Years ago, when LED moving message displays were all the rage, every time I made a mixing mistake my roadie Matt used to have a lot of fun at my expense by displaying a message along the lines of “DJ required, apply within, no experience necessary”. Thankfully, these days my mixing has improved and Matt no longer works with me! At the time, these message displays were quite useful as a novel form of advertising; so, when the box containing Kam’s new TextBeam 300 laser landed at Mole towers, I was quite interested in what it could do.

Of course, Kam have been providing DJs with kit for many years. My first dual CD player was a Kam KCD-850 way back in the 90s. A good few years later I remember Kam launching into the DJ lighting market, but wasn’t impressed with the early effects which seemed a bit dull. However, in recent years, this has improved massively.

Kam has created a bit of a niche for itself by offering affordable and innovative laser effects for DJs, and their latest offering certainly fits into this category. The Kam TextBeam 300 is a multi-colour RGB laser projector that provides custom text display as well as the usual animations and mid-air effects. I first saw this little beastie in action when Clive from CRS1 brought one along to a SEDA ShowNight a few months back, and it created a fair bit of interest. Open the box, and you will find the laser unit with its bracket and instructions, a mini QWERTY keyboard, an infrared remote control, the safety key and plug, a mains lead, and an extension lead for the keyboard so that you can still use it when the laser head is mounted out of reach.

Now let’s take a look at the specs. This class 3B laser actually contains three separate laser diodes: a red 150 mW laser, a green 50 mW laser, and a blue 100mW laser. These three laser beams can be combined to provide a variety of vibrant bright colours, including red, green, deep blue, light blue, pink, yellow, purple and white. The rear panel has the usual safety features of a key switch and a remote kill switch socket, as well as a safety-wire mounting point. Power is supplied via an IEC connector, and there is a mains switch on the back. 3-pin DMX input/output sockets are also supplied, as is a PS/2 keyboard socket to connect the QWERTY keyboard. The whole laser unit can be mounted using the supplied adjustable bracket, and it is also provided with 4 rubber feet so that alternatively it can be placed directly onto a flat surface. Also, on the back panel is an LED display and four buttons to allow selection between the various different modes and functions, as well as DMX addressing.

There are a number of built-in automatic modes that offer a variety of shapes, colours and animations, all of which can be paused, and set in different colours, or a single colour, of your choice. These pre-programmed patterns can be set to react to sound or just run automatically, and you can also alter the zoom level, so you can project onto a wall at some distance quite easily. The themed programs are fantastic; on offer are the following: New Year, Christmas, Love (which is ideal for Valentine’s Day and for weddings), Birthday, Halloween and Music, as well as a general party program. Each features a mixture of themed words, graphics and animations.