Pool Lights

[waterbear]

The color wheels on the Jazz lights turn about twice as fast as the ones on the SAM lights. The colors of the color wheel are very vibrant (deep) so they might not give as much illumination except when on white that you would expect (The FX lights are basically the same but they use Halogen bulbs instead of Metal Halide so they are not quite as bright, colors are basicly the same However, Metal Halide is a bluer light source so there are some slight differences...the green and deep blue and are very rich but the magenta is more purplish then compared to the FX lights)...SAM colors are more pastel (and therefore seem to illuminate better) and change more slowly. It depends on what you like. Metal Halide will produce a much brighter light than Halogen but they do not light immediately when you turn them on (sort of like a florescent light) and take a few minutes to reach full brightness. Also, when you turn them off they need to stay off for a few minuted before you try and turn them back on or the will not light. Once you get use to this little quirk of Metal Halide lighting you will have no problems. Because of this quirk they have two switches...one to operate the light itself and one to turn the color wheel on and off and to sync it if you have multiple lights. The Fiberstars FX and the Pentair SAM/SAl lghts just use one switch to control the light/color wheel and sync operations.
Interestingly enough, Pentairs fiber optics illuminator that is used with the SAM/SAL lights is also metal halide and uses the two switch approach but syncs fine with their halogen SAM/SAL lights. Fiberstars makes both a Metal Halide illuminator for use with the Jazz that is two switch and a halogen one for use with the FX that is single switch.