Stairville LED PAR 56 black 151 LEDs RGB

I purchased four of these in 2006, and a further 8 since (total 12). These PARs are good value for money for getting some coloured light in to small areas, and cannot be beaten for the price. However, for larger areas, or more serious use than discos or bands in small rooms, they fall short - as you would expect.

Their design was changed slightly after 2006 to give a taller yoke (this is the bracket they hang on). The extra length means you can now angle the unit straight down without the DMX cables getting in the way. Early units also suffered from dry solder joints, meaning certain strings of LEDs would stop working. This can be solved by taking the panel out and finding the 'dead' LED - either re melting the solder, or bridging the LED out. If under Thomann's 3 year warranty period, they will send new panels.

Stand alone and sound to light modes are useful.

Down sides:
-The PARs will only address up to DMX 128. So you can't use them with higher addresses.
-They are not very bright
-The beam angle is not very wide. Using frost to diffuse the beam reduces the light output
-The colour frame is meshy, and that further reduces the light output
-Over time, the yoke bolts and cable gland can work loose and will need tightening
-Dimming curve is poor
-As there are lots of LED sources, you get colour fringing/shadows
-You cannot make a decent white
-There are 4 fuses behind the LED panel which protect the LEDs. Sometimes these can blow, taking out a whole colour, but can be replaced.

However, these are designed and built to a price, and for that price they are good units, and cheap enough to be abused and thrown in and out of car boots!

I have four of these lights. I am a DJ for modern jive partner dancing, with an audience of between 50 and 150. I use these lights to light up the floor from a height of about 1.5m, with static colour.

The brightness of an individual unit is enough to shine about 2 meters. I use four together on a lighting T-bar, the combined brightness lights up an area of around 5m by 5m.

The functions are minimal. You can set static colours using red/green/blue at 0%, 25%, 50% and 100% intensities. There is Auto Fade which fades between six colours over a configurable time. There is also Auto Change which is sound activated, this is not very good at the volume I play music: even at the lowest sensitivity the lights change too fast.

There are more colours available in DMX mode, which I haven't used.

I love these things. For the amount of money I spent on them they are great. Easy to use and set up. I have had great time programming with them. The light they give off is great for the small venues the band plays in and gives the improved visual effect when playing to help add to the atmosphere. For the larger events for gigs with an audience 4 of 5 hundred, 8 of the lights is not enough.

I love how easy they are to control with a DMX controller. As an on stage lighting sollution I wish the 8th dip switch wasn't an overide switch and could be used for addressing for DMX. However being able to use the switches to set single colour for family Haloween parties last year was ok but felt this could have been done as easily with a DMX controller. Also think the first and 5th channels are a bit of a waste. Think they only need to colour mix RGB. Think three channels would have been fine can't say I have ever used channels 1 and 5 with any degree of satisfaction.

Feel the build quality is a little short with screws undoing themselves over time. Even the entry point for the power cables have unscrewed. Though they are 5 years old now.

Overal happy with the product just a little sad that you can only use up to 25 cans on a single DMX universe. Despite the down sides my intension is to purchase more of these.

I Bought 8 of these for a stage at work, I will probably buy some more later on.. Works really good if the room is dark, Ok if there's light from the windows.
The lights are installed 2,5m up in the roof, 4 in the front & 4 in the back.
And thar covers most of the stage that is approx 4x3m

I like that each light has 3 colours, saves space and money!

And if you don't have a Lightmixer, these have alot of time depending options which can be pretty useable option for disco or if you don't have a lightning guy to control the lights

The package was easy to assemble and your up & running in no time.

I put 4 stars in quality, but I guess time will tell! =)

Good lights for the price.
I dont think there built for the road though, Perfect for installs,
After about 30 shows half of the blue LEDs on about 4 of units stopped working and the cable attaching the power cord to the light came loose.
Also the casing aint the strongest of materials either had to bend it back into Shape quite alot! (Buy a flightcase if your moving them around quite a bit)

The output itself is great and did exactly what I needed them to do (Lighting for Wedding Band).

The stand alone features and presets are quite good too,
The mic is very sensitive and even if you turn the dial to the lowest option theres not much of a difference!

To some it up....Great for installs not for the road! Cant go wrong with the price!

I am really happy with these lights - we've got around 6 that we use as part of our stage setup. We don't have them set up with DMX - but this is something we aim to do soon. We tend to leave them set to the automatic (to music) mode - which means they cycle through the colours according to the music. The only downside is that the sensitivity setting for the to-music mode is either all or nothing - so essentially they either strobe very quickly or stay on a fixed colour. I tend to favour the flat panel LED lights - also available on Thomann, as these have much nicer modes (fades, blends etc) plus a digital DMX interface, rather than the dip switches (which can be fiddly to turn on/off).

From a storage and transportation perspective these are very good. And the fact that they use LEDs means you never need to replace bulbs and they are very robust.

If you live in the UK keep in mind that these ship with a European travel adapter - we bought some travel adapters to use them.