Martin Efx700

[superstardeejay 0]

http://www.djdeals.co.uk/prod-images/MartinEFX700_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

Just programming a couple of these into a show, so thought I'd do a review-ette.

 

They are a moonflower in the same vein as the NJD Datamoon or Abstract Twister. However, they're alot larger; and brighter; and a whole lot heavier! Think of a Wizard on it's back.

 

They are DMX512, have a high-speed strobe shutter, mirror dish and combined colour-gobo wheel. They have a mechanical dimmer function, lamp on/off relay and can shake either the dish or the effects wheel or both. They have built-in programmes that can be called up through just 1 dmx channel.

 

They take a Philips CDM150S/A-T discharge lamp; about the brightest 150W discharge lamp you can get. Forget the exploding HIT150, the expensive HTI150 or the lacklustre Arcstream, this lamp is easily as bright as an MSD250 and at half the price. If you're on a tight budget (unlikely with Martin gear!) you can fit a standard CDM150 or MBI150 for reduced brightness and colour temperature at about £15.

 

Like most modern martin stuff, they're well built, they have a huge, heavy mounting bracket with multi-purpose ceiling plate which doubles as a foot. They are equipped with rubber bumpers front and back, an LED panel to set the DMX and other parameters, built-in mic for standalone use, attractive dark brown powder-coated body and brown anodised extruded side panels which won't dent.

 

Programming them is easy, the dish can go forwards and backwards, fast or slow under 1 channel with continuous rotation (something the Datamoon should've incorporated!!) and continuous colour/gobo change. If you're lazy you can recall the macros so it does its own thing to enable a fast approach to programming.

 

They come packed with 3 manuals, in 3 languages; ours is written in proper, not pidgeon english. They also come packed with 3 mains leads; a shukco, a bare-end and one with 13A plug. The also give you a long, quality DMX XLR lead.

 

They are incredibly bright, indeed 'stunning'. the Philips lamp is guaranteed not to fade slowly over its lifetime unlike a lot of rival 150W metal halide lamps; I can vouch for this having had alot of dealings with this and other lamps in other fixtures. Lamp life is quoted at 6000 hrs, a genuine lamp is around £38-£45.

 

The lens is focussed by a small multi-turn knob next to it.

 

On the down side, the colours are rich but a little boring. Incorporated with the gobos (as with the datamoon) they contain several multi-coloured positions and almost no pure, single colours. This makes synching them with other DMX fixtures a little difficult; the orange is split with white; the red has a little white in it; there's no blue or magenta (blue and magenta are only available as a split colour together) etc etc. In fact the only single colours are green and yellow plus open white.

 

The gobo shapes themselves are fresh and different although they suffer considerable fringing around the edges no matter where the focus is set.

 

The dimmer is a bit noisy; the stepper motor whistles loudly at low light levels which might be audible during a slow dance which is where you may use the dimmer.

 

The lamp change is terrible. I found it a struggle with 2 of them on my bench; I'm glad I wasnt up a ladder or in the corner of some dark pub. The lamp lives behind a flap which itself takes an age to open; its very easy for the captive screw to score the paint as you fiddle trying to get it away from the body of the fixture. The lamp hatch is held on by a steel cable which too short to give good access and too stiff, so it keeps springing back in the way. Under the flap is a further recessed plate held on by 4 captive screws. You undo those with a screwdriver and pull a rubber knob to remove the lampholder. The knob fell off both of them before I'd pulled the stiff holder out. Getting them back is also a fiddle; the captive screws are so long that each one falls at the wrong angle and as soon as you've got one started you realize the others have sprung out of alignment so you have to take it all apart again.

 

The lamp access is by far the worst I've ever seen on any fixture (including those where you have to remove the whole body to change the lamp!) and Martin can do better than this. The lamp change took me 20 minutes to do and I can tell you that I am particularly experienced changing lamps in my line of work!!

 

 

The EFX700 is part of the 'Mania' range of discharge and halogen effects lights currently marketed by Martin Professional of Denmark.

 

They retail at around £600 each.

 

Edited March 4, 2011 by superstardeejay

[MintyDave 0]

 

 

very informative SSDJ. The video is certainly good however as an engineer can you see the value in the fixtures or are they possibly overpriced for what they are. I have not seen any martin effects in use for a long time and the last ones i saw were nothing to get excited about.

Edited March 4, 2011 by superstardeejay

[superstardeejay 0]

can you see the value in the fixtures

 

Well...they are certainly expensive. Versus the usual chinese tat (these are probably made in china) they are miles ahead. The steel is heavy duty with excellent powder coating, the aluminium extrusions are so well finished and coated, the brackets etc all feel excellent. It is all screwed..no..bolted..together (no self-tappers here!). Forget trying to draw a parallel with anything by Acme, Chauvet, American DJ, Soundlab, Geni etc, nothing compares.

 

Performance-wise, the MAD Power Flower was probably just about on a par with it, I can't think of anything else comparable. If NJD Notts had made a discharge Datamoon (they did do a sound-to-light SuperBlitzer a few years back) then maybe it would be about equal. Wow..a discharge Datamoon...........

 

I can't over-stress the brightness of these fixtures, unless you are familiar with the capability of the Philips Broadway CDM150-S/AT already. Not many fixtures use it; it's more common in the theatre.

 

These units will be part of a rig that contains Martin Wizard Extremes (250W discharge) and graphic scanning lasers.

 

The customer in question has just bought 4 popular-brand led scanners from a local DJ shop, and when he came to collect the Martin light rig from my workshop today, I gave him a demo of the programmes and he took a step backwards and suggested that the new LED scanners might now stay in their cardboard boxes!

 

 

:dukesy:

[MintyDave 0]

Have just been into town for a beer and a local dj was playing one of the town pubs. I think he had a raptor on a stand above him and an older martin moonflower (rectangle case possibly) sat on a flightcase. What a brilliant bright light show. There was something else on the floor possibly a led quad lens type unit but the 2 martins alone were stunning.

 

he did set the fire alarms off though. Bit ott with the smoke! Im going to have to email him to see what they were, unless you are looking JB.

 

Can see the difference in the effect produced, made my datamoons look like toys. I suppose the closest rival has to be the acme isoultion IS4's . i struggled to find anything else.

Edited March 5, 2011 by MintyDave

[superstardeejay 0]

The problem with the iSolution is they use the abysmal chinese Xenpow HIT150. That is a wire-ended prefocus discharge lamp which is expensive and short-lived. When they fail they often explode and the glass goes everywhere. I've never seen a Philips CDM150 lamp explode. They go black occasionally or white if the seal breaks, but that's it.

 

The older Martin moonflowers, Destroyer and Punisher were the square-ish black boxy things, great optics and bright, 250w a1-259. I sold some second hand ones some years ago and I was actually sad to see them go, they were on a par with the Datamoon for brightness but the movements were a little more sophisticated.

 

The raptor is ok, 250W halogen, similar to the Spektronic Broken Swing. They need to be kept spotless inside and out for the light to stay bright. No good on the ceiling of a nightclub where it will get neglected.

 

The raptor would be left in the shade by the EFX700.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MintyDave 0]

As i said i will drop him an email to find out what they were. Casting aside the brightness, the sharpness of the beams and projected gobo along with the colour just made them look stunning.

 

Looking at the current mania range, they are not for the average mobile jock weiging in at 14kg each.

 

Although i find the datamoons do the the job, love the controller, when it comes to the optics they are dissapointing. I have a pair of cheap prolight 250w moonflowers and the optics are far superior but thay are limited on features - no dmx, no master slave and the gobo is on a constant speed with just the mirror spinning with sound to light.

 

Overall the Martin's are the Rolls Royce of lights and the market is stuffed full of Ford Focuses, but where is that middle ground. The 100w martin fixtures although brilliant must surely be underpowered and appear to be discontinued anyway. In fact their range of lighting is limited to the bigger fixtures which i suppose is down to demand or lack of from us small-fry. Also i see the raptor is plug and play no dmx nothing.

Edited March 6, 2011 by MintyDave