Betopper CLB260 Moving Head Club Stage Mobile DJ Light

0:00 You've got in front of you the Beatopper CLB260 full power compact bea

Right, ladies and gentlemen, you've got in front of you the Beatopper CLB260 full power compact beam. What is it? Well, it's a moving head, of course. Now, slight difference between this and a lot of the other lights I've been sort of demoing over the past quite a few years is because we're almost going back to old school. Now, this actually has a discharge bulb in it. So, what is a discharge bulb? Well, without going too technical, imagine lightning, a bolt of lightning. Well, imagine being able to capture a bolt of lightning in a bulb. Well, that's basically, that's sort of what's going on. The PowerCon, not a Speakon, a PowerCon, always shows a good product when they look after the end user. Now we have here a safety wire, safety cable and if you are in the UK or for that matter I think if you're a professional lighting person

And you're going to put this on some kind of lighting rig. You should know that by law in many places around the world, you have to have one of these fitted. Okay, so let's just get it out of the box. It's a bit of a beast and I do have some video footage of me using it. It's heavy as well. Right, okay, let's just get the box out of the way and let's put it there. Okay, so over the years... You'd have seen me demo quite a few units, but what I always try and explain to people is... Oh, I hope you like my old-school bunch of screwdrivers there. We're going to do something in a little bit that's quite exciting. But I always mention to people about lighting, and that is that now we're in the era of you don't really need to spend a fortune.

2:19 On one moving head

On one moving head. I mean, to be quite honest, even if you're into big production, what's the point? You see my logic behind that is if you're into big production and your lighting show is out, you know, 10, 20 times a month over a period of a year, that's quite a considerable amount of work. And generally with lighting, you have 12 months full guarantee. So of course, if you're spending a fortune on a moving head or for that matter, any kind of electronic device and it goes wrong inside that 12 months, bingo, you've got your warranty. But if it goes wrong, then expect a hefty bill to get it fixed. So what have we got? We have a moving head that is pretty sick actually. Sound to light, master slave, the usual functions.

And also, which I will show you very shortly now, we have a nice LED screen. Now this area here we can use to scroll through the LED. It's very easy to use, simply up, down, back, forward and if you go to the setting you want, you click OK and that's it. So very intuitive there, quite easy to work out on the back. We have, of course, our DMX in and out, fuse, speedcon in, sorry, powercon in, beg your pardon. And the white one is to link. Not sure exactly how many heads you can link, but I'd say a fair few. Now, the cable that comes with the light isn't that long. It doesn't really matter. I mean, some people, what they do, I have done that in the past. I've just taken the power con off and got an extension lead, attached it and there you go. Right, let's pause the camera and let's open this little lady up. Right, here we go, taking the top and the bottom off. First things first, please, I can't emphasise this enough, do not take, do not open up any form of new bit of kit you've got because it's highly likely you'll void the warranty. I don't know if you can see but on...

4:37 The screws, you've got a tiny bit of blue

The screws, you've got a tiny bit of blue. Now I'm not sure how that works but I think the people in the factory or wherever you send it to know, will know if the head you've got or whatever you've got has been tampered with so please don't. Okay, two main lenses. Here we have a prism so hopefully you can just about see that there's a prism. This here I'm not sure, I think that may just sort of dull the actual light down. Now we have the gobo wheel here. I don't want to... Well, all right, yeah, I think I can move it. Yeah, that's all right. And let's have a look if I can just move it, tilt it that way. And then we have our colour wheel as well. So these are known as dichroic. So what they do is they let light through but at the same time they'll give, you know, a subtle kind of colour.

Two fans. Now in here, of course, is the discharge bulb. Now, again, something that I need to stress. Now, a lot of people are now so used to LEDs and turning them off, turning them on, sorry, turning them off, chucking them in a flight case and away you go. Please don't do that with discharge because these heads need a little bit of time to cool down. Old school projectors. That's why a lot of people will throw them away because they find out that the bulbs are, you know, 200 quid. So I wouldn't be surprised if the bulb in this is very expensive, but the whole unit itself is relatively inexpensive. So in there, I don't know if you can see that, you can just see the terminals. That will be your discharge bulb that will get very bright and very, very hot. But of course, no panic because you've got one fan there and another one there. Now, more than likely, one is going to blow and the other one's going to suck. So they're not going to both blow and they're not going to both suck. One's going to blow, one's going to suck, of course, for good air circulation. OK, there you go. So just have a quick nosy.

6:58 You know, there's a lot of tech gone into things like this

I mean, it is a very impressive looking piece of kit, I have to admit. You know, there's a lot of tech gone into things like this. You know, these aren't cheap and cheerful by a long shot. Very well made and very solid as well, you know, as you would expect to have. Okay, so, here we go. Right, sadly I can't use any smoke due to, of course, the smoke detectors, but here we go. The CLB260 from Beat Topper. If I go back a bit, it's just a kid's disco today. That's pretty fast. So what it's doing now, it's just going through its own kind of little show. Okay, I've just turned it on. Now again, with lights like this, if you turn it on straight away, don't expect it to come on straight away. You may hear the stepper motors inside their sort of...

Making a sort of a clicking noise but don't worry about that because it's basically just getting ready now you can see that to begin with um it's very very briefly actually it seemed to be quite dim and then it got lighter that's because the discharge bulb has to have a little bit of time to get bright okay so we're on automatic at the moment so uh again the um screen here Pretty easy to work out, even though I pressed OK twice. So here we go. We've got selection here, run mode, set chase, manual control setting. So basically you can run through like so and then you go across and then you've got another set of bit of information here. PANFINE TILT. So in other words, what we can do if you think about it, you may want this elevated in a light trussing rig facing downwards so you might not want it pointing that way. You may only want it pointing down to the floor. In that case, you go to the settings. Alternatively, you could say have it on a podium and you want it

9:44 Only going upwards, then of course you can do that

Only going upwards, then of course you can do that. Or let's say for example, I've turned it off now, anyway, I don't really want to do that and talk at the same time, trying to explain things. So let's say you've got it on a podium, so your mobile DJ, you've got one of these either side, and of course you don't want them shining at you, next to you, the DJ, or behind you, because no one's there. You only want them facing forward, so of course you can go to settings and do that. Now of course... If you don't want to use a DMX controller, you know, you can go sound to light. But if you do that, I highly recommend you do master slave. That's important because it means they will do a similar kind of move. And I'm pretty sure in the settings as well, you can do the mirror image. So they're not going to both turn right or left. As the one on the left of you turns inwards, the one on the right of you will turn.

So it'll give a nice kind of effect. Alternatively, maybe you do like them both to move the same way as well. But again, with something like this, I'll be really honest, you're always better off getting a decent DMX controller because that's when they come to life. It's a little bit like having a DJ controller and just using MP3s instead of the DJ controller you've got. Using the software from the same company, putting all your files through that software and then of course using the files on the controller so you have more features. Exactly the same with something like this. Okay, so I hope this has been a little bit of an insight for you again from Beat Topper, the CLB260 discharge bulb. Pretty mean piece of kit.

Right, okay, I'm old school again. There is a DVD case so you can see the size. There's my hand. Now the aperture in there is pretty big. That's got to be a good four inches of aperture so you're going to get a lot of light through that. Okay, I'm going to show you a bit of footage now from a couple of gigs I've done with this and I will leave you with a practice and enjoy. Thank you very much.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.