There are more houselights on the market than ever before, and today I’m going to look at a mid-sized RGBW houselight from GAMMA LED Vision. Is it the houselight for your church or venue? Find out here!
The GAMMA Penn is a medium sized houselight. There are actually three houselights total in their series; a small, medium and large, but the one we’re talking about today is the medium.
Construction
When discussing a houselight, we are talking about a pendant type structure, dark in color, that features a fixed mounting bracket that you attach to the top with a standard sized mounting hole. This particular design is clever with fins along the side to pull the heat away from the LED and keep everything cool rather than fans to provide perfectly quiet lighting for your venue of choice.
Lens
The lens featured on this houselight is a stippled plastic lens with a beam angle measurement of 60 degrees and a field angle of around 110-120 degrees. This lens gives a very wide, very diffused ambiance.
Hookups
On the backside of this light, you will find all of the different connections. There is the power connection as well as an input connection. You will not find a through connection on this light but that should not typically cause a problem because on houselights a through connection is not generally needed. You will also find terminal blocks available to hook up your DMX.
One thing that is missing that could be considered convenient in other houselight brands is that sometimes when there are terminal blocks there will often be a little tab that comes up that you can zip tie the cable to to give it added support; however this is not a major issue as you can still zip tie your cable to the yolk once you install the light and provide the same stream relief.
Screen
On the back of this light you will find a screen with an easy menu for your basic DMX needs as well as other indicator lights. Overall the build feels quite sturdy and reliable.
Cost
This is not the least inexpensive house light available but for a light in its price range it is a generally decent cost for what you are getting and compared to other models from other brands, it is really well priced.
Convenience
One really great quality about this light is that the bracket does not tilt so you will never have to worry about realigning your light. Once it is mounted in the direction you want it to go, there it will stay.
The true test of a houselight is not whether it looks nice or is heat synced, or has a nice looking lens; although those things are important, but rather how does it work? By “how does it work” we mean does it dim, does it fade smoothly, do the colors look reasonably nice, and most importantly what does the white look like?
Color Quality
This particular light is a red, green, blue, white LED. This gives you the ability to create your own color palette to suit your individual preference and needs. The saturation on the individual color LEDS will be a bit softer than you would get from a different type of lighting but they still provide very nice coloring.
White Light
The white light by itself is a beautiful white. It has the potential to be soft or to provide a really nice intensity if desired. From the white alone, you are then able to mix in any of the colored LEDs to create the perfect lighting for your house.
Ultimately if you are looking for a good houselight, white is going to be the most important to quality check, but the other colors do matter as well.
Closing
If you’re looking for a houselight and you want the DMX control and something that is easy to install you may want to give the GAMMA Penn consideration. In comparison with other houselights, the GAMMA Penn is a really nice quality houselight. It provides good color quality, solid brightness, is completely fan-free, and works exactly the way it is advertised.
