Written by guest blogger Larz Hanson, Detour DJ & Audio (and former Facebook Fan of the Month!)

Throughout our lives, we all find icons that stick in our heads. Those icons can be anything…people, objects, events, etc. For me, I can name several things that have affected me profoundly:
1) Van Halen live in 1980 with Dave Lee Roth. Greatest rock concert I’ve ever attended.
2) That famous poster of Farrah Fawcett. I won’t go into details…
3) American Idol and their AMAZING light show.
4) Recently, the excellent CHAUVET® Q-Spot 260 LED moving-head!

Which brings me to the point of this blog…

I think I can speak for everyone reading this blog when I say that money is tight these days and all of us need to get the most lighting for the lowest cost. CHAUVET® has stepped up to the plate on this challenge and knocked one out of the park with their Q-Spot 260 LED moving head fixture for anyone wanting to bump up their light show a few notches without going broke!

The Q-Spot 260 LED offers the brightest single-LED light source of any fixture on the “working-man” market, an intense 60-watt unit that outshines every competitor in its price range. With its whiter color temperature, the Q-Spot 260 LED looks brighter than typical 250-watt halogen fixtures. The color temperature and output is actually on par with higher-cost 250-watt discharge fixtures, though the Q-Spot 260 LED is smaller than, weighs half of, and uses about 1/3 the electricity of the MSD250-based units. But CHAUVET® didn’t just make a bright light and stop there.

A color wheel (eight vivid, saturated colors spanning the rainbow plus white), two independent gobo wheels (one static, one rotating and indexable), a rotating 3-facet prism, motorized remote focus (which serves as a cool “morph” between the two gobo wheels), smooth dimming to blackout, and a variable strobe with an excellent “random” setting. All this adds up to huge bang for the buck, and explains very well why I’ve bought 10 of these killer lights so far (and plan to buy more!).

Actually, I’ll need to invest in a pair of heavier-duty truss crank stands first. Then I’ll shoot for at least a dozen Q-Spots, maybe a few Q-Beam 260 LEDs (another cool CHAUVET® light with features similar to the Q-Spot 260 LED), and some other fixtures on a backline truss.

Okay, I ended up a little geeky there, but really there’s a lot to love about the Q’s and not much worth complaining about. Best moving head on the budget market right now, hands down! A huge light show for a small price!

See the Q-Spot 260 LED for yourself.