If you manage the Intelligent lights at a club or run a mobile DJ rig, you have likely spend more hours up on ladders changing bulbs than you want to admit. You thought why has nobody taken a High power LED and put it in a mirror based scanner? Well my friends the time has come! A new company SDE Lighting has finally built the fixture we have all dreamed of! Don't waste another penny with American DJ, Chauvet, High End or Martin. The guys at SDE Lighting have made an 60 watt LED Intelligent Scanner, and priced it at about $325.
How did I find this LED Scanner?
First of all I was searching Ebay like most guys trying to find some cheap Halogen Scanners for our Night Club. I have always wanted to replace our current lights with LED Scanners, but until now every LED Scanner on the market was either way under powered, or cost way too much. While I was searching I came across an auction by SDElighting. They were selling an 60 watt LED scanner. I thought this had to be a mis print. So I opened the link and read up on the specs. Nope it was no misprint. They really were selling a 60 watt LED Intelligent Scanner Light. But as with everything on Ebay, when in doubt its good to contact the seller to do some research before you consider buying. So I contacted the seller asking for information about the light, and I got a response a few hours later.
Who is SDE Lighting?
They are a New Jersey DJ Company called Sound Defying Entertainment. They serve primarily the New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania areas with DJ services. These guys have been running DJ setups since 2001. Just recently they took all their knowledge of Intelligent lighting and decided to start making their own fixtures. They don't make very many lights, currently they just have 1 mirror scanner called the Sixty Scan ( stands for 60 watt LED ) and a Forty-Five RGBA Flat Par. If the quality of the fixtures is what they say they are, then these guys have the potential to become a major player in the Intelligent DMX lighting business.
Specs on the Sixty Scan ( 60 Watt LED Intelligent Mirror Scanner )
The Sixty Scan is an LED scanner that contains 1 x 60 Watt LED source. This is a very bright LED with superior optics to produce a very bright effect.
Features of the Sixty Scan
7 Colors + White
7 Rotating Gobos + Open
Separate Color & Gobo Wheels
Electronic Dimming ( 0-100 )
Electronic Strobing ( 1 - 18 Flashes / second )
180 Degree Pan, 100 Degree Tilt
Time for Full Pan (0.35 Seconds )
Time for Full Tilt (0.2 Seconds)
Mirrors Feature Micro Stepping Motors for very smooth movements as slow speed, while still having the torque for quick Pan and Tilts.
LED Display
3 Modes: DMX, Master/Slave & Sound Active
Built-in Lighting Programs
Manual focusing lens
Strobe in every color
Gobo Shake
No Duty Cycle
Specs of the Sixty Scan
9 DMX Channels
80mm 3400 RPM fan which provides airflow over the LED's Large Heat Sink
60mm 5000 RPM fan which provides direct cooling over LED
DMX-512
Built in Microphone
13-degree beam
1 x 60W White LED ( 50,000 Hour Life )
Lux: 9,200 @ 1m
Weight: 13.5lbs/6kg
Full 1 Year Warranty
Price: $325
Total Power Consumption: 90w
DMX Channel Assignments on Sixty Scan
1 Pan
2 Tilt
3 Color
4 Gobo
5 Gobo Rotation Speed
6 Strobe
7 Dimmer
8 Built in Macros
9 Macro Movement Speed
Disclosure: First let me be clear I have yet to physically see or test one of these fixtures so everything I am stating is based on the specs and interactions with the support staff of SDE Lighting
How the SDE Sixty Scan 60 watt LED scanner compares to other fixtures
To put it simply nothing else can compare. The closest competitor is the Chauvet Intimidator LED 300 which also boasts an 60 watt LED, but is priced at $600 each. The Chauvet Fixture also is rated at 120 watts for power consumption, which is more than the SDE Sixty Scan, but it does support Daisy Chained Power, which is a nice convenience. However The Chauvet looks to be made of Plastics, and the Sixty Scan appears to be an All Metal housing. If you are a mobile DJ, durability is a must. Also the Sixty Scan has manual focus opposed to the Chauvet's remote focus. But I have no problem manually focusing my lights. Not that remote focus is a bad thing, but its surely not a feature I would be willing to pay more for. One feature that stands out is the Sixty Scans have dual fans for cooling. Most Halogen fixtures will feature only a single 80mm fan which provides minimal airflow, which in my opinion is never enough. Well the Sixty Scan has two fans, one for airflow over the heatsink, and one that blasts cool air directly onto the LED chip. Both fans are 12 Volt DC. Meaning if you require extreme cooling, you can replace these with some aftermarket computer fans. ( which are very inexpensive! ). I recently had to order some replacement fans for our High End TrackSpots. Since the TrackSpots use 24 VDC fans you can't just swap them out with a computer fan, and have to hunt pretty hard to find a replacement. Buying them from HES direct cost $24 each, which is very over priced.
SDE Sixty Scan 60 watt LED Scanner Pros
Aside from the 60 Watt LED that will cut your power consumption by 75%, to me the big pro of this fixture is the the Electronic Dimming and Strobing. Halogen Fixtures use mechanical Shutters that are powered by an Stepper Motor. Let me tell you from experience. If you use strobing in your lighting sequences, then this stepper motor will be the first to go bad. The amount of power and torque need to rapidly move a shutter puts extreme wear and tear on the stepper motor. Since this LED Scanner features electronic strobing you will never have to worry about replacing an expensive stepper motor for your shutter. The fixture is light weight, and has an attractive black metal housing. The company informed me that the name will be printed on the front, but they decided to move this to the rear of the fixture for the second batch ( which I feel is a good choice ). Also this fixture is priced at $325, making it almost 50% less than the closest competitor. The LED is supposed to last 50K hours, and if it finally burns out, a replacement is only $40. It uses a 12 Volt 80mm Cooling Fan, the same kind used on computers, so if you want to increase your airflow, or save some money on the replacement, you are just a newegg click away.
SDE sixty Scan 60 Watt LED Scanner Cons
No Ability to Daisy chain the power. The LED light Source is rated for 100K hours. But considering most other fixtures on the market are only rating theirs at 50K hours I kind of doubt this one will really last for 100K hours. Still even if it only lasted 20K hours that is still a bargain. The company is new and has yet to establish a reputation on the market. According to the company replacement parts are available, just takes a call or an email to Customer Support. But as of right now there is no dedicated Parts Store on their website. Not a huge negative as they are just starting up. The Fixtures themselves judging from the quality of the build in the photos appears to be made in China. But keep in mind most companies ( Chauvet, American DJ and others all have their fixtures manufactured in China ). Very few companies manufacture their lights here in the states. Martin and High End are the only two I know of, and we all know how expensive their fixtures and parts are.
Why SDE over other Companies?
First of all I have worked on my share of scanning fixtures from various brands. Martin, High End, Chauvet, American DJ, Elation, ext.. After you have repaired a few fixtures you start to identify its weaknesses.
Martin Entertainment
For the Martin's which use Discharge Bulbs, their biggest weakness is the replacement cost of the bulbs. New bulbs can cost sometimes $100 each. The other problem is they reverse polarity on the DMX ( meaning pins 2 and 3 are reversed ), and to get them to work with your other lights you have to use inverter plugs. Even though martin does stock replacement parts for repair. They charge way too much for replacement parts. However I will give martin credit where its due. I have never had a problem reaching their technical support, and whenever I have need new fixture profiles for lights that were not in light jockey they would get one built very quickly. As for customer support after the sale, Martin from what I hear is terrible. I personally know the guy who built HUSH Nightclub, he said after Martin got their 300 Lights installed at his club. He said they were unreachable for support when fixtures started having problems.
Elation and American DJ
Then you have Elation and American DJ, which do a pretty good job making affordable fixtures, and have parts for repair. But after they stop making a fixture for a number of years they will stop making replacement parts for it. Not sure if this is their way to force customers to buy new fixtures or if they just can't get them anymore. This is the problem I have with our Mighty Scans. So now each one is a ticking time bomb waiting to die with no replacement stepper motors available.
High End Systems
High End makes very good fixtures, but unfortunately their priced high and have nothing to server the lower end of the market. Still today their Discontinued TrackSpot fixtures are highly sought after on the used market. Known for their tank tough construction, very cheap replacement bulbs ( $3 each from some sites ). Our club has some which are 20 years old and still running. They still have parts available, but they are not cheap.
Chauvet
I have worked with the Intimidator 1.0 fixtures and honestly I was not impressed. Who at Chauvet thought it was a good idea to have a combined color / gobo wheel? Honestly ditch the gobos and just give me full circles. I found the fixtures Stepping motors to be choppy, and they would constantly loose their center positioning. Even though Chauvet has come a long way, now with their LED Intimidator series. Their fixtures are still very expensive for what you get. Plus their tech support takes forever to get back to you. If you ask them anything highly technical they will just not respond.
SDE Lighting
SDE has made a LED Scanner that is affordable, has a ton of features. and is made to last. I have reviewed the specs and design. They use very high quality parts and components in their fixtures. They don't liter their fixtures with ton of stickers, or add stupid plastic bumpers. Its a clean design, and a very simple construction. Customer Support is excellent with answers to all my questions. So far so good. Only time will tell.
Final thoughts on Sixty Scan and SDE lighting
Unlike American DJ which seems to be obsessed with making hundreds of different useless lights, SDE has chosen to make a Par, and a Scanner. Which in my opinion are the only two fixtures you really need for most establishments. Some people get infatuated with buying the most lavish lights such as the High End Cyberlights that feature a ton of effects and will take up some serious real estate on your light controller. But keep in mind all things with mechanical parts eventually fail. The more moving parts a fixture has the more prone it is to failure. Once I get some of my old Halogen Scanners sold, I will try to purchase one of the SDE 60 watt LED Scanners, and then give a full review of the performance. If they are as great as I am hoping, then I intend to replace all our lights which include 10 High End TrackSpots, 16 American DJ Mighty Scans, 2 American DJ 250 EX, 2 Venue Scan 250, 4 Martin Roboscan 812, and 2 Accu Spot 300 moving head fixtures with SDE's sixty Scan 60 Watt LED Mirror Scanners.
Update 3/19/2011 We got in our first batch of 4 x 60 watt LED scanners from SDE lighting today. The internals are excellent, but the outer shell is a little thin, so don't be surprised if UPS ground manages to dent them up a little. 2 of our 4 fixtures were dented , but it was nothing a pair of pliers couldn't fix. They are slightly brighter than our 250 watt halogens. Saturday Night we had a big party. These fixtures looked awesome on our dance floor. Even though I wasn't using DMX to control them, they do a pretty good job in a master / slave mode. Lots of compliments from our party guests on the new fixtures.
Update 3/23/2011 Today I put in an order for 6 more 60 watt LED scanners. Once I get this next set of fixtures, I will be setting them up with Martin Light Jockey over one of our stages where they will run 14 hours / day. Just a note we are selling our 12 Mighty Scans for $200 each, so if you are interested feel free to contact me. Plus I have 2 AccuSpot 300 moving head fixtures for $600 each. We also have 10 high end trackspots, but those are not yet for sale. Once we clear out our other lights, we will consider selling the trackspots too.
Update 3/30/2011 The 6 Fixtures arrived today. Unfortunately UPS Ground was less then gentle with them. One of them had a broken mirror, However Upon closer inspection it appears that the manufacturer ( not SDE lighting ) forgot to put in a second alan screw on the mirror assembly, resulting in the entire assembly falling off during shipping. Also two power cables were missing. I informed SDE lighting, and they apologized for the missing cables, and broken mirror. They said they would ship me the missing cables, a replacement alan screw,and a replacement mirror, at no cost to me. Even though I am a little disturbed by this set back, I do understand that UPS can be brutal on packages. Thus far the customer support with SDE lighting has been excellent. Also as a side note I checked all 6 fixtures to see if they powered up, and all 6 worked perfectly. Once the replacement parts arrive I will be installing the 6 fixtures at the Ritz over the alternate stage.
Update 4/4/2011 The replacement parts ( 2 power cables and 1 Alan screw ) arrived today. SDE Lighting has a bunch of replacements parts ( LED chips, Mirrors and such ) that are arriving in a week from China. Once the parts batch arrives they will be shipping me a replacement mirror. Its nice to work with a smaller company like SDE lighting that takes customer support so seriously. Thus far I am very happy.
Update 4/8/2011 This morning I installed the 6 LED scanners over our 3rd stage at the Ritz. They replaced 4 American DJ Mighy Scans ( which are for sale ), and 2 American DJ Accu-Spot 300 Moving Head Fixtures ( also for sale ). Getting them hung was easy. Just to test their functions I set them all to the same DMX address, then went through the various controls on Martin Light Jockey. They use the same Fixture Profile as the EuroLite TL-200, though unfortunately Martin does not include any gobo images on the gobo controls. This can be fixed by Manually configuring the fixture profile. I am hoping I can convince Martin to make a custom fixture profile for SDE Lighting, and to include it on their master updates. Once I confirmed all their functions worked correctly, I gave each of them their own address block, and then programmed them to do some scans over our 3rd stage. I was amazed by how smooth the movements were. Also I will say that these are just as bright, if not brighter than all our 250 watt halogen fixtures. The only negatives are the limited number of colors ( no red and no purple or UV ), but the colors it does have look excellent. The orange actually is more of a red color than orange, which is a plus. Normally we have to change bulbs on our Halogen fixtures at least once a month ( due to running 16 hours / day ). If these do what they are supposed to do, the next time they are taken off the truss will be several years from now.
Update 5/31/2011 A week ago I had a huge install with these lights. I hung 16 of these scanners on our upstairs truss, plus I also setup 8 of the 45 PARs by SDE Lighting against our back wall shinning upward for ambient lighting. The LED Scanners were setup in Master Slave Mode. I would have liked to program them but this setup was for a smaller event and we didn't have the budget to do custom programming. Overall the effect was great. Even in Master / Slave Mode they still look great. Here is a video of the setup. This was before the crowd showed up.
Update 2/14/2013
Its been a while so I thought I would update the blog again. Since last update we have had 3 more lights burn out the chips. Mike has gotten me 2 replacement LEDs, but is waiting on a parts shipment before he can ship me another one.
Also I decided to move our lights around. I moved our Mighty Scan fixtures to our upstairs truss where they run for maybe 8 hours once a month. I then moved all Sixty Scan LED Fixtures to our main stage where they run from 14 hours / day. This move was before last Halloween. It has been about 5 months since moving the fixtures, and I am glad to say that we haven't lost a single fixture yet. ( no LEDs have gone out ). This is running 16 sixty scans. In this same time period if we had been running the Mighty Scans or any halogen based scanner we would have gone through 90 bulbs, and probably replaced about dozen wire harnesses. I figure that in parts and labor the LED Sixty Scans have saved us about $2000 in the last 5 months.
Update 3/20/2013 We lost 2 more fixtures due to bad LEDs, which brought our total down fixture count to 4 units. Mike finally got some replacement LEDs to me. I installed them and everything seems to be running great. The new LEDs are slightly larger than the originals, but this helps assist in cooling issues. As of now all 16 of our LED Scanners are working at 100%.
Remember our LED Scanners run 14 hours / day every day. This is while running in an environment full of dust and cigarette smoke. Even though we have had some issues here and there, the cost savings over halogen have been huge. I highly recommend these Scanners.
Reliability and Performance At this point we have been using these fixtures for just under 3 months. They have been running for 16 hours / day, 7 days a week. We have not had a single problem with any of them. The only issue we had was with the first batch of lights being dented due to UPS ground, and insufficient packaging. However our last 2 batches of lights came in much thicker packaging and arrived flawless, so this should no longer be a concern. The DJs at our club have become huge fans of them. While we have to change out the bulbs on all our Halogen fixtures once a month ( HES TrackSpots and ADJ Mighty Scans ). We have not had to touch these fixtures once.
Below are the benefits I have observed since we put these lights into action.
Never have to change bulbs.
Low Power Consumption ( about 105 Watts vs 375 Watts on trackspots )
This means you can run 3 x as many lights on a single circuit
Low Heat ( meaning your AC won't have to run extra hard to keep your venue cool )
Easy to program and configure
The Beam on these is much wider than our trackspots and at the same intensity too.
Very smooth mirror movements.
If you don't know if you are ready to spend just a little more to get these LED Scanners, and are still considering some cheap Halogen scanners, Here is something to think about. If you are a club and don't see yourself being in buisness more than 3 months and will only be open on the weekends, then get the Halogens, but if you plan to be open longer, than I highly suggest the LED Scanners. The long Term cost savings make them a huge value.
Paul | May 16, 2011 12:48 PM Jamie, Yes these are the same fixtures. I am actually getting ready to hang 16 of them this Friday for a weekend event at our Venue. I looked at the video, and the red you see is actually a red orange, and the violet is actually blue. But they do look very close to what you see in that video. The DMX addressing panel does not reflect off the mirror, its a good position for the controls. The fans are very quiet. Plenty of cooling. These fixtures do not get hot like Halogens.
I am not sure about the mirror snap hitting the hand. When the fixtures first power up they reset the mirror's pan and tilt. they mirrors are very quick and smooth. Plus you will love the strobing. They operate more like a real strobe since they do not have a mechanical shutter. Strobing is dead quiet, and fast!. Plus its variable up to 13 strobes / second.
Honestly I in the process of replacing all our other fixtures with these. They have been running for well over 4 months now 16 hours / day and not a single issue. These in opinion blow away HES TrackSpots. I acutally did a side by side comparison to one of our trackspots. it has the same brightness, yet the coverage area was about 40% larger.
If you have any questions let me know. I will try to get some videos on YouTube after I get our installation setup this Friday.
Jamie | Nov 7, 2011 8:45 AM Hey Paul -
Any failures at all for the 16 fixtures you installed after 6 months?
Paul | Nov 7, 2011 2:44 PM @Jamie, No Failures. We do have one of them that seems to loose position of its gobo wheel, but its been like that since the beginning. Just haven't had the time to ship it back for an exchange. None of the fixtures have developed any issues from wear. The LEDs are still going strong. Only thing I have had to do is clean the optics, and fans. Other than that they just work.
Mauricio Martinez | Nov 16, 2011 8:06 AM Hello IM wondering how are the lights doing? Im asking this cause Im join to get 4 scans and thinking of the chauvet intimidator led 300, but after reading your review kind of thinking this out
Paul | Nov 16, 2011 12:28 PM @Mauricio The cases on the Chauvet Intimidator LED 300 are probably built a little stronger, but internally I don't think there will be much difference between the sixty scans and the LED 300. The support from the SDE has been phenomenial. I had one fixture that arrived broken ( thanks UPS ), and the company gladly exchanged it, and even reimbursed me for my return shipping. They stand by their products.
At this point we have 16 of the sixty scans, and 24 of the LED Pars. Thus far no issues. Its really amazing how cool these fixtures stay. I am used to our older halogen fixtures that could cook an egg on the side of the case.
I moved 2 of the scanners to another stage, and set them up in master / slave, then inverted the pan so their effects would be symetric. They have been going 18 hours / day for the past 3 weeks without a single issue. This is after already been used for maybe 50 hours over the past 6+ months on another stage. To say the least I am very impressed.
The only thing I have had to do is clean the optics and the fans ( we have a lot of smokers in our club ). Other than that they just work. I highly recommend them! No reason to pay 2X as much for the Intimidator 300s
Mauricio Martinez | Nov 16, 2011 1:35 PM @Paul hey buddy thank you for the quick answer so will u recommend me to get this lights and not the chauvet?? How about quality?N
Paul | Nov 16, 2011 1:36 PM @Mauricio, We still have older American DJ LED PARs 12 American DJ Mighty Scans 4 High End TrackSpots.
The TrackSpots seem as if they are constantly needing to be repaired. The Mighty Scans are good fixtures, but parts are no longer available for them. Plus being a halogen based fixture we are replacing bulbs every month, and fans every 3 months. This is running them 18 hours / day.
I am actually trying to find a buyer for all our halogen fixtures. Halogens are find for venues that are going to run them for a few hours a day, or just on the weekends, but if you are going to run them 18 hours / day like we do ( stripclub ), then LED based scanners are well worth the investment.
Paul | Nov 16, 2011 1:49 PM The internal Quality of the components are very good. The only negative are the cases which tend to be made of sheet metal. This was an issue in the beginning as UPS would easily damage the fixtures, but SDE started to ship them in much thicker boxes, and ever since then I haven't had a single problem with damaged lights.
I highly recommend these over the Chauvet fixtures. Even though I do believe the Intimidator 300 would be a good fixture, its not worth 2 x the money of the SDE versions, not even close. The only thing the Chauvet have over the SDE are daisy chain power, but feature is not worth the difference.
Mauricio Martinez | Nov 16, 2011 2:06 PM @ Paul this will be my first scans thats way i ask someone like you because you know all about it, now are they powerful like the 300's, are the gobos big enough?
Mauricio Martinez | Nov 16, 2011 9:24 PM @Paul hey buddy I talk to mike at SDE lighting and he only have 3 left that got box damage by UPS and a extra one refurbished which I'm not so exited about it but he just got the new models Sixty Scan Pro. These contain a 60w LED as well but has superior optics so it is brighter, it also has Prism, Rotating Prism, and Remote Focus whatsoever you think?
Paul | Nov 17, 2011 1:20 PM @Mauricio Yeah I emailed with mike a while back, he told me about the new PRO models. They sound awesome, but our venue doesn't really need those features. We just need beams than scan and strobe. Honestly would be happy with an 100 watt LED that can strobe, and a color wheel. I don't even need gobos for our venue ( stripclub ).
Mauricio Martinez | Nov 17, 2011 2:33 PM @ Paul I found the manufacturer and the rices are way cheaper I don know what to do, also my GC rep offer me the chauvet intimidator 300 led for 400 if I purchased 4
Paul | Nov 17, 2011 3:20 PM @ Mauricio What manufacturer did you find? Are we still talking about SDE lighting? Even at $400 each for the Chauvet intimidator 300 LED, I would still go with the SDE lighting sixty scans. When you buy from guitar center you are buying hardware from sales guys that likely have no experience with DMX fixtures. When you buy from SDE lighting ( Mike ), you are buying from a professional traveling DJ group, that has years of experience with sound and lighting. They are a small company, and you get very personal service with them. There are multiple times I have emailed Mike with questions on various DMX trouble shooting issues and he has always been there with suggestions. And when I had to send a LED PAR back that got damaged in shipping, Mike had another shipped out immediately no questions asked. This kind of customer support is rare. You will never get that kind of support form American DJ, or Chauvet
Keep in mind I haven't personally demoed the latest batch of LED Intimidators from Chauvet, so its possible they might have some decent fixtures. I did try the earlier models and I was not impressed.
If you are planning on doing a very large order of fixtures, you might want to talk to Mike to see if he can work with you.
Mauricio Martinez | Nov 17, 2011 9:45 PM @ Paul hey buddy I order 4 sixty scans pro from mike today, I found the company that mades the sixty cans and the prices are a bit cheaper but since they don't have a store in the USA I choose to get them from mike he is very nice and helpful and also quick answering questions, I will make a video when the lights arrive I have a Small Video and Audio Company that way we can share with the rest of the "world" what this lights can do.
Thanks for your Help I will keep bothering if I need more Help
Gabe | Aug 2, 2012 1:28 PM Just thought I would add to this thread.
I installed 4 Sixty Scan Pros in a teen dance club. These lights are amazing! We actually had to turn the brightness down to 50% because they were too bright! We also installed 4 LED RGB par lights. Just running those 4 lights is a better light show than most bars in this town.
One problem though, recently a Sixty Pro stopped out-putting light. The mirror still works but the fan and the bulb will not turn on. I can't seem to get in touch with Mike at SDE. Have you ever had this happen and do you know if the fan and bulb are linked?
Paul | Aug 2, 2012 1:47 PM @Gabe We are running 16 Original Sixty Scans in our club. ( not the pro versions ). Thus far we have had 3 fixtures in which the LED prematurely burned out. The first time it happend, mike got a replacement chip out to me very quickly. The second time we had 2 down fixtures because of this. I also had a hard time reaching him, multiple calls and emails. Finally he got back with me, and sent out 2 replacement LED chips. Though it took about 3 months for him to get me the replacement LED chips. However there was no charge for this since the fixtures come with a 1 year warranty. I get the feeling Mike has a hard time getting replacement chips from his suppliers in China. ( turn around time is not very fast )
Take the cover off your fixtures and look at the LED light source, see if there is some light coming off it, or some dark burned marks on the surface of the chip. This is what happend to both of ours.
Besides this issue with the LEDs going out, the fixtures have been solid performers in our club. Most likely your problem is the chip is burned out. If you are good at do it yourself repairs. I recommend you just have mike send you out a new chip to do the repair yourself. Though replacing the chip was much more tedious than I expected. I had to practically rip the entire fixture apart to get to the chip.
On the 2nd and 3rd fixtures, I just knocked out the rear fan screen which gave me much faster access to remove the heat sink and replace the chip. I am not sure if the fan and bulb are linked. Though if the fan stopped working, having the bulb not work would be a good safety measure. Test your fan on a 12 volt DC source ( car battery ). If it spins then its fine, and its most likely your chip. If it doesn't then just replace it.
If you have to replace your fan I recommend you find a high speed 12 volt 80mm computer fan. If you want extreme cooling you can try the Tornado fans.
ken | Jul 30, 2013 6:57 AM Paul
I have 2 sixty scans & one of them stopped putting out light. Everything else works. I've tried reaching Mike, with no luck and it appears his sales website is gone. Any idea where I can find replacement parts for my unit? Thanks for any help
Paul | Jul 30, 2013 10:20 AM Ken,
I emailed with Mike about a Month ago. He inferred that he didn't have time for both the DJ business and the Retail Light Business. I guess their mobile DJ business has been growing, and they decided to focus their resources toward it instead. I had the same issue with LEDs burning out, except we have 16 fixtures. The original LEDs that went with our fixtures are no longer made. The newer Generation is a much larger LED, and I will add much more reliable.
I had to swap out the LEDs on a bunch of our fixtures. This involved taking the fixture apart and drilling new holes into the heat sink. I found a source on Alibaba.com to buy the LEDs from. The only negative is since they are bigger they are not perfectly matched to the optics. This means the light output is slightly less than the original. However I did the upgrade to the new chips about 3 months ago, and haven't had a single fixture go down since. We run our lights 18 hours a day, so I think the new chips have proven themselves.
Contact Peter Lau from Overlighting.com (peter-lau(at)overlighting.com). Tell him you need the same LEDs that he sold to Paul White. I want to say they ran about $20 each. They have a cheaper LED built on a 35 mil spec, but I recommend going with the 45 mil. Especially if you run your lights for long hours like I do.
If are looking for new fixtures I have found a source for that too. The newer generation of LED scanners is smaller, but much brighter for the same 60 watt output. I ordered one fixture from my source, and ran it for 6 months straight in our club. ( 18 hours / day ). I had no issues with it. Internally its a better design. It has a push / pull setup for the cooling, and the optics are built directly onto the LED, ensuring all the light goes down the center of the fixture. These are much brighter than the sixty scans. I am just waiting for some projects to settle before making a larger order for some installs.
Hope this helps.
ken | Jul 30, 2013 10:46 AM Paul
Thanks for the information! I barely have 3 hours on these fixtures, so, I think I'll try repairing them first.
I would appreciate the information on the newer fixtures just in case I decide to add to my inventory or if I continue to have issues with these sixty scan lights.
WhiteSites Blog
Jamie,
Yes these are the same fixtures. I am actually getting ready to hang 16 of them this Friday for a weekend event at our Venue. I looked at the video, and the red you see is actually a red orange, and the violet is actually blue. But they do look very close to what you see in that video. The DMX addressing panel does not reflect off the mirror, its a good position for the controls. The fans are very quiet. Plenty of cooling. These fixtures do not get hot like Halogens.
I am not sure about the mirror snap hitting the hand. When the fixtures first power up they reset the mirror's pan and tilt. they mirrors are very quick and smooth. Plus you will love the strobing. They operate more like a real strobe since they do not have a mechanical shutter. Strobing is dead quiet, and fast!. Plus its variable up to 13 strobes / second.
Honestly I in the process of replacing all our other fixtures with these. They have been running for well over 4 months now 16 hours / day and not a single issue. These in opinion blow away HES TrackSpots. I acutally did a side by side comparison to one of our trackspots. it has the same brightness, yet the coverage area was about 40% larger.
If you have any questions let me know. I will try to get some videos on YouTube after I get our installation setup this Friday.