The event services company ON Services – headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia – has purchased 100 x Robe WTF! - IP rated wash twist flash - LED strobe-wash-blinder fixtures, 88 of which are featured on country music legend George Strait’s 2026 run of shows, with lighting designed by Stacey & Skylar LaBarbera.
The LaBarberas – Stacey and his oldest son Skylar, who has his own production design company and is the tour’s co-designer and lighting / media programmer on the road – specifically spec’d 88 of these fixtures as they wanted a new IP Rated luminaire that literally washed, twisted and flashed, explained ON Services’ senior Account executive for touring & national lighting, Donny LoDico … “so we purchased them!”
Donny added that the WTF!s – 100 was a nice round number – are ideal for general rental stock and for lighting the many festivals, tours, exhibitions and corporates that ON Services supplies. Some have already been used on other gigs, including rockers Def Leppard.
Donny, who still engages in some lighting design work himself, was looking at several strobe products with a large quantity investment in mind. “For me, the WTF! is a proper multifunctional product and a luminaire that ticked numerous boxes for us and our clients,” he affirmed.
As an LD, he loves the fact that it spins 360 degrees on both horizontal and vertical axes, “together with the zoom and the ability to zone it into different sections of light, and of course the sheer firepower in terms of lumens and output. We needed a fixture that was most importantly IP rated for our outdoor venues, and needed to be very bright to cover the audience with the ability for some eye candy effects.”
With over 1500 Robe moving lights in stock at ON Services, including iFORTES, iFORTE LTXs, Spiiders, ESPRITES, Spikies, Tetra2s and LEDBeam 350s, he knew already that WTF! would be a reliable, robust, and well-engineered product.
As an operation already committed to Robe as a key house brand, it made sense to invest further in the same manufacturer, and the fixtures will be moved between ON Services’ six branches.
Stacey and Skylar LaBarbera are equally enthusiastic.
Over many years of working with Robe, Stacey thinks “they make innovative, quality and reliable fixtures,” and he is on a constant quest to discover something different for each design they create to help make it a standout creation.
They believe that WTF!s are “PERFECT for the profile of the tour and the size of the stadium shows that George Strait is playing today.”
Skylar agrees: “Playing stadiums, you need intensity, and the WTF! is really impressive, especially when in colors and as a strobe that also pans, tilts and zooms! It allows us to perfectly focus the fixtures based on the size of the venue we are at that week, and the zoom sections are super convenient and allow for some cool looks …it really does it all for an audience color strobe! And you STILL have the ‘CTO Mole’ strip in the middle for additional functionality, which we use almost every song to light up the crowd for George.”
On the George Strait tour, they are using 40 x WTF!s on 8 trusses positioned above and below the four onstage video walls for audience wash – the show is staged in-the-round. On top of that, the four corners of the rig each have 12 WTF!s rigged in a grid-like pod configuration which are utilized for eye candy effects and to also wash the audience.
These are run in full pixel mode so they can create twinkling, sparkling, kinetic eye candy and other effects. “I took a lot of time to program these and get them just right, and in full channel mode, the versatility was endless,” Skylar says.
The LaBarberas initially saw WTF! demonstrated a while back and decided to use them at the next opportunity.
Donny also supplied a couple so they could start programming and pre-vizzing the tour. “It’s so incredibly bright that you can’t even look at it whilst programming,” notes Skylar, quipping, “anything over 5% and I have to wear sunnies!”
Stacey likes the fact that WTF! is a fundamentally simple luminaire in concept of being a wash, a square and a pixel surface, but with the added scope of continuous pan and tilt, focus and in / out zoom; then there’s the quality range of whites and other colors plus the warm tungsten ‘Mole’ temperature and tungsten emulation of the center pixels.
Skylar says that the IP rating offers a plethora of possibilities for lighting outdoor events, festivals, and large stadiums where you need to control the environment more than a conventional molefay or standard color blinder. “You can focus these from the console and effortlessly fill every dark hole in the venue with light.”
“It is an amazing light – insanely bright and really unique!”
Stacey underlines the great relationship they enjoy with Donny and the ON Services team who always keep on top of the latest tech and developments. They know this was a big investment that had to work for everyone.
Stacey has worked with George Strait for over 37 years – showing remarkable client loyalty and how Stacey’s designs have moved with the times.
Speaking with this fund of experience and knowledge as a lighting professional, he explains that he’s “seen many different aspects of lighting and lighting products evolve and I am always looking for something that is different that stands out from the rest. Josef (Valchar, Robe CEO) and the team are consistently developing cutting-edge ideas and tech that help all of us in the industry push the creativity and originality of our art.”
Donny further highlights the “excellent” relationship and outstanding support that ON Services receives from the Robe North American team, which supplied the fixtures.
ABOUT ON SERVICES
ON Services is a national event services company with more than 40 years of experience delivering high-impact brand experiences for corporate meetings, conferences, trade shows, and live entertainment. A unified creative direction, spanning brand, design, and storytelling, serves as the connective tissue across all that ON Services does, ensuring a consistent standard of artistry from concept through execution. Offering solutions that span immersive LED video walls, custom scenic design, interactive technology, and live streaming, ON Services operates through three specialized teams, ON Site, ON Events, and ON Tour, unified by one mission: to create experiences that move audiences. With strategically located teams across the United States, ON Services combines local expertise with national reach to guide clients from vision to execution. For more information, visit onservices.com.
Photos: George Strait show photos are by Donny LoDico. Unboxing / warehouse shots are courtesy On Services.