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.