full on, or off, they work very well and come close to equaling the output from 1k PAR lamps.
 
Re: cheap led par cans

Tim McCulloch said:
IThere are issues with "dimming" and crossfades that do NOT sufficiently emulate conventional lighting for theatrical use, and at some point I suspect Blizzard will either come out with new firmware or new units that address these problems.
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Yes, the cheap LED PARs are terrible for smooth dimming/brightening. I think the cheapies I bought recently only have 6 steps between on and off. Pretty lame. I had heard it's possible to mod them with a better DAC to make them operate smoothly. Anyone know anything about that?
 
Re: cheap led par cans

I don't know anything about PWM dimming of LED lights, but I do know that virtually ALL the cheap ones can't be used with video, because the PWM operates at too low of a frequency and it will flicker on camera.

I've bought cheap LED cans before (back when cheap was over $200 a can), and after a couple gigs all the screws are falling out, everything is loose, and some don't work. I would never think of sending lights out on a rental in such a condition, and I don't have time to rebuild lights after every show. So I'd much rather spend $300+ on a light that is a quality die-case piece that is going to last 5 years, than buy ten $50 cans to do the same thing.

I've even imported $15,000 of lights from China expecting that I wouldn't have this problem. Wrong. The cost of maintaining the China lights is now outweighing the original cost savings.

And think of this: if you're running a legitimate business, you can write off and depreciate the cost of the quality lights, so as long as your company has the money, it shouldn't be a big deal to spend the extra. Name-brand lights are also cross rentable, whereas cheapo cans aren't.
 
Re: cheap led par cans

Tim McCulloch said:
I can't comment on Benjamin's suggested units, but we've been buying Blizzard 3 watt, RGBAW (Rocklite). There are issues with "dimming" and crossfades that do NOT sufficiently emulate conventional lighting for theatrical use, and at some point I suspect Blizzard will either come out with new firmware or new units that address these problems. For most rock show lighting where things tend to be either full on, or off, they work very well and come close to equaling the output from 1k PAR lamps.
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Hi Tim - can you elaborate on the dimming issues with the Rocklites - is it "not enough steps", or simply a different curve than a typical incandescent?
 
Re: cheap led par cans

Not enough steps, and they come on at roughly 25%. Visually, it looks like there are about 12 steps. With a relatively fast fade time it looks smooth enough, but with longer fades you can easily see it stair-step at the low end.
 
Re: cheap led par cans

Thanks Tim. I've been in touch with Blizzard about their new Puck3s and am curious if they behave similarly. There's no dealer of Blizzard in my area, so it's been hard to get a demo.
 
Re: cheap led par cans

Tim McCulloch said:
I can't comment on Benjamin's suggested units, but we've been buying Blizzard 3 watt, RGBAW (Rocklite). There are issues with "dimming" and crossfades that do NOT sufficiently emulate conventional lighting for theatrical use, and at some point I suspect Blizzard will either come out with new firmware or new units that address these problems. For most rock show lighting where things tend to be either full on, or off, they work very well and come close to equaling the output from 1k PAR lamps.
Click to expand...

Tim, have you looked at your lights on tape yet? I guarantee they flicker, if not all the time, definitely at anything other than 100%.
 
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