Hey guys,
I’m a mobile DJ, 16, and have very little money coming my way. I have everything I need to play music at parties, and anyone who hires me says I am quite good at what I do. But lately I feel as if just music at some parties isn’t enough, so I want to get into lighting.
If you could offer me any knowledge on how I could go about creating a light setup controlled through DMX cables and another controller for cheap, I would be regretful.
When doing mobile lights are always a good look. You can use it as a up sell or include it in the price, they feel like they are getting a deal when you say the price you quote them includes lights and sound for the night. I’ve done a lot of gigs and the people are amazed I even have lights.
American DJ has lots of cheep but good LED lights that run by DMX or sound to light. they are worth a check I think. I have several of their lights and they are good.
I would start with some LED par lights or par light package like the 4 bar. If you plan on growing your set up and want DMX controll, a controller like the Chauvet Obey 40 or 70 is a good purchase. A hazer is a good addition, and will make the light beams stand out. Go for ADJ, Chauvet, or Blizzard lights, not lights straight from China off eBay or from cheaplights. Pretty sure they all come from China, but the bigger name companies test them before shipment, and warranty them from a US location.
To start you could just use 2-4 pars up lighting the wall behind you in sound active mode, and add dmx and stands as you can afford it.
When I first started with lighting I bought a centrepiece light and went with Chauvet’s Vue 6.1 and a light stand ($300). Then after one gig, I bought one ColorStrip and Obey 40 to uplight the table or dancefloor ($500). At this point, I was charging $800-$1000 per show. With the money, I bought 2 Intimidator Spot LED 150’s ($900). Then, I bought another light stand and another ColorStrip ($300). One more gig. Charged ($2000) and bought 10 Slim par 56s ($1200) for uplighting around the room.
I did find a smoke machine on kijiji for $30 bucks and tried to use it at a gig, but found that most venues won’t let you use it, or old ladies complained they were choking. I rented a haser and a dry ice machine once thinking that would solve the issues, but I still got complaints of choking. I think some people see smoke and think they’re on fire. So I don’t use smokers anymore. Though, if a client wants it, they get it.
After 5 shows, and 3 months, I had all the lighting I needed. People are absolutly floored when they walk into a wedding reception hall full of light. I get nothing but compliments on the lighting. Lots of customer referrals from one gig to the next.
As you can tell, I went with an all Chauvet light set-up. I did this for a reason due to DMX programming. The guy at the shop told me that sometimes DMX programming from one brand to another can cause flickering and communication issues to the lights. I also found Chauvet’s lighting to be less intrusive (bright) than American DJ lights. Plus, Chauvet’s lights are cheaper. I love some of ADJ’s lights, and sometimes think of switching brands, but I’m too lazy to do the reasearch on the best options.
With this set-up, I can offer quite a few options for my customers… but 8 times out of 10 they go for the ultimate becuase they’ve already seen it at their friend’s wedding/party and want the same thing or better.
If anyone has great experiences with lasers, please let me know.
Thank you guys! I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to help me out! It looks like DMX compliant lights are way to expensive for me at the moment.
So from this set of posts I do believe that such a set up should do well.
Hells to the yes.
We just now started to use that as an extra in our venue (and we got enough moving heads, strobes and PAR64’s, really we do) and it just adds that cherry on top.
Try to get a custom overlay with your name that bounces on the music and you’re set
Adding DMX controlled gizmo’s really costs some $$$ if you want it to be good.
I have no idea what the budget brands in the US are, but here in Europe we got Showtec and that really blows.
A year ago we were hosting a party and at the end, when we were about to disassemble the main stage, the DJ stage came back to live because someone disconnected the DMX line and all the Showtec moving heads automatically began party’ing in Demo Mode. Pretty hilarious but not professional at all.
As a fellow mobile DJ, price and portability were my biggest factors. I also didn’t want some “cheesy” lighting display of different colors or circular patterns moving to the music. I did a lot of research on the light patterns, and I realized that a lot of them carried the same inherent characteristics, like moving multi-colored patterns or designs. I found that to be really low budget so this I what I bought:
2 portable lasers, one to create a pattern across the floor, and another to create a design within that pattern, both sound activated.
American DJ Micro Galaxian
American DJ Micro Hypnotic
I also wanted to augment those lights somehow and wanted some sort of multi-coloured strobe so I bought 4 of these:
American DJ Mega Par Profile
Each of the lazers cost around $130, depending on where you are. And each of the Mega Par Profiles cost me $100.
Usually what I do is I sell the “whole package” which costs of two Mega Par Profiles and the 2 lazers. You can get a t-bar like the one I have made by yorkville, which has 4 pre-cut holes. All I had to do was get some bolts and washers from the local hardware store and I have a t-bar with 4 separate lighting effets. I hook up the two mega par profiles as master/slave so technically it’s one effect from two lights that work in unison.
The best thing about the Mega Par profiles is that it doubles as up-lighting, so they can pull double duty. Maybe someone doesn’t want multi-colored strobes but they want accent lights or vice versa. You don’t need 4, but someone asked me for 4 so I figured what the hell, might as well by them and start selling them to people. I charged that client $35/each, so after 1 gig 1 third of those lights were already paid for.
I get that, but smoke machines are cheesy. I always tell my clients “You don’t want a smoke machine…Unless you want to create the effect that you just floated into the room”. They usually change their minds after that.
This is pretty much what I wanted to avoid. Having multi-colored polka dots around the floor is lame…But it seemed to me like unless you get lasers you’re stuck with multi-colored dots, squares, or some equally tasteless design.
My thoughts on bubble machines are the same as smoke machines. Unless you want it to look cheesy, don’t bother. Bubbles can’t really be seen in the dark, and don’t even make lasers and color beams visible like smoke does.
Also a no-go. Cheap, par cans that use multi-coloured film are very archaic. Get multi-colored LED Par’s that don’t require film and have a much longer life expectancy.
