Review: Stage Light Company Hex Par Pro 12 and Pix Bar Hex Pro 6

Recently, I was given the opportunity to review the Stage Light Company Pro Par Hex 12 and Pix Bar Pro Hex 6.  Check out the full video and transcript below.

Let’s just say, I was a little surprised at what I found!

Transcript/Post:
Hey guys, it’s David Henry from Learn Stage Lighting .com.

Today, I’m going to review for you 2 products from the Stage Light Company.

It’s going to be the Pro Par Hex 12, and the Pix Bar Pro Hex 6.

Now, that’s a little bit of a mouthful, but I want to get into it and really show you these lights, and show you what they do because I can tell from looking at them, and this is my first look at them, that the owner of Stage Light company, Luke, had clearly, like me, worked with a lot of cheaper lower end LED fixtures and had a whole ton of frustrations to get off his belt.

That’s exactly what he did when he created these lights.

I’ve really enjoyed playing with them, and I think you’re going to enjoy seeing these lights in action as well.
First thing I want to do is just show you the fixtures, what they look like, and what’s going on physically with them.

First up is the Pix Bar Pro Hex 6, which is new from them.

It’s got red, green, blue, white, amber, as well as UV LED’s which [are] actually kind of cool.

I’m not going to lie, the black light’s kind of fun. It’s got 6 of them and they’re each individually able to be controlled via DMX, or you can set the fixture to a mode that uses less channels, only 6.

You can control the whole fixture at once.

Physical

If you look at it sideways, you can see here. I’ve left it plugged in for a reason.  We’re going to notice here that the foot is tall enough so that when it’s sitting on the ground, the cords aren’t getting smashed into the ground.

That goes for the DMX cord, which is a 3 pin. I get it. [Luke] aims his product at churches, and I totally understand why there’s a 3 pin plug on it.

There are some people who are like, it’s always got to be 5 pin, even though only 3 are used.

I personally like 5 pin because it keeps you away from audio but it’s not a deal breaker for me. It’s really not.
As you can see here, we’ve got Powercon in and out, as well as DMX 3 pin in and out. They’re riveted in there real nice. [The Powercon] are screwed in.

We got a fuse on the back here, and the screen. First thing you’re going to notice is hey, no fans.

There’s a vent here, but that’s another design feature that Luke put in here that I really like with his lights, because having no fan means that there’s no fan to fail.

When a fan fails, things, components start getting real hot, and the lights starts to fail. That’s a common problem on moving lights, if they’re cheaper and they don’t have thermal sensors.

Or maybe the guys in the shop don’t care. Those fans break, and it starts killing components. Not so much with these.
You’ll notice it’s got these feet on the end right here, however, if you want to clamp it, you can also clamp it with this bracket in the middle.

I like that hardware too, because then you could put a whole bunch of them on a piece of truss, clamp them up in the center, and then you could turn the whatever way you want and it’s just with one clamp, not having to line up 2 clamps on a piece of truss and make it fit with all the v’s. I really like that as well.

On the back here, you’re also going to see the screen which we’re going to plug in soon.
Now, the Par, which is the Pro Par Hex 12, they’ve also got a 5 I believe, which has 5 LEDs instead of the 12.

It’s a pretty good unit as well. It’s heavy, just like the other one. Doesn’t feel cheap or light. It’s got a double yolk, so it makes a nice floor stand as you can see.

Knobs on both sides.

The back panel is very similar to the bar. This one’s got a point for a safety attachment, which the bar actually didn’t besides of it’s yolk in the middle.

It’s got the DMX in and out 3 pin. Screen with your buttons. Your Powercon in and out.

It’s great that it also lists what the max power out you can attach to it is, and how much this fixture [uses], so that you can use those 2 numbers on site real quick, even if you’re not familiar with these fixtures.

[It helps you] make sure you’re safe. Make sure you’re not plugging in too much through the Powercon, because that can create some problems.
One other thing I want to note about the buttons on both of these is they’re actually rubberized, and it feels really nice.

They’re really easy to press. They give you good feedback and screen response right away.

The front of this also … Before I move on quick, I want to mention this, has glass on it. Feels really nice. Feels almost weather proof.

I don’t think it is, so don’t go putting these outside, but it definitely feels solid, feels protected.

The bar doesn’t have that. That’s something I’ve seen in other LED bars and maybe that has something to do with the manufacturing process.

I’m not sure.

Either way, they both feel like really solid pieces of gear, and honestly, for the price you’re paying for these lights, they are on the budget end of things.

I wouldn’t get frustrated over having a piece of glass or not. They’re definitely not outdoor units. They’re definitely indoor units.

We don’t want to expose these lights to weather, because they’re just not built for that. If that’s what you need, you need to look at something else and pay more for it.
But these are some really cool lights, and so on our next video, I want to show you the menus and dive in.

The Menu

Just show you all the different features that I found there. What they do, and why I really really like the simplicity of this menu system. The menu on these, when you first start it up, it’s going to say DMX, mode, give you the address, and also the channel mode that you’re in.

There are a few things I really like about this.

One, the screen is bright, and it’s responsive when you push the buttons. Now, I know you can’t see what’s on my screen on this camera, but I hit menu.

I’ve got a number of options here. I’ll scroll to the top.

You got DMX address, which again is just DMX address like any other fixture. Like normal, you hit enter, you set the address, you hit enter again, and it’s saved.
DMX channel, which is the channel mode.

Now, the par has a 6 and 12 channel mode, the 6 channel mode being just the red, green, blue, amber, white and UV. Then the 12 channel mode, actually being a mode that has an intensity channel and a strobe and automated programs. I don’t remember what else, but if you like fixtures that have modes like that, then that’s what’s in that mode.

The bar on the other hand has a number of modes.

I’m going to scroll through them here, because there’s a whole bunch of them. 6 channel, 8 channel, which is a lot like the 6 channel.

It’s got the 6 colors, and then it’s got an intensity and a strobe channel. Even if your console if a pretty simple console, maybe doesn’t support doing the intensity virtually, it’s in the fixture in the DMX channel in that 8 channel mode.
Then we’ve got … We’ve got a 4 channel mode.

I forgot about that, which is red, green, blue and white I believe, which is kind of cool.

3 channel mode, which is just the red, green, blue.

Again, unless you’re super tight on DMX channels, I wouldn’t ever think to use those, because you’re wasting half your fixture. You’re not using all the cool colors.

Then we’ve got a 12 channel mode, which splits the bar in half down the middle so you can control one side, you can control the other side.

There’s a 36 channel mode. In that mode, you get control of each pixel individually. This is the mode that as long as I have the amount of DMX channels to do all my units individually like that, I really like to do that.

The reason is, you can create some really cool effects across your lights, and some really cool movement – even pixel map.

Then after that, there’s a 38 channel mode, which is just like the 36 channel mode, except it’s got that intensity and strobe channel as well.
Diving back into the menu here, let me show you our other options are dimmer curve.

There’s 4 or 5 selectable dimmer curves. Right now the units I have I believe might be not quite the final version that are going to ship.

It’s close I know, and it might be the shipping version.

I believe this bar had 4 modes, and the par had 5 dimmer modes. Either way, see what I mean.

I tried the different modes.

Mode 1 was definitely just the regular linear curve, and the other curves maybe had a soft bottom or a soft top to them.

You know, your pretty typical dimmer curves, if you ever looked at an LED.

Again, I typically leave all my fixtures just at linear. If I’m that concerned about the dimmer curve, I do it within the console.

It’s one of those things if you have a simple console and you don’t like that linear dimmer curve, you can change it inside the fixture.
Then there’s a mode for static color, manual color, and the difference there is static color is you’re choosing a red, green, blue, etc. bunch of different colors.

Manual color, you’re dialing it in from 0 to 255 for each color that this fixture has in LEDs. Then manual white, which allows you to dial in some different whites.

Just to get a different color temperature on your white.

There’s an auto program, sound active mode, which I’m not a fan of as you all probably know.

Master/slave, which is if you’re linking different units together but not with DMX, and then a factory reset. Of course, there’s a confirmation on that so you can’t just hit it.
I really like that there is a lot … Very simple options on these menus.

There’s not a lot of complicated stuff.

Simple Menu = Good

Unfortunately, I had a bad experience in the past year with another company’s light, where they just had so many options inside their menu for their LED unit. They didn’t have a factory reset.

This production company bought a bunch of these things. I’m going to have to admit that I was the one who recommended these units to them.

They had all these settings in the menu, and then all of a sudden they started going out on different shows with different designers.

People would mess with them. They’d get all out of whack, and they were hard to reset back where we wanted them. Having a factory reset and limited number of options, is really helpful and a really good move.

The Colors

Like I said before, this is the Pixbar Pro Hex 6, and the Pix Par Hex 12, has very very similar menu options.
In this portion of the review, I really want to show you guys the colors of these units put out. I apologize in advance for the video coming off of my camera, because it’s not great video.

It might even be white balancing a little, which is not helping us with colored LEDs. I’ve got the lights dimmed way down so that I can show you some of the colors that these guys have.

First thing you’re going to notice as I bring up different colors, red and yellow here, blue added in, so that makes a nice white. We’ll go to a cyan. I’m going to bring up just the amber LEDs there, so that’s just the amber.

We’ll turn those off. We’ll bring up just the white and we’ll bring up just the UV, which they’re not very bright, but when you hold something white up them, they really pop.

Like any UV LED, that’s how that works.
Few things I want to show you here as I’m looking at these, bring up a nice magenta here.

The 2 fixtures, though this one, the par is a lot brighter than the bar, because it’s got twice as many LEDs in it, they’re very consistent.

They’re definitely using the same LEDs between the 2 units.

As I’m dimming colors up and down, and dimming the fixture as a whole, the dimming is really quite smooth. When I think about other products that are in this range that I’ve used and cheaper products, or slightly more expensive products even, honestly, the dimming curve is very acceptable.  It’s very reasonable.

Conclusion

Is it a Mac Aura? Or a Color Kinetics ColorBlaze, or a Chroma Q ColorForce in dimming curve?

No. It’s not any of those. If you’re not familiar with those fixtures, I just named some fixtures that are $2000, $3000 or $4000, depending on where you buy them, if you got them used or not.

Whereas these fixtures are both between $200 and $300.
For the price, you just really can’t beat these things. I’m really satisfied with the colors.

I’ll pop back into the picture here. I’m really satisfied with the colors, with the build quality.

Really with everything about them. I mean, watch I’ll got to a straight up green here. It’s a really nice green. It’s not too electric. It’s got a good warmth to it. It’s not sterile.

That’s the point that I really want to drive home about these lights, that I’m so thankful for Luke to send them to me to test out for you guys, because I really like what I see from the Stage Light Company.
To be honest, I hadn’t heard of these guys, and this is my full disclosure here.

I hadn’t heard of these guys. Luke reached out to me. Sent me an email.

We got talking and I said “Hey, I’d like to check out some of your products. Could I demo them?” He said sure, he’d send me some.

I haven’t received free lights or anything like that. I get to demo these and box them back up and send them back.

I’m definitely going to be recommending these to you guys, as well as to some people I work with, because for the price, these are really solid lights.

While Luke is aiming at the church market, I wouldn’t hesitate to use these at a production company. I wouldn’t hesitate to use these for a band, even for some theater work. I just … The value is there.
For the price you get, if you’re stuck on a budget, I would take a really strong look at this stage light company brand because he’s putting out products that honestly, it’s hard to beat the value.

Looking at other budget priced options out there, fixtures I’ve used in the past, these are better than a lot of them, and are slightly less or equal priced.

That’s about the conclusion of this review guys. Below or as well as on the video, I’ve got a link to the full post on Learn Stage Lighting, where you can see the transcript and see the video there, as well as have some links to other resources on the page.
Thanks so much guys for watching. I hope you really enjoyed this, and that it helps you to create great lighting. If you’re in the market for some new lights, some new LED fixtures, I would definitely check Stage Light Company out.

They’re definitely going to be a new one on my list of places to look when I need a new piece of gear. I’ll see you guys later, thanks!