to many faders?

[zac850]

I was just looking at ETC's website and their boards and saw that several of them had TONS of submasters, the Insight 3 has 108, and the Express 72/144 has all of those. I was wondering if anyone thought that it was to many subs. My school has an Express 125 and it has 24 subs. For me (and, well, my school does only have 36 dimmers) this is plenty. I can understand how more then 24 subs would be useful, but 108? My thought is that you would spend so much time looking for the sub that you want. They advertise that with all the subs it makes it faster when your doing something on the fly, but I am thinking that it would take to long to look for the sub that you need......

I've never worked any big show with more then 60 lights or so, so if I completely wrong please do tell me, however it just seems like there are to many subs.....

[soundman]

We have an express 72/144 and it only has 24 submasters, then there are 144 faders one for each channel on the top part which is good for setting looks. Most times we never go past sub page three but the advantage of having 108 subs is more for a place where you would want certain looks like a tv studio or a dance club. The advantage is instead of having to go to cue 35 you just have to bring up sub 35 or at least thats how I would do it.

[bdesmond]

In a place with a lot of fixtures, they may be setup with a whole variety of "looks". I have seven to fifteen setup sometimes. You can have differewnt colors on subs, and then premix them on others, and you've got an instant look when someone comes in to do something...

[zac850]

I agree with all of that, but I can't think of more then 30 or 40 subs and looks that you would need. For me I have maybe 10 subs by color, so red and blue and amber and that stuff, and with maybe another 4 or 5 for position on the stage......

I can understand for maybe a large place venue, but most places I think wouldn't need that many subs....

[Radman]

Is it bad to have five times more than enough?

[Radman]

When the faders are in groups of twelve say, it can be pretty easy to map out locations in your head. This look is third row second column #122, etc.

[zac850]

thats true, I guess your right..... my head wouldn't be able to remember all of those, but I guess people do.

and good point, you can never have to many extras.

[Inaki2]

1 cue per submaster, specials for video, allt hose add up to lot of submasters. You'd be amazed at what big shows use in terms of console attributes.

[Radman]

What sucks is when you are stuck with 8 submasters and a crappy chase as the only memory for your board! Like me!

[dj_illusions]

I absolutely love subs! they are fantastic. Specially when working on strands.

I have all my colours in subs, then all my specials, chases then finally i plot down some basic looks like curtain warmers and warm stage washes and cool and whatever else I want. Our desk has something like 60 subs, and I use the groups (pallettes for hog users) to do stuff instantly like if I have specials and everything else up by pressing one button I can make it change looks to a red stage with blue cyc if you want.

You can never have enough subs =)