08.04.2015 | Elation Lights George Thorogood “Badder Than Ever” Tour

Elation is proud to again be lighting American blues rock musician George Thorogood and his legendary Delaware Destroyers band, who continue to surprise after four decades. George Thorogood found chart success in the ‘80s and continues to tour extensively after 40 years. Out on a “Badder Than Ever” spring tour through April, lighting designer William Bennyhoff needed a rig that could complement Thorogood’s high-energy boogie-blues style and found it in Elation Platinum Beam 5R Pro, Rayzor Q7 and Cuepix Blinder WW2 fixtures.

“Five years ago we were looking to have an ACL look for our show without having to carry ACL bars,” explains Bennyhoff, who works for Toucan Productions (www.toucanproductions.net) of Oklahoma City, provider of lighting, truss and control for the tour. “We looked at all the options out there, which wasn't many, and decided to use the original Platinum Beam 5R.” Designers have been turning to the Platinum Beam 5R for touring productions for years, its narrow, long throw 2.5 degree beam producing an ideal ACL-type beam effect.

Last year was George Thorogood and the Destroyers’ 40th Anniversary, which required a bigger setup, so Bennyhoff added Rayzor Q7's and Cuepix Blinders to the rig. “We chose those fixtures because of the light output to weight ratio,” he says. “They are super bright and light. This year we added eNode4's to the rig as well so that we could save on cabling to the ‘light pods’ we have.”  The eNode 4 is Elation’s compact 4-universe Ethernet to DMX interface ideal for hanging in truss or remote areas of installations.
"Each light pod has 3 universes in them so we added an eNode4 so the only cables we need to connect to them are one Socapex and a CAT5 cable."

Bennyhoff’s challenge was to create big looks to match the powerhouse rock but without taking the main focus away from the artist. To do that he placed 6 Platinum Beam 5Rs on 5’ sticks of truss in a set cart and spaced an additional 12 Platinum Beam 5Rs around the stage deck. In the four overhead light pods he placed 12 compact Rayzor Q7s for color washes and beam looks, along with 12 Cuepix Blinder WW2s for punches of bright white light.

“I have had the Platinum Beams out on my rig for five years and almost 400 shows now and have had very few issues with them. Reliability and performance was most important with all the fixtures,” Bennyhoff concludes.

Elation Equipment:
18 x Platinum Beam 5R Pro
12 x Rayzor Q7
16 x Cuepix Blinder WW
24 x eNode 4
1 x eNode 8

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