Lighting Talk - bootleg astera

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bootleg astera

Printed From: Speakerplans.com
Category: Other Chat
Forum Name: Lighting Talk
Forum Description: All your lampy, laser and 'other' special FX needs....
URL: https://forum.speakerplans.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=107603
Printed Date: 26 March 2026 at 8:34pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: bootleg astera

Posted By: teeth
Subject: bootleg astera
Date Posted: 08 January 2023 at 2:33pm

considering getting some tbh, aliexpress has them for £250 a pop.

i'm intrigued, they are just leds and housing. could be some good $ to be made on hires...

Replies:

Posted By: csg
Date Posted: 08 January 2023 at 5:18pm

They are probably quite usable, most led from china is

However…..

People hiring usually want the real thing

Any serious faults and its usually skip time, environmental carcrash

Any dangerous faults ( I’ve witnessed Chinese beam 200’s in flames and I’ve serviced similar units with curious errors like the lamp blower fitted and working correctly bolted against a solid piece of metal, so it couldn’t move any air….) will be your liability if you can be proven to be using equipment without the correct safety approvals such as TUV/CE/BS

You certainly can get good kit from China, ive done it, but i have to do extensive QC, and lots of involved checking on any safety approvals that i am presented with, and most are false, and ive only purchased Chinese equipment when it has been for wet hire use, for dry hires it simply doesn’t make sense

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“The fact is this is about identifying what we do best and finding more ways of doing less of it better”

Posted By: teeth
Date Posted: 08 January 2023 at 8:38pm

yeah, all good points csg.

i'm only considering it as the chinese clone amps have all been fantastic from what i've seen.

wondering if they are basically identical to the real thing.

hard to tell though... and like you say, could be a gamble

Posted By: teeth
Date Posted: 08 January 2023 at 8:38pm

i wonder if punters could tell they are the real thing or not though ;)

Posted By: csg
Date Posted: 08 January 2023 at 9:57pm

If they are asking you for Astera, they want Astera, not a copy.

For your use, its a completely different question

The way Chinese manufacture is arranged there are thousands of small assemblers making product from parts made by larger manufacturers. The difference between QC standards and the give a f**k quotient varies dramatically and basically its a complete crap shoot without prior knowledge.

Im not sure I would agree that all Chinese clone amps have been fantastic. Quite the opposite infact i think

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“The fact is this is about identifying what we do best and finding more ways of doing less of it better”

Posted By: monkeypuzzle
Date Posted: 08 January 2023 at 10:09pm

The most important difference I’ve found with generic Chinese is build quality. An amp in a rack should last reasonable well but a light with a poorly built yoke or other parts deteriorate pretty quickly as they are moved from gig to gig and just aren’t worth repairing. A company in know have over 500 high power ip65 RGBW LED floods in stock and whilst they are great (I bought 8 from them) their pile of broken ones is rapidly growing and the faults are numerous from colours flickering, dead cells, dead units dead displays. The list is as long as there are components in the units. At 250 dollars a unit plus what ever you can get a shipping container for at the time I doubt many will be fixed. Branded stuff would just have a few common problems that affect units as they age that are widely recognised and solutions are usually found to deal with them.

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