S4 Revolution revisited

Ok, so I am bumping an old thread. I have been working with S4 Revs. for my current production, and have been having issues with some of them. The biggest problem we had was oneforgetting where home position was. also, i occaisionally get one or two the develop a case of parkinsons disease from time to time. The staff (I'm a contractor for this show)has had to deal with this for some time, one guy told me that it is a problem with one of the drive belts, but to replace it means re-cueing that fixture into the whole show.
I wonder if some of the problems have to do with the board though, they have a Congo.
I love how the things are near silent though. heck, the color scrollers are the loudest part of the unit. The lack of CMY really bugs me because the varilites at my high school did.
One other little oddity of the Revs. is that they have strange habits for manual shutdown. I have one i have to turn on and off every night that since it is not on the main independant that all the other DMX devices are on. When I shut it down, I have to turn it off, swivel it around, pull out the gobo unit and spin the changer, and finally re-insert the gobo unit. Don't ask me why it likes this, but it gets cranky if I don't.

WOW! If that isn't an ad for why you shouldn't buy one of these I don't know what is going to convince you. That's just crazy. And best of all, the cost as much as a product from Vari-lite or Martin... who don't have weird little tweaks like that.
 
I'm pretty sure that ELATION is doing better than that with their new fixtures!!
 
I'm pretty sure that ELATION is doing better than that with their new fixtures!!

Guys, we've had this discussion already

The Elation Powerspot 700 is an arc unit with no shutters.

The VariLite VL1000 and ETC S4 Revo are incandescent units w/ shutters.

The VL1000 and Revo are 2 completely different beasts, from all the assorted trash and flash arc units and get used for completely different purposes, usually as replacements for a rig full of S4's.

SB
 
You are right Steve. I think the point was that the Rev is over priced and under featured... especially when compared to the VL1000. The point with the Elation coment to me was that they are a new player in the industry and yet appear to be doing a better job of quality control and producing a reasonably priced product. ETC one of the big kids on the block seems to have done a pretty poor job with this product.

True the Elation Powerspot 700 is a completely different animal but throw some CTO in there and it'll work with the rest of your rig. But it'll have a lot more features than a Rev.

For me... After starting this thread long ago, my money's going into Seachangers. For the price of one Rev I can equip 3 or 4 S4's with CMY color mixing. If I need them to move... throw on an I-cue or a Right Arm. In the end, I think it's a much more effective use of money.
 
True the Elation Powerspot 700 is a completely different animal but throw some CTO in there and it'll work with the rest of your rig. .

We had THIS discussion before as well. CTO in front of an arc lamp does not have the same color rendition as an incandescent source. I've tried this and it's not the same. This is why the VL1000 is such a hot item, the lamp matches well with the rest of the S4 rig, even using dichroics.

I'm guessing that the VL1000 is much more in demand due to the fact that (many top) designers have adapted they're eyes and brains to think in terms of what dichroics *look* like and can get reasonable matches to S4's with or w/o scrollers. The Revo is more problematic with it's limitation of a scroller (wasn't there a rumour that the Revo was going to be offered with a CXI mixing scroller ?), especially on big events - Broadway, TV, Industrials, that as it's all a rental anyway, no big deal to spec. a VL.

I have read little as to reliability issues of Revo's, excepting here, and wonder what the story is among the shops.

SB
 
I had the opportunity to use the S4 rev's at a show. The first problem we ran into was that the Hog did not have the personality in the software. And then we had to find the right personality (this gets esp hard when you cannot reach the fixture to see what it is loaded with). We brought in some x-spots and some studio beams to use in a show along with the houses revo's. They revo's only ended up getting used in one or two cues b/c of their accuracy and they way they behaved on the hog. The head LD was asking me why would you mess with a scroller when you have the option of CMY. I think using a scroller is a step back. I think there are some aspects of the revo that need to be addressed.
1. The way the modular system works. Maybe have a option for a fixed number of dmx channels and then you plug in whatever modules and the addresses do not change (such as X-spots and Martin Pal's).
2. The head......... You do sometimes compromise speed for accuracy but the S4 revo does not have a fast head speed for very precise accuracy, so there is some programming and some engineering that needs to be looked at.
3. The scroller system....... Color scrolls burn up and change color throughout the run of a show, its just the nature of using gels. When you have dichro glass you dont have these problems. I think ETC should look into designing a dichro color mixing module.

I know there are some other issues that need to be looked over and addressed but this is a start. The Revo has potential to be a extremely impressive unit, but does need some work.
 
Have the color scrollers actually fallen out and killed people? That's pretty whack if it's true. I love Martin and Vari*Lite far more for intelligents. ETC should stick to convetional, static fixtures.
 
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