FYI our current board is this:
Elara (Sorry that's not the manufacturer's website, but it's discontinued, and that page contains a picture, basic feature list, and the manual anyway.) It's a fairly old 12/24 two preset almost-but-not-quite-memory board - it does scene presets and sequences, but nothing more like a cue stack or anything.
Thanks icewolf08, a plain keypad would probably be a much more sensible idea for most of our purposes, however the reason for wanting to do the kludgy faders is exactly what you said, allthingstheatre - although design itself isn't my/varnis' primary responsibility, we don't have a professional designer and there *will* be "a bit more blue, a bit less orange, ok" changes during rehearsals etc, especially since we have some video-projected backdrops.
I think the only rational option at this point is to rig together a keypad using a cheap external numpad, and then get the Behringer... we'll have to look into some fundraising.
Thanks again all
- ojno
EDIT: We have found someone who has a Zero88 Fat Frog that we can borrow for the couple of weeks necessary for our show, so that makes a great backup option for us. I think we'll still develop the system we described, though, looking to the future; but at least now it doesn't have to be ready any time soon at all.