90 SMG LED Strobes Pulse Life into Mayday Techno Marathon

More than 25,000 clubbers attending the 15-hour Mayday techno party at Dortmund's Westfalenhalle were immersed in a lightning fast color-change environment, created by no fewer than 90 of SGM's new X-5 and XC-5 LED strobes. The 50 white lights and 40 RGB strobes, specified by lighting designer Thomas Gerdon and supplied by production company, schoko pro, were in constant action throughout the marathon.

Gerden had first used these revolutionary strobes at a club event in Nuremburg. Two months later, at Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt, he was able to take a closer look and decided to use them for Mayday.

Although the festival is staged annually by major rave promoters I-Motion GmbH it was the first time Gerdon had been asked to design the lighting. He was brought in after working on another I-Motion event - the Nature One Festival, which is the largest rave festival in Germany.

"I found the idea of working with LED-based strobes very exciting," he said. "The advantages of LEDs are obvious but I liked the fact that the strobes could be addressed with absolute precision, leaving the XC-5's available for extremely fast color changes. This way of achieving this effect was not possible until now."

He describes the strobes as "extremely bright, fast, comfortable, and cool -- easy to use and smart to program."

Joe Wippel, production manager of schoko pro (and technical director of Mayday) could see other advantages. "Of particular benefit is the user-friendly handling, and on a production of this magnitude speed of rigging was essential. On top of that, there were no failures, which speaks volumes for the performance of the strobes."

Since much of the lighting was suspended from a moving overhead truss the compact size and low weight mass were of real benefit, while power consumption was minimized; thus schoko pro needed to provide less cable and the load was vastly reduced.

The XC-5's were used both on the big central cylinder above the dancers, at the stage on circular trusses and the towers behind the DJ, while the X-5's were placed on the finger trusses surrounding the cylinder and at the outer truss elements. This helped to build the atmosphere for a constant stream of live acts and DJ's, including Westbam (the driving force behind Mayday), Sven Väth, Chris Liebing, Paul van Dyk, and Carl Cox.

Gerdon's verdict on the SGM LED strobes is that they are vast improvement on conventional strobes. "They consume much less power yet provide nearly the same output as a xenon 3000 strobe."

He continued: "The XC-5 provides the designer with so many new options because a conventional xenon strobe with scroller is nowhere near as fast with color changing. Before the XC-5 came along, color chases have just not been possible." He also highlights the vast palette, "with all colors registering much brighter than their xenon equivalents."

Gerdon now has an appetite for using SGM's revolutionary strobes including an anniversary show in Algeria and the next Nature One open air dance floor. "I can see advantages in the LED strobes and am fascinated by what might be achieved given the many creative options -- both in terms of the speed of color change and fast response to other commands."