Hog 500 would also be good, can be had cheaper then a Hog 1000. You get 8 playback masters instead of 16, 512 channels instead of 1024, and no
palette buttons for easy access. Despite that, its a much smaller
foot print then a Hog 1000, which can be a blessing.
As far as the Magic 260, it has a few issues with it. First being that the
Fade and Speed faders aren't the same time wise. Halfway up on
Fade is 15s and Speed is 15m, so it can be very annoying trying to set custom
fade and delay times for movers in sync on the fly. Patching is also very annoying on it, because it tries to auto patch everything, even when auto patch is off. Third, it only has 4 aux buttons for conventionals which are on or off. You can program them into scenes or shows, but you can only run a show or a scene at a time, so that can be annoying. I find its just easier to use a small
console for conventionals only and the Magic for movers. Forth, to save anything, you have to get
Elation's USB stick, a generic one won't work. Fifth, I have found that personalities in the board, if the movement is 16bit, the
console doesn't like it, it moves the fixtures on its own. You have to just use a generic
channel fixture to fix it, which means no joystick or labels on the
screen for the channels. Lastly, naming on it is a very time consuming process, and if you try to record elsewhere, you must rename, names don't copy.
If you can deal with the above, its a great little
console. I have used it on a number of occasions with great success. 12 pages of shows and 48 pages of scenes with 24 on each
page is great to have at your finger tips. Its great for
LED only shows, because you can bouncing between scenes using the
fade time for great transitions. Also, be aware the
DMX out on the back is 3 pin, not 5 pin and it deals with values 0-255 instead of percents.
