Experienced Swedish lighting designer Henrik Lundin is discovering that SGM's new X-5 LED strobes are making an increasingly powerful contribution to his show designs.
A member of the successful Stockholm-based company Satellite Live, since touring with eight of the new white strobes from the newly set-up SGM Sweden (headed by Mikael Uddh), he has never looked back.
One of the latest dance extravaganzas to undertake an extensive club tour with the strobes has been electro/hip hop group Maskinen (The Machine). "Because we were often visiting clubs with limited access to power, the X-5, with its low power draw when compared with the traditional energy hungry xenon sources, became a natural choice," he says.
The X-5 is not only a high-efficiency white LED strobe but its astonishing power is harnessed in an extremely compact form factor. By combining LED technology with advanced electronics and software control, new creative possibilities are opened up, among them being that the panel can be split into three individually controllable settings.
"I have been touring with the X-5's throughout 2012 - first with Swedish soul/pop singer Veronica Maggio on large outdoor stages, and most recently with the Maskinen tour," states Lundin. "I've really put the LED strobe to the test, in both daylight and dark interiors.
"The X-5 gives me the same intensity and a lot of exciting new effects compared with traditional xenon units, at a fraction of the power consumption. And the design of the luminaire means it can easily be deployed in the most compact touring situations."
