New Lightboard for a High School Theater

[Amogh]

Hi guys,

My school is currently in the process of buying a new light board for our high school theater. As one of the leaders of the theater tech club, I am trying to find a good option that should last for quite a long time. Currently our setup is all conventionals on dimmers but we want to try and implement leds, scrollers and other automated lighting over the next two or three years. I don't have a budget yet from the admin but it should be around 6000$. So the options that I was looking at were the Congo Kid, Etc Element, Hedgehog 4 and the Zero88 FLX. Could you guys tell me what your experiences are with each of these consoles? If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. Also, would you guys recommend something different?

 

[bwbw13]

Hi Amogh,

Before going off and attending college, I worked with an ETC Element for four years at my high school. I would highly recommend this board! It is easy to use, yet it is packed full of features for advanced users. We were able to run LEDs, conventionals, scrollers and motorized lights all at the same time from the board. It was especially great in the high school setting since you can teach someone the basic skills, and teach someone else all the advanced skills.

 

[AlexDonkle]

ETC Elements and Ions are what I've see in most high schools. Hog is typically only used in professional touring as far as I've seen.

Since you're located in Hong Kong, do you know what other nearby high schools and/or local universities with theatre programs are using?

 

[Amogh]

Our Middleschool actually has an element

Hi Amogh,

Before going off and attending college, I worked with an ETC Element for four years at my high school. I would highly recommend this board! It is easy to use, yet it is packed full of features for advanced users. We were able to run LEDs, conventionals, scrollers and motorized lights all at the same time from the board. It was especially great in the high school setting since you can teach someone the basic skills, and teach someone else all the advanced skills.

Our middle school theater actually has an element and I have used that prior to moving up to our high school. While the element does seem to be a reasonable choice for our school, I would also like to get some other options to see what the competition's like. Also, Could you guys tell me the difference between an element and the Congo Kid?

 

[Amogh]

ETC Elements and Ions are what I've see in most high schools. Hog is typically only used in professional touring as far as I've seen.

Since you're located in Hong Kong, do you know what other nearby high schools and/or local universities with theatre programs are using?

I have a couple of theaters outside our own in international schools and they did seem to be using an ion to power their shows. I am planning on contacting the dealers tomorrow to get quotes after I receive the finalized budget from the admin.

 

[Lextech]

You can't go wrong with an Ion and a fader wing. Programming wise it will handle most things, with a fader wing anyone can get lights up when they need to.

 

[Amogh]

You can't go wrong with an Ion and a fader wing. Programming wise it will handle most things, with a fader wing anyone can get lights up when they need to.

Cool, that's a good idea. What's the big difference between an Ion and a Congo Kid because I believe that the Congo kid is a bit cheaper but should still have a similar layout excluding the faders.

 

[Lextech]

Having worked in academic theatre from middle schools to university, I have found that the ETC Eos programming language is very easy to teach. Any time a school asks for an opinion, I will spec an Ion with a wing as the minimum. Congo is a board I have not used so I cannot comment on that, but I know it is a different system. Get a demo of both and see which you like better.

 

[CraigV]

I have never worked with Congo, but my understanding of it is that it is more of a visual-based system.

ETC has had decades of perfecting the command-line based lighting control boards. If you have moving lights, I recommend an Ion with a fader wing. If you don't have them and don't intend to get them, I say go with the Element. With v2.3, control over LED color is easier than ever. I actually prefer using the new color tools instead of encoder wheels for hue and saturation.

If admin get really stingy on the budget, I would look into ETC Nomad with a programming wing, a playback wing, and a fader wing. The cool thing about Nomad is that you can get what you need in terms of DMX output (If you only need 256 address outputs, 512, 1024, etc.) So basically you're not paying for addresses that will never be used.

 

[CraigV]

Before you even really request a demo, you can download the different offline software and manuals. You obviously won't get any output, but you can at least play around with cue structuring, submaster assigning, and get a general feel for how it works.

 

[Amogh]

Before you even really request a demo, you can download the different offline software and manuals. You obviously won't get any output, but you can at least play around with cue structuring, submaster assigning, and get a general feel for how it works.

Apparently, the admin has changed their plans and want to revamp the whole theater over the next few years. Therefore, I have a feeling that my budget for the light board is probably going to be increased as previously, we believed that our theater was going to be rebuilt in a different. Therefore, I will take the advice and get my budget asap.　Thanks　ｆｏｒ　ａｌｌ　ｔｈｅ　ｈｅｌｐ！