- plays were all the rage, every time I made a mixing mistake my roadie Matt used to have a lot of fun at my expense by displaying a message along the lines of “DJ required, apply within, no experience necessary”. Thankfully, these days my mixing has improved and Matt no longer works with me! At the time, these message displays were quite useful as a novel form of advertising; so, when the box containing Kam’s new TextBeam 300 laser landed at Mole towers, I was quite interested in what it could do.

86 Of course, Kam have been providing DJs with kit for many years. My fi rst dual CD player was a Kam KCD- 850 way back in the 90s. A good few years later I remember Kam launching into the DJ lighting market, but wasn’t impressed with the early eff ects which seemed a bit dull. However, in recent years, this has improved massively.

Kam has created a bit of a niche for itself by off ering aff ordable and innovative laser eff ects for DJs, and their latest off ering certainly fi ts into this category. The Kam TextBeam 300 is a multi-colour RGB laser projector that provides custom text display as well as the usual animations and mid-air eff ects. I fi rst saw this little beastie in action when Clive from CRS1 brought one along to a SEDA ShowNight a few months back, and it created a fair bit of interest.

Open the box, and you will fi nd the laser unit with its bracket and instructions, a mini QWERTY keyboard, an infrared remote control, the safety key and plug, a mains lead, and an extension lead for the keyboard so that you can still use it when the laser head is mounted out of reach. Now let’s take a look at the specs. This class 3B laser actually contains three separate laser diodes: a red 150 mW laser, a green 50 mW laser, and a blue 100mW laser.

These three laser beams can be combined to provide a variety of vibrant bright colours, including red, green, deep blue, light blue, pink, yellow, purple and white. The rear panel has the usual safety features of a key switch and a remote kill switch socket, as well as a safety-wire mounting point. Power is supplied via an IEC connector, and there is a mains switch on the back. 3-pin DMX input/ output sockets are also supplied, as is a PS/2 keyboard socket to connect the QWERTY keyboard.

The whole laser unit can be mounted using the supplied adjustable bracket, and it is also provided with 4 rubber feet so that alternatively it can be placed directly onto a fl at surface. Also, on the back panel is an LED display and four buttons to allow selection between the various diff erent modes and functions, as well as DMX addressing. There are a number of built-in automatic modes that off er a variety of shapes, colours and animations, all of which can be paused, and set in diff erent colours, or a single colour, of your choice.

These preprogrammed patterns can be set to react to sound or just run automatically, and you can also alter the zoom level, so you can project onto a wall at some KAM TEXTBEAM 300 105478_AD_NA_F1812_170x240_Master_v01.indd 1 27/07/15w31 09:27 distance quite easily. The themed programs are fantastic; on off er are the following: New Year, Christmas, Love (which is ideal for Valentine’s Day and for weddings), Birthday, Halloween and Music, as well as a general party program.

Each features a mixture of themed words, graphics and animations. The Message Display mode is particularly useful, as you can save up to nine uppercase, mixed, or lowercase messages in the internal memory, which can then easily be recalled via the keyboard. These messages can be set to simply scroll or you can animate the text with roll or zoom in/ out eff ects, the results of which can be quite mesmerisng. Again, you can alter the colour of the messages so that they can be set to be displayed in multi-colours or a single colour of your choice.

There is also a Time mode which displays the current date and time, although it's a shame the date is in the US format. This mode could be really useful for occasions such as New Year's Eve. There is also a Countdown function which allows you to set a specific number of seconds to countdown which it will display followed by a saved message of your choice. I imagine this could also work well at a wedding where a bouquet toss is staged. that not so long ago would have cost While reviewing the TextBeam 300, I pounds.

It would used it at mixed Christmas functions driven by a piece of where diff erent companies shared a also very expensive. single party, so it was quite cool to done here is to deliver welcome every company by displayable and innovative ing their names. I also tried it in my market. Having seen ‘kitchen lab’ at home, and this time do, I was quite surprised let the smoke machine go - WOW! inexpensive this device The laser animations look stunning considering the deals creating mid-air eff ects in smoke. now.

While this is not a high-end produc- I can imagine that tion laser - it’s aimed squarely at the would enjoy seeing mobile DJ - it is worth remembering initials, or special a laser like this at their wedding. The TextBeam several thousand 300 could also be used for corpoalso need to be rate events to highlight relevant soft ware that is messages, and - potentially - this is What Kam have something you could charge a bit a very aff ordmore for. In addition to its easy-tosolution to our use text projection function, this all that it can laser unit is also perfect for proat just how jecting more traditional animated is, especially patterns and mid-air eff ects.

Having available right spent some time putting it through its paces, I really like this laser; it’s relatively easy to use, has plenty to many clients off er, and is great value for money. their names, date up in lights KAM TEXTBEAM 300