TourPro Zoom Par Jnr

Road Test

TourPro Zoom Par Jnr

By Jeremy Nolan.

Jeremy Nolan is the director of Melbourne’s Above and Beyond Production Services, founded in 2013. Having worked with some of the most iconic bands, events, and festivals nationally and internationally over 20 years, Jeremy drew on this experience to create a company that is rapidly gaining a reputation for creating high-end lighting production events and custom lighting pieces.

At Above and Beyond, we work across a lot of different markets; festivals, corporate, sporting events, product launches, and live performance. As such, we need to stock a lot of different brands and types of moving lights, LED fixtures, washes, pars, and FX lights. Our strategy to build the right inventory is to adopt particular products as our ‘core’ product in that category and build quantity over time.

The TourPro Zoom Par Jnr appealed to us on many levels. Firstly, it’s IP65 rated. We stock a lot of IP65 rated fixtures because we cater for a lot of outdoor events in the summer months, including The Australian Open tennis. We’ve found the Zoom Par Jnr to be very versatile; it has a zoom, it’s RGBW, and the seven 20 Watt chips make it very punchy, with really nice colour saturation.

Its features and capabilities are typical of the direction the market is headed in terms of the progression of the technology. It’s a meat-and-potatoes kind of fixture, which is exactly what we’re looking for to build our stocks on. Ideally, we would like to have 100 units in our inventory within the next 12 months.

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We did an event a few months ago on a barge in Sydney Harbour. We had to light a sign on the barge that was made of 2.4 metre tall letters, with a throw distance to work with of 1.8 metres. The client wanted a nice, bright, white light. The barge was 20 metres long, and obviously had power restrictions. With their zoom and the short throw distance, the IP65 rating, and low power consumption, the Zoom Par Jnrs were perfect for the job; they were the ideal fixture in that application.

IP65
We’ve punished the Zoom Par Jnrs in all sorts of outdoor conditions, particularly here in Melbourne with its ‘four seasons in one day’. They’ve been in baking sun and pouring rain, and they’ve performed beautifully. The fact they don’t have a cooling fan means less moving parts, and less dust and dirt being drawn in. It also means they run really quietly, which we appreciate on our indoor corporate gigs. We also appreciate the flicker free management control, as a lot of our work is filmed or broadcast.

Control
In terms of control, we use most major platforms, as we have many different LDs using our equipment who are very specific in their requirements. In-house we stock MA Lighting, Avolites, ChamSys, and Hog, so any fixture we have ends up being operated by everything. In terms of fixture profiles, we’ve found that most manufacturers have TourPro fixtures in their library. If we have had an issue with fixture profiles not being available, we’ve contacted TLC Global and they’ve arranged one for us. We use Capture visualisation software, and that has libraries on-board for TourPro fixtures straight off the bat.

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Standout Feature
In a market that is saturated with LED pars, we chose the Zoom Par Jnrs predominantly because of their output to size ratio. The seven 20W LED chips provide a lot of output for the fixture’s size. There are a lot of other zoom pars out there, but they are all substantially bigger, and that has an impact on casing, storage, transport, and rigging. We have ours cased in lots of eight. Their double yoke is handy because you don’t have to carry a floor stand for them, but that is standard across most fixtures of this type.

Support
The distributor TLC Global have been very responsive to any enquiries, and they’re particularly good at following up on inventory, orders, shipping and logistics. We haven’t had any technical faults with any of the fixtures, and so haven’t had any warranty issues to deal with.

Conclusion
The TourPro Zoom Par Jnr is a workhorse fixture, and we want to continue to build our stock and make it our everyday Par, phasing out our older Pars. It represents a good return on our investment.

Brand: TourPro
Model: Zoom Par Jnr
Pricing: RRP $770 inc GST
Product Info: www.tlcglobal.com.au
Distributor: www.tlcglobal.com.au

The Specs:
Colour spectrum: RGBW 4-in1
Number of LEDs: 7
LED type: 20w
Dispersion: 8°- 50°
Flicker free management for TV Applications DMX input/Output: with RDM
DMX mode: 3/7/10/12/14-channel modes
Output: 1000 lux @ 2m 50 Degrees
Output: 12000 lux @ 2m 8 Degrees
Quick electronic strobe 1 ~ 25 Hz
51 x Built-In Macro’s
10 x Internal Programs
10 x Custom Programs
Natural cooling without fan
Display: LCD display
Operating voltage:110 V AC – 240V AC / 50 – 60 Hz
Power consumption: 150w
Power connector: IP Rated P/Con Housing material: Aluminium Die Cast Width: 254mm
Height: 192mm
Depth: 318mm
Weight: 6.5kg
IP Rating: IP65

This article first appeared in CX Magazine August 2018 – print and online. CX Magazine is Australia and New Zealand’s only publication dedicated to entertainment technology news and issues. Read all editions for free or search our archive www.cxnetwork.com.au

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