E Q U I N OX M I DA S S P O T - INFO@ MSRP: £. The DJ industry seems to be going mad on moving heads at the minute. Every weekend I see DJs posting pictures on social media of their rigs featuring four or more heads on totems, and that’s a great testament to progress in the technology world. Such fixtures used to cost thousands of pounds but are now readily available to us for very little money.

However, with so many similar products out there, a new fixture really needs to stand out from the crowd. Does the Midas Spot from the Prolight Concepts Group’s Equinox brand have what it takes to stand up against stiff competition? Let’s find out… 80 80 sponsored by Every Saturday night you can guarantee that you will see a picture on social media of a DJ with that magical photo of a number of moving heads all pointing towards the camera and, let’s be honest, it looks amazing, who wouldn’t be proud of something like that?

The good news is that kind of setup is available to everyone these days, at every price point. Ok, maybe the fixtures are not exactly the same, but visually similar in many ways. The new Midas Spot from Equinox sits right slapbang in the middle of what I call the ‘Mobile DJ end’ of the moving head fixture market, i.e. sub-£1000. Its main competition are big hitters, which are already established as incredibly popular products, but the Midas Spot has broad shoulders and is able to hold its own with some fairly impressive specs and useful unique features.

It all starts with a powerful 60W LED that has a reasonably narrow 16-degree beam angle. Although there are products of the same class hitting the market right now with 75W LEDs, the difference between the two is marginal. And, let’s be honest, for an average party of up to 150 people in a room measuring 20m wide by 10m deep, 60W is more than enough firepower. One impressive feature of the Midas Spot is its incredibly smooth dimming curve.

For years LEDs have suffered from poor dimming curves, especially at the lower end. Many fixtures would flicker as they neared their ‘full-out’ intensity and this obviously could cause some problems under DMX control with slow, sensitive lighting cues. However, the Midas Spot offers extremely smooth dimming right across its brightness range. Inside the head is a GOBO wheel featuring seven rotating, replaceable GOBOs plus open.

The installed patterns are fairly detailed and include a textured glass GOBO in addition to the standard metal ones. This creates a very nice 3D effect, which really stands out as different compared to the output of other similarly-priced movers. Two extra metal GOBOs are also included as standard, which you can choose to swap with any of the fitted patterns, and your own custom GOBOs can also be used (GOBO size: 24mm; image size: 19.5mm). A separate wheel features seven colour filters in EQUINOX MIDAS SPOT addition to open white and a new with the usual tri-colour filter.

This is very neat sound-activated and allows for eye-catching multimodes. These colour GOBO projection, which ‘forward-facing’ looks particularly good using the as well as two 3D glass GOBO. In addition, the allow for fixture also allows for spit-colours effects even (providing they are adjacent on setup. the colour wheel), with the two colours blending nicely together On the front (with no black dividing line as is backlit 2” LCD sometimes the case). a selection jog dedicated LED To further add to the creative Master, Slave potential offered by the Midas display makes Spot, a 3-facet prism is also the different included that can be used to a DMX address triple the GOBO projection for the various impressive mid-air beam effects. extremely easy In addition, the unit also offers too long now motorised focus, which comes up with in quite handy under DMX to their confusing ensure that GOBOs are nice and which makes sharp regardless of the projection different modes distance.

With this easy need to reach Speaking of DMX, the Midas lookup the Spot offers the choice of 10 or if you want 13 channels of control (with or reverse tilt. without fine pan/tilt), together of control SETQAUYIINNOGX M MOIDBIALSE SPOT Equinox Midas Spot array of auto, themselves. I don’t like to go and master/slave through the tiresome mental include a useful exercise of trying to understand a auto program, series of letters and working out slave modes, which what feature they turn on and off, contrasting movement so a big thumbs up to Equinox for in a master/slave this.

Around the back you’ll find you get a rather nice powerCON input and output menu display with and also 3-pin XLR DMX input/ wheel, alongside output. If you remember my indicators for DMX, Equinox Vortex review in the last and Sound. The large issue of Pro Mobile you’ll know choosing between that I quite like the fact that modes, selecting manufacturers are fitting more and changing ‘pro’ power options to the latest optional attributes mobile-DJ-focused products.

The and intuitive. For fact that powerCON sockets lock we’ve had to put into place means that they can’t four-digit menus – and be accidentally pulled out (as is abbreviations – the case with IEC connections), going through the which is definitely a good thing. rather painful. system you don’t Another pretty neat thing I like on for your manual to the Midas Spot is it’s automatic confusing acronym pan/tilt correction, a feature to set, for example, once only found on really high- I’m a massive fan end fixtures.

I’ve noticed that systems that explain THE EARLY DAYS 8811 Equinox Midas Spot it’s becoming more and more common at this end of the market, which is good to see. If you’re not sure what this is, it’s basically a super-cool way of the Midas Spot auto correcting if pan or tilt is knocked out of position or if DMX falls out of sync. I’ve had heads in the past that have got slightly mis-calibrated when using them in sound-to-light mode as they spin round to the extremes of their pan or tilt ‘stops’, usually ending up with the fixture pointing in a direction that’s completely wrong.

In the past, to correct this you would need to power-cycle the unit, or reset it in some other way, but the auto-correct system stops this from happening. One of my pet peeves about budget moving heads are strange, jarring glitches in their movement, so I’m very pleased to say that the pan and tilt operation on the Midas Spot is really smooth when you want it to be and incredibly fast when the party picks up pace. Ok, so it won’t go from one positional extreme to another in the blink of an eye, but it’s not far behind!

This is an extremely quick and agile fixture. And the same can be said about the GOBO rotation, this can be slowed right down without any kind of ‘stepping’, so will look really neat at a wedding, for example, where you’ll want to set a nice romantic scene. The Equinox Midas Spot itself footprint. The is solid and made from sturdy clamp will allow materials that should stand up to the Midas Spot on the typical abuse that a fixture the need for much experiences during its life out on the 7kg fixture up the road with a mobile DJ.

It’s first place. And its pretty quiet too, with the cooling feet mean that it fan being the most prominent directly on the floor noise source. on a plinth or riser. In terms of physical size, it’s This fixture would reasonably compact with a tiny investment if 8822 quick-release omega for a compact, yet powerful, you to position moving head that provides lots of truss without creative potential. Offering great spinach to get performance and plenty of punch, there in the this is an ideal mobile DJ mover chunky rubber perfect for both impressive midcan also stand air effects (if you’re lucky enough of a venue or to be in a venue that permits haze) and sharp, crisp GOBO projections.

The future is certainly be a good bright with the Midas Spot! you’re looking EQUINTOHXE MEAIDRALSY SDPAOYTS