What is your favorite button on any lighting console?

[xander]

Love the microvision. It was my first board as well. 12 dimmers and a microvision. Perfect for a nice little light lab (too bad this was the actual theater not a light lab). :-D Mine was the original microvision I think. Only one fader pair, 6 subs, keypad, and like 4 display/setup buttons?

Anyway, on topic, one good button (actually a softkey) is "thru on" on the Strand 300/500 series desks. Extremely useful. "Cut" on Strands is also nice. Don't have to slide the faders down/up like on an ETC Express(ion).

-Tim

[SteveB]

Apologies for dragging this out of the archives, but I thought I should share and maybe there's a lesson to be found.

I cued a show for the first time on my Ion, which wasn't fun, only due to the malfunctioning interface between the chair and the console, as I discovered that the Undo feature is by far the best feature I have found on any console I've used to date.

I'm getting rid of un-used channels/subs never focused (and being anally retentive - I HAD to clean up, even though it's one run of a 1 hr. show) and I'm typing " Delete Subs 10-15" and missing the Sub button, so now the console thinks I'm deleting cues and (as per the malfunction mentioned above) I press Enter the 2nd time on the "Please Confirm" query.

Oops. Well more like a BIG OOPS, as I look up to make sure the SM isn't around.

There were only 14 cues in the show, this being a one hr. kids show of Peter and the Wolf, so suddenly the show was shorter, or never coming out of Cue 9, which was a Blackout.

Thru some quickly forming tears, I'm chanting "There's an Undo button around here somewhere, there's an Undo button somwhere...." and sure enough.

The button needs a sub label called "SYA" as a variation of CYA.

I also learned that my other favorite function (not really a button) is programing in Cue Only, not Track. Best done this way when the SM sets all the Preset cues all at the same time as "1, 10 & 14", then the bright cues as 2, 5, 13, etc.... then a couple of pull down cues, then some blackouts, etc... and Track is now my major issue and after running thru the cues (the SM was VERY patient with me) and finding mush, I get to do most of it all again, this time in Cue Only.

Lessons learned.

Steve Bailey
Brooklyn College

[Esoteric]

The OOPS button on my MAs.

Mike