More details from High End Systems/Barco (www.highend.com and www.barco.com):
Hip-hop artist, singer and rapper Hoodie Allen recently finished a second knockout tour of clubs and theaters across North America, with a High End Systems lighting rig and production support from Studio Gear. Studio Gear’s Mike Atkins explains how the touring package for these latest shows evolved. “Studio Gear primarily worked in audio/visual on our shows, until 2011 when we got heavy into lighting. We were already Barco dealers, so when we started to explore lighting system purchases it made great sense to speak with Craig Burross at High End Systems, and we’ve been exclusively High End since that time. Hoodie Allen’s designer, Charles Ford of DK Production Design, is a good friend from our days at Vincent Lighting, and he knew I was tied in with HES. Charles became interested in their latest products when he came through Austin with Mary J. Blige for her performance at the Moody Theatre earlier this year. The system we put together for Hoodie Allen was a floor package, as the size and scope of the venues was quite diverse.”
Studio Gear provided a dozen Solawash 19s and six TechnoSpots, along with a Road Hog 4 control package for this tour. Mike continues, “This was our first outing with Solawash, and we were blown away by its performance and features. I’d call the Solawash 19 the easiest sale I ever made. When we first started talking about this tour, Charles said he wanted to use another manufacturer’s product and I asked him to first have a look at the Solawash. Solawash was the hands down winner, and he’s given me great reviews of the fixture. He loves the brightness, the indigo highlighters, and he uses a lot of the pixel features that have been included. That is a really unique feature of the product that’s a great selling point, especially in a ground package where you’re looking for some eye candy in addition to practicality. Solawashes are very practical in their zoom range, or you can use them as eye candy, and the fixtures are fabulous in either role.”
The Technospot was equally vital to the concise lighting system sent out by Studio Gear. Atkins says, “I first introduced Charles to the TechnoSpot through a demo in early 2012. He loved the feature set and how efficient the lamp was; basically you’ve got a 575 watt lamp outputting 12000 lumens, so it’s starting to compete with 700 watt fixtures from other manufacturers! Charles also really loved the gobo animation feature, and he really uses it for what I think it was intended for. No other light out there has that feature, and he was pretty sold on it. It’s a spectacular product, and as a dealer – where we come in – it’s great to show it off when people ask for a 700 watt fixture. We’ve got another dozen in our rental inventory that we keep very busy, and we’re talking about increasing our count.”
Specification of a Road Hog 4 control package was another tenet of Studio Gear’s touring package. Atkins points out, “We had a purchase order in on the new Hog 4 desks in August of last year – we bought into the Hog 4 line sight unseen. As an exclusive vendor of their products, we’ve enjoyed great success with the new desks and our inventory has grown significantly. We have several Road Hog 4’s, the Full Boar 4, the Nano Hog, and the full sized Hog 4, so we offer the full range of High End Systems consoles. The broad scope of these product range is just fantastic. You can get into the Nano Hog at a spectacular price point, and it’s even going to compete with a lot of the lower end stuff out there, but you really are getting a ‘high end’ upper echelon controller, versus an off brand type product. And the beautiful thing, even with the Nano – is that they’re all expandable. So you can get a Road Hog – which has four DMX universes onboard plus additional ArtNet universes, or if that’s not enough for you, you can expand by purchasing a second console, widgets or DMX processor. All these things are networkable and expandable, so you don’t necessarily have to go buy the biggest console out there. And even the full sized Hog 4 – compared to other consoles – has a very attractive price point!”
This was LD Charles Ford’s second tour with Hoodie Allen, and he echoes Atkin’s sentiments on the High End gear used for this touring run. “For all the various aspects of Hoodie’s show, everything had to be pretty bright and strong, and the TechnoSpot and Solawash fixtures were the perfect choice. We played clubs and smaller theaters, so I needed something that would work in those environments, and felt that the Technospots and Solawashs were the best fit for this tour. We performed in a wide range of venues, and those two fixtures alone are powerful enough for an arena – let alone a small club. But, it looked really good in both the small clubs and the bigger spaces. The Solawash is certainly one of the brightest fixtures for its size, and I really enjoy how powerful each individual pixel is. The indigo highlighters are another powerful and unique addition; they are just ridiculously bright. I wasn’t expecting it to be as powerful when I got them, or to be able to see a beam come from an individual pixel. I was blown away when I saw a very definable beam come from a single pixel.”
Ford says he can’t compare the TechnoSpots directly to any other fixture on the market. “I hadn’t used the TechnoSpot before,” he says, “and they blew these 700 watt fixtures out of the water, especially with its gobos and optics – nothing compares to that quality and quantity of light output. I’d feel completely comfortable using them in an arena setting. Also, they are remarkably consistent. If have six of them in a row, I don’t have to worry about an inconsistent center field of the beam; they’re all just completely even. Some other fixtures might look amazing on the first week of the tour, then down the road the beam fields aren’t as even anymore, but I haven’t had any issues with the HES gear.”
On the control side, Ford says he loves the Road Hog 4, adding “the desk has a really big touch screen, so I can see everything I need on the one screen. For this type of gig I need a compact console, so it’s perfect. I love how fast that desk is – I was a big Hog 3 guy, and switching over to the 4 has been flawless. We’ve had no issues with reliability. It’s a very stable platform.”
