Concert and Corporate Productions are a major force in the Western Australian production industry. With service offerings spanning lighting, AV, LED screens, rigging, and staging, CCP’s gear and operators can be found at festivals, concerts, major conferences, theatre shows, symphony concerts and slick corporate gigs. CCP need lighting that can be everything to everyone, and have found their go-to fixture in the SolaSpot Pro 1500 from High End Systems, recently adding a dozen to their arsenal.
“We needed a viable replacement for our Martin MAC 2000 profiles,” said Sean McKernan, CCP’s General Manager. “Reducing our lamp overheads was very important to us, and having an LED source saves us considerable money over a year. We did the sums, and over a fixture’s working life of 50,000 hours, lamp costs are around $18,000 per unit.”
The SolaSpot’s 400W Bright White Engine LED kicks out a more-than-respectable 20,000 lumens, keeping the luminous output at over 70% over 50,000 hours. Packed with features including framing shutters, CMY colour mixing, linear CTO, two gobo wheels, animation effects, a prism, an iris, and frost, the SolaSpot can be used in almost any lighting application imaginable.
“The SolaSpot Pro 1500 does everything and more than a MAC 2000 did with low overheads and running cost,” Sean continued. “The low power consumption means we can put more units on single circuits, and having a unit that’s got consistent colour temperature and intensity over the duration of 50,000 hours is phenomenal. It means we never have to worry about an LD complaining about inconsistent colour temperatures or intensities on different units when using them in the same rig.”
Along with efficiency and longevity, the other big feature that won CCP over is the SolaSpots framing shutters. “The framing in the SolaSpot is brilliant,” praised Sean. “Our SolaSpots have been out on numerous theatre shows and the LDs are loving it. A lot of people are saying its framing is better than a Philips Vari-Lite VL3500.”
The notoriously perfectionist theatre crew are also loving the SolaSpot’s colour temperature and dimming. “We’ve had it in a few theatres and they’ve more than held their own,” Sean reported. “The dimming is very, very precise. I’ve had 20 second crossfades on shows and there’s no problems. The CTO is fantastic; you’d think you have an ETC Source Four hanging over you. There’s nothing it can’t do. It’s got everything you could ask for in a Profile, plus the framing as well.”
