Question on minis versus LED's

[kcny]

This year will be my first show with LOR. I’ve got one controller almost ready to go, an EDM transmitter on the way and my SPT1 wire and vampire plugs. Last year after Christmas I bought like 50 boxes of incandescent mini-lights from WalMart and was going to use just those for my show this year (and buy LED’s next year when they go on sale).
Before I go hanging all my lights – will using just the minis be bright enough for a display? Will they dim, shimmer and fade fine? I am only doing house/window outline and a couple bushes – no mega tree or arches….
Or, should I take what little money I have saved and buy some LED’s now? If yes, since another poster pointed out the free shipping – what about these LED’s: http://www.allthingschristmasandmore.com/Standard-C6-LED-multi-colored-faceted-70-lights-green-wire-22-gauge-4-spacing-23-long-_p_2297.html
Is that too much to spend on those lights (versus a sale price). Will those LED’s dim, etc. fine?
Thanks for any input! - Kasey

[Guest Don Gillespie]

kcny wrote:

This year will be my first show with LOR. I’ve got one controller almost ready to go, an EDM transmitter on the way and my SPT1 wire and vampire plugs. Last year after Christmas I bought like 50 boxes of incandescent mini-lights from WalMart and was going to use just those for my show this year (and buy LED’s next year when they go on sale).
Before I go hanging all my lights – will using just the minis be bright enough for a display? Will they dim, shimmer and fade fine? I am only doing house/window outline and a couple bushes – no mega tree or arches….
Or, should I take what little money I have saved and buy some LED’s now? If yes, since another poster pointed out the free shipping – what about these LED’s: http://www.allthingschristmasandmore.com/Standard-C6-LED-multi-colored-faceted-70-lights-green-wire-22-gauge-4-spacing-23-long-_p_2297.html
Is that too much to spend on those lights (versus a sale price). Will those LED’s dim, etc. fine?
Thanks for any input! - Kasey

Welcome aboard, you will be fine to run what you have, I wouldn't start spending money on lights untill I know what I want my show to look like, then I buy accordingly, the only one who is will notice is you, once lights start to go blinky blinky to the music people will be amazed and not really notice what kind of lights you have just my own opinion

[kcny]

"just my own opinion" -- And your opinion and others on the board are valued to us newcomers. Thanks Don!

[-klb-]

The default dimming curve is designed for mini lights. So they should be just fine. At one point, we had 130,000 mini lights in the city show. Changing them to LED has nothing to do with how the perform during a show, just how badly they age, and fade towards white. Over 3/4 years, a lot of reds were shades of pink, and many greens were closer to white..

We don't yet have the alternate dimming curves in our V1/V2 CTB 16 PC controllers, so things are not as good as they could be with LED, but the colors are much better.