Most hated equipment

[MircleWorker]

Four years ago the school I work for opened a $16 million theatre, "State of the art." The steel prices shot up so they had to do a little cutting of the budget. A great place to work, awesome but, not a lot of stuff inside.

Lighting system: I got what I call the Anti-Christ of lighting, ColorTran. Up until last year I had to reset the Architectural system everyday, just to get that to work. I've had the tech guys out almost every few months fixing something. The only time I didn't have a problem with that when I unplugged the system. Light board: Colortran Innovator 600, Freezes and the display burns out. Lately the Sub masters are ramping up 5% and falling. Dimmers: Colortran I series. These little babies burn out. I've replace about a dozen of them and still counting. My system ghost really bad. the only way to get rid of the ghosting is to bring lights up to 50% and out on a 0 count cue. any fades will result in ghosting fixtures. Huge latency issues from board to the dimmers. Zero count cues are .75 to 1 second. House lights do this real nice "stair step effect." all Profiles have been checked.

Sorry for the rant. I'm just angry. Thats just the lighting system not to mention C.R.S. rigging, Strand SL cool-beams (the least of my problems) or soft, gorgeous, pine floors.

 

[Techy101]

Generally I am pretty content with any gear that just works. I've gotten to work on everything from the GrandMA Full-size with MAC 2k's, DigiCo D5 Live, Yamaha PM1D, Midas Heritage 3000, Midas XL3, all the way down to dirt old Peavey mixers, Mackie CFX-12, and whatnot.

With a previous company, we needed lights, but couldn't afford them. I went to a place that dealt in Disney Surplus gear, and got old Strand Century LekoLites for $14 each. They all needed to be totally reconditioned, shudder assemblies were rusted in place, and took a hammer, steel brush, etc... to get back working again. But they worked, and because of that, they were ok in my book.

I should preface this with the statement, that I do like digital consoles. They take some work to get used to, but as with everything, signal flow is the key to understanding. I actually liked the DigoCo D5 Live more than any analog console I've ever used.

I only have one hated piece of gear right now, it's a Roland VM-7200/VMC-7200. I don't know what was going through their minds when they were designing it, but they must have been drunk. It seems like they were trying to copy the Yamaha DM2000, but it didn't work out like that. For live applications, it's almost worthless. Firstly, to power on, (depending on the sequence of the processor and the console) takes anywhere from 3-6 minutes. Once it's on, if you're using it and want to get to the EQ for a channel, you (depending on the previous menu you were in, and there's about a 3/4 second pause between hitting the button, and it letting you do the next thing) "CH EDIT", "PG Down", PG Down", "PG Down", "PG Down", (and if you want to get to the low end) "down", "down", "down", "down". I timed it once, and with the "load time" of the menu's it takes just over 6 seconds to get into your low end parametric.

Don't get me wrong, it's a very powerful piece of gear. It has lots of built in functionality, just a worthless user interface. Because of how the menu's work, you have no good way to access anything quickly. You have basically the same thing if you want to access your "Flex Bus" which works as either an AUX or a Matrix, depending on how you have it set up. If you decide to try to adjust your gain on a channel while it's hot, you're in for a surprise. When you adjust gains, that channel cuts out for about half a second, then comes back on at the new gain.

I'm not sure who chose to purchase this, but I've been tempted to put it in the corner a few times, and bring in a little Mackie to replace it. Easy access to your channel strip is a must IMHO for live mixing.

This console would be a good choice for an environment (like a simple church) that stayed the same day after day after day. Have everything set once, locked out, and someone just there to fader sit. But for a theatre, it is just to complex, counter-intuitive, and the biggest fault, slow. Like I said before, it's not a total hunk of junk. It's quite powerful, and has some really neat features. But like a car, it doesn't matter how many toys you have inside, if the gas pedal doesn't work, it's pointless.

 

[len]

Yeah, how exactly are your StudioSpots giving you trouble in mounting?

It's not a valid beef, I know, but they just piss me off. I am familiar with the swap pan/tilt, and all that. I just felt like complaining. And I was less than complete in my post. Sometimes, I have to take a truss and run a pipe perpendicular to that and hang the fixture off that. With most other lights, you have the flexibility of mounting either direction. Because of where the mounting holes are in HES products it's difficult if not impossible to do that. Same thing with the Studio Commands (an excellent product). With Martin, CP, etc., you have a bracket that allows the fixture to be put into either orientation.

 

[soundop]

the mackie 24.2 sound mixer at my middle school that thing sucked so much, THEY HAD TO CALL ME BACK TO WORK IT! thats how horrible it is, then thats followed by any and all strand lightinging light boards.

 

[saxman0317]

hmmm...old lighting board at school. This was pre me era, but i have used it once in a bind..yes nez, i used it once... "Sparky" is the old lighting board...which would give you alittle jolt every now and then to say it loved you. That and the sound board we use for our portable system. The thing doesnt know in from out, literally. Once during and assemble it decided taht outputs would become inputs

 

[avkid]

the mackie 24.2 sound mixer at my middle school

I don't believe such a thing was ever made.

 

[soundlight]

I think that you would be referring to an early 24.4.

 

[DarSax]

Most hated? That's a toughie. I'd say my Electro-Controls (Bought by Strand, 1984) patch bay, installed in 1980. It has the wonderful pull-out-and-assign system, complete with broken sliders and nonexistant numbers (58 and 59. Whereyougo?). Makes a funny "humming" noise, with the occasional "pop." That is, until you get too close, at which point it makes a much louder "pop" accompanied by an "ow."

But then I'd have to say my school's electrical system, comprised of plugs numbered 1-120, but with most plugs repeated several times at (completely) random intervals, so as to...I don't really know, make specials just that much harder to create? Also installed 1980.

But then I'd have to complain about our dimmers. The ****ed room has been locked so I don't know the specs, but I'll give you a hint: 1980. And there's 32 of them (Just kidding. Only 31 work) for a 1800-seat auditorium. Coupled with the repeating (and occasionally broken) plugs of doom, it makes for a lighting designer's dream.

But if I complained about that, I'd have to complain about my Strand MX-24 board, with its high-tech 96-programmable scenes and 7 broken/messed up sliders (contact cleaner has simply ceased working. What's fun is when we hook up a monitor, and we see the level for slider 1 jumping from 2-71-FL-9-29-32 without us touching it).

But then I'd have to say my lights, Electro-Controls (remember, defunct 1984) Parallelispheres, Fresnells, and Scoops. Add in some lights I don't even know (appear to be E-C, but they have a grand total of 0 markings on them) and a couple Altman-Somethingorother-Zooms (I'm too lazy to look up exactly which ones they are, god knows I wouldn't be able to find them anywhere else) bought at about the same time as everything else. All formerly stage pin, converted with cheap hardware-store edison plugs. Oh! My mistake, these take the cake. Wires are 100% filled with fiberglass. Don't you love that "itching" feeling all over your arms in the morning?

Eurk.

 

[autophage]

Broken or crappy things, I can fix or cannibalize. The school usually looks the other way when the lighting fairy comes to visit with his magical soldering wand.

What bugs me are really fancy things that we can't properly control. An ETC Express board just isn't the best way to work with Technobeams.

 

[TimeWarpedSR]

Oh boy do i know about hated equipment. I'm the head light tech, and we have to work with the stuff that the school.."provided" (we get no funding from them). We have had to resort to what our crew refers to as "ghetto rigging". That means making safety cables out of old wiring removed from the old light board...

 

[Dustincoc]

Our Multicables. Salvaged from another theatre and have plenty of exposed bare wires. I've seen them spark and was just yesterday shocked by one that wasn't even showing any bare copper.