Unison vs. Paradigm: Lifetime of a Unison System?

[Chris Chapman]

I was helping a friend get a new facility up and running and was playing with their Paradigm controllers for architectural/rehearsal lighting and something occurred to me.

In my space we are running the OLD Unison System that is a legacy system from ETC now. If my Controller goes down, or there are other issues with it, what are my repair options? Replacing with a full up Paradigm is... problematic due to costs and that our system is a Net1 System too.

Anyone else out there limping along with original Unison? Is there really a viable upgrade path?

 

[derekleffew]

We have many, many original Unison installations approaching twenty years old here in Las Vegas, with no plans to change or upgrade. Not exactly "limping along"; more "if it ain't broke..." If/when it do break, I'm confident ETC will still be around to repair, which will always be less expensive than replace.
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[Chris Chapman]

I say limping along because of multiple programming qwerks that we run into on our system. (Not being able to save new looks, touchscreens that are iffy, time & date not wanting to save updates, etc.)

 

[derekleffew]

And you've offered/allowed ETC the opportunity to address your issues? Do they say it's time to replace, that they can longer support you? On one hand, "Never ask a barber whether or not you need a haircut." On the other, it's very rare (but not unfathomable) that ETC will say, "We can no longer support one of our products."

Do you have a preferred friendly local service vendor? If not, Greenville is just across the pond from Middleton, is it not? It may be closer for AbbyT to drive up from Cincinnati, however.

EDIT: Greenville is just north of Grand Rapids; I thought it was a suburb of Deetroit.

 

[cbrandt]

There are several ETC dealers out of Grand Rapids. Do some research, I think one or two of them even specialize in theater installations as their primary business. If those guys have left a bad taste in your mouth, there are a few dealers out Detroit way, I'm more familiar with those (and disclaimer, *am* one of those).