What Scanners?

[jamie1dj]

hey guys looking for a bit of advice, looking at the adj comscans or the equinox ultra scan.

Equinox ultra scan cheaper and seem to have more for your money with seprate gobo and colour wheel and 25w led

adj comscans more expensive and does not have seprate gobo colour wheel also only 10w led

have the saved on production somewhere with the equinox? if anyone owns the different scanners or seen in action please let me know!

[DYM]

The Chauvet 1/2/300 Intimidator series are good.. so is the ADJ Inno Scan.. but they cost double these "systems"

[jamie1dj]

yeah but like you said they cost double, my main concern is brightness between the two

comscan 10w led and ultrascan 25w led but that does not mean the ultra scan is brighter, can anyone tell me if they have owned the comscan and is it bright enough?

[DYM]

My advice, save. Buy once cry once. Your going to want a brighter fixture down the line.

[blasterman]

I have four Chauvet Intimidator 300's and love the things. I did try a few knock-off brands just to see what the clones were like, and wasn't very impressed. A lot of the knock-offs use array type LEDs to save money because that's the only way the Chinese currently know how to get a lot of light from a single die - ram a lot of lower powered LEDs on it. This results in a muddy beam with *terrible* gobo projection. This light though looks fairly crisp according to YouTube videos, so I'm suspecting it's a decent chip -vs- an array. Also, a lot of knock-offs seem to be clones of ADJ stuff, so chances are the ADJ equivelant has similair specs - just different gobos. Oddly the knock-off lights seem to have better gobos than Chauvet in particular, and they all tend to use the same gobos so it's safe to assume they are coming from the same factory :-)

Otherwise, my biggest issue with any light lower in wattage than my 300's is colors. All the mainstream lights use cool-white LEDs, and cool white LEDs have a limited spectrum. The problem is that colors really get killed with any of the smaller scanners because the LED just isn't throwing the spectrum to be filtered. If you like running mostly white like I do you won't need to worry about brightness. If however you like the toggle colors a lot you're going to need to stick with the 50/60 watt scanners. chauvet should be releasing a refresh of their Intimidator line with new LED engines, and this should drive the price down of their existing models. ADJ just released their Inno series, so those older products should be dropping in price as well.

Oh yeah....the knock-offs also tend to have narrower spreads than ADJ or Chauvet, and this light looks pretty narrow. They just throw a different optic in it.

[Mystic]

These are tricks lesser known companies do to get you to look at their product (remember that 100w LED fixture a couple years ago?). The bigger issue is that these companies put in the cheapest components they can find in place of good stepper motors and features. What good is having a seprate gobo and colour wheel if one of them breaks a month down the road because the motors used to run them break or the circuitry on the board is poorly soldered and constantly messing up? And good luck with their "warranties".

Granted, ADJ makes junk in my opinion, but they are a step up from these no-name and Chinese brands. That says a lot when I'm actually praising ADJ, even in the smallest form.

You get what you pay for. Remember that.

[blasterman]

One positive thing I'll say about ADJ - and that list is very, very short (fist-bump Mystic on that point)- is they have a decently bright roller. Too expensive IMHO, but at least it's bright and fast.

Another issue with seperate gobos and color wheels is there isn't much point if the combination kills your lights in terms of brightness. Red plus thick gobo on my 300's is a joke. You need night vision to see it. Red plus thick gobo on a < 25watt knock off scanner is a worse joke.That's one peculiar advantage of classic halogen - they do warm colors very well. Color wheels on two of my 300's are disabled so I can run straight gobos and not have to skip around.