Wow I'm late to this party and there's so much to comment on. There's a lot of poor advice here based on a LOT of speculation. When you haven't answered basic questions about what your needs are.
I couldn't disagree more. If you are going to upgrade you need to upgrade for the future. The whole purpose of
Element is to be a
console for small theaters, churches, and schools. It's perfect for learning on. A jester, although a fine board for many situations, is ancient technology. He's looking to buy an I-pod and you just told him, this Cassette
deck will handle all your needs. True it might, but it's a bad idea spending money on old technology.
Element is brand new. As far as I know, there is not a single person in the world who has purchased one and received it yet. They will begin shipping soon, but I believe so far there are only demo prototypes out there... and not many people have seen them yet. So there will be no used ones available. There is a lot of hype in this thread about a
console most of the posters have not seen or touched.
Second, if you are buying for a public school, you may find that you are not allowed to
purchase used equipment. Check with your purchasing department to find out the rules on purchasing. It may not be as easy as I want this light board buy it. You may have to deal with bids and specifications... which get's really tricky.
The
Express(
ion) software is dead.
ETC has not made a board with that software in about a year. The new consoles:
EOS,
Ion, and
Element are FAR superior in what they can do.
Express(
ion) software was good and it's out there on a lot of machines, but trust me, if you can afford it you don't want to choose it over the new generation of consoles. They are far more powerful and much easier to use. You'll just have to learn a few new tricks
There is a lot of information you never gave us which we can't make a responsible recommendation without.
#1 What
console do you currently have? I have found that often there are students out there who think their equipment sucks but they are wrong. It's good equipment that just needs a little repair and they need training.
#2 How many dimmers do you have in your theater?
#3 You mention some DJ lights (a waste of money on something that will look terrible with
stage lights by the way). Do you think there will ever be money to buy things like
gobo rotators, color scrollers, seachangers, moving head lights, or
LED lights?
#4 What is your
fixture inventory like? You briefly mentioned this, how many lights do you use in a typical show? Have you read
my philosophy on purchasing new equipment? From what I've read it sounds like you have a serious need for more
stage lights. A new light board won't make your same old lights look better. It may be that your money would be far better spent by investing in more lights... but I can't say that for sure until you tell us more about your inventory. How many and what kind of lights do you have?
#5 Where are you in this great big world? We can make a recommendation of what dealers to contact to get demos if we know where you are.
FINALLY, You've heard a LOT of propaganda in this thread about a
console that very few people have seen and touched. Again they haven't started shipping
Element to customers yet.
ETC is an outstanding company with a great product
line, and I'm sure
Element will be great. However it would be irresponsible to not advise you to check out all your options and
decide for yourself which console meets your needs. As Icewolf said in
this post, the most useful post in this thread by the way, you need to check out all the options. If you are focused on getting LOT's of
submaster handles on your board then a
Strand Presett Palette might be the best fit for you. I own the
Classic Palette and have never run out of submasters with it's 32 handles... but if I do there are many pages waiting for more. Not to insult your skills but you should consider letting go of your
submaster crutch and learning to unleash your
console's real
power and program cues in that bad boy. In that case you might be able to get away with something as lightweight as the
Strand Basic Palette. All the
Strand consoles run the same software be it the simple Basic
Palette or a $40,000
Light Palette... but all this is speculation until you answer my questions above. I would advise you to try to
purchase Strand or
ETC if the budget allows. If not, there there are excellent options (such as the Jester), or products from
EDI, Leprecaun, NSI/
Leviton, and many others. But again, we need to know more about your needs.
You don't want an
EOS they run around $40,000 and are designed for Broadway shows. You probably don't want a used Obsession II either. They were a great
console but again are complicated and designed for BIG Broadway sorts of shows.
Not to insult our eager young members like Corbett and Nick, but the working pros who have used all this gear, stopped giving you advice on
page two of this thread. I think there are only 1 or 2 people (perhaps none) who have posted in this thread who may have actually seen an
Element. Unless you were at the
USITT convention, it's been really hard to see one so far.
So let's take a breath and backup a
bit and answer the questions above so we can determine what you need before we tell you what to buy.
