Tinting a light bar?

MAMiller44 said:

You as well as most others have completely missed the point. The point has nothing to do dimming a light bar, my goal is to maximize brightness. My thought of “too much” on the Radiance+ is ONLY about the aesthetic of too much amber backlighting...the Radiance bar itself is actually not that bright compared to RDS.

The point here is that the midnight RDS light is reported to be HALF the brightness of the regular RDS on Rigid’s site. So the point is, could I get the same look of the RDS midnight by tinting an RDS, but get more lumens? Now we’ve learned from @Specialtyperformanceparts that Rigid’s specs on the midnight may simply be wrong. Trying to figure out direct from Rigid what the truth is.

Click to expand...

Just got off the phone with Rigid and their site is correct. The RDS midnight DOES in fact put out about half the lumens as the standard RDS.

MAMiller44 said:

Just got off the phone with Rigid and their site is correct. The RDS midnight DOES in fact put out about half the lumens as the standard RDS.

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That may be the case with the tint if they changed and are accurately measuring it after the lens. I’m going to check the box though when we get our new stock on them though for discrepancy on the box and then I will reach out to our Rep who can move it up the chain and get the real facts straight if there is. I am 90% sure I read the same rating on the boxes at some point.
Unfortunately, I’ve found in my experience that the customer service people that answer the phones at these companies aren’t always “experts” and tend to just read the same specs you read in several places. Not that the one you talked to wasn't. It's just some are hourly general help. Right or wrong, the point is that if there are discrepancies, I am really interested now to find out the facts. I’m glad you brought this up though. Now I’m on a mission. Lol.

Which is right? Only one is... but which is it?

I will circle around when I clarify. Either way, tint will block usable light. It's just science.

MAMiller44 said:

Just got off the phone with Rigid and their site is correct. The RDS midnight DOES in fact put out about half the lumens as the standard RDS.

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So you may just want the standard one...

We do have them in stock.

https://specialtyperformanceparts.c...s-series-pro-light-bar?variant=29468963471404

Alright, so to summarize here...

After doing more research and talking to Rigid, the RDS midnight does in fact have about half the lumens as the standard RDS. This is simply due to the materials used and black having less reflectivity than chrome. The internals and the lens of the standard RDS and midnight are allegedly the same.

Also, some YouTube videos later it appears tinting a standard RDS would yield about the same result as the midnight. Tinting light bars is very much a thing to achieve that look, and if done right I would say looks great. But yea, you lose about half the lumens. If the midnight is the same price and that’s the look you want, just get it from the factory like that if you’re okay with the less output.

I ended up going with a Radiance to see if the amber back lighting grows on me. Mainly because I found a big 4x4 site that had some coupons to bring it down to $800. Couldn’t pass on the price.

MAMiller44 said:

Alright, so to summarize here...

After doing more research and talking to Rigid, the RDS midnight does in fact have about half the lumens as the standard RDS. This is simply due to the materials used and black having less reflectivity than chrome. The internals and the lens of the standard RDS and midnight are allegedly the same.

Also, some YouTube videos later it appears tinting a standard RDS would yield about the same result as the midnight. Tinting light bars is very much a thing to achieve that look, and if done right I would say looks great. But yea, you lose about half the lumens. If the midnight is the same price and that’s the look you want, just get it from the factory like that if you’re okay with the less output.

I ended up going with a Radiance to see if the amber back lighting grows on me. Mainly because I found a big 4x4 site that had some coupons to bring it down to $800. Couldn’t pass on the price.

Click to expand...

Ok,

Guess what. It’s exactly what I said and thought.
We did just get more stock of the 40” midnight RDS light bar.
The discussion and question earlier was what the Lumen rating is compared to the non midnight edition.
Someone had gone from the specs on Rigids site, and called in. They were shown and told that they produced much less than the 63,000 ish lumens of the standard unit.
I from experience did not see that, and Rigids site had previously had the correct specs. However, there site as of late has been riddled with issues. Missing pictures and data, incorrect or mixed specs and information that bleeds over form other light models etc. I haven’t directly asked them about it, but I plan to when
We have a forecast meeting next week most likely.
My guess is that the site crashed at some point a couple months ago and they didn’t have proper backups. It appears they have been trying to rebuild and patch it with
Archived photos and data. Many photos and details are still missing.

Now, here is what’s most interesting. If you look up that model on google and follow the links to various sites, they show the same specs. What most people don’t understand about how most of the sites out there work for retail sites like Amazon, Jegs, etc is that they have a data feed. This is automated so that they don’t need to keep up with thousands of products and price changes, spec changes, and even when they are discontinued... so if it changes on the manufacturers end, then so it pull to the retailers site.
Now, in this case, since it appears Rigid has someone in charge of pulling old data to rebuild the site, they are probably pulling the info from OLD models. About 4 years ago, Rigid replaced all of their lights with the “Pro” series and added an additional digit (3) to the end of their part number. They used to be 5 digits, now they are 6.
As far as what someone answering the phone would relay is terms of specs, would be the same thing you’d see on their site which is incorrect. These positions of people who answer the call ins are not high paid engineers.

That being said, here is a picture of the box of the actual 40” Midnight series light bar and it’s actual specs.