Renshaw immediately committed his new Alpha Spot HPE and Wash fixtures to a number of large-and small-scale industrial productions. The feedback he received from both his in-house lighting designers as well as freelance L.D.s and programmers confirmed Renshaw's belief that he had made a good choice. "One of the things that immediately impressed me was my freelancers commenting on how quiet and fast the new Alphas were. We do mostly corporate shows, and it is always a concern having a bunch of moving lights on the show and hearing them "hum" in general not to mention amplified by the audio mics."
The Alpha Spot HPE has an impressive list of features for a fixture of its physical size including 10°- 40° zoom and fully electronic focusing. The CMY colour mixing system is augmented by a seven position plus white colour wheel and a linear CTO for gradual colour temperature correction. The exceptional special effects section of the Alpha Spot HPE has a total of three gobo wheels. Two wheels of six easily interchangeable, indexable/rotatable gobos, and a third, fixed wheel of eight gobos that can be swapped with other fixed wheels. In addition to its three gobo wheels, the Alpha Spot HPE also has a "fast clamping" animation disc. The "fast clamping" system allows for a quick transition to other graphic effects discs and can be used in conjunction with any or all of the gobo wheels to enliven projection effects.
"The Alpha Range is spearheading what we see as a radical shake-up of the moving light market in the US," says Clay Paky America's CEO, PJ Turpin. "We have a 575W range of fixtures that have greater lumens output than 700W fixtures and in fact are strong against many 1200W units, and the Alpha's have feature sets usually reserved for fixtures costing several thousand dollars more. We have the staff and inventory in place to support the product, and the fixtures are being used on major shows all over the world. The ETS - LDI show was a great success for us, and of course it did not hurt that I could point out the five major Las Vegas shows that all use Clay Paky fixtures, with more on they way."
(Lee Baldock)
