MELBOURNE, Australia – For the Australian leg of Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns tour, LD A.J. Pen used 41 Vari*Lite VLX Wash fixtures, supplemented with 12 Vari*Lite VL 3500 Wash fixtures. "I placed one side-by-side with a couple of other LED wash lights and immediately I could see it was a ‘game changer' – an evolution of the wash light," Pen said.
He credited the VLX fixtures for their light quality and the speed with which they can change colors. "I can run a chase at 1,500 beats per minute between red and blue with the VLX," he noted. "With other LED wash lights, their processors can't keep up.
"You can do some really interesting things with the VLX without it being a dedicated effect light," Pen added, emphasizing that "it's definitely a tool, and not an effect…I would happily replace every wash light with it.
"The approach that Vari*Lite seems to have taken is to replace the guts of what the wash light already is, what we've come to know and love," Pen continued. "Wash lights have color mixing, they generally have a dimmer that's separate from a strobe channel and they pan and tilt. It's that simple, you don't really need to get fancier. And the VLX fulfills that role."
For the Linkin Park shows, Pen basically replaced all the normal wash light positions with VLX fixtures. The Vari*Lite VL*3500 wash fixtures, meanwhile, function as followspots, with four backlighting the band and six on the downstage followspot truss, operated manually.
"The VL3500s are excellent as a followspot," Pen said. "The only thing I would ask for in a VLX is the ability to get a narrower beam, but I'm sure that it is on Vari-Lite's ‘to do' list."
Photos by Tim Solar
For more information, please visit www.vari-lite.com and www.jands.com.au.
