What do you hate about your light board?

[MillburyAuditorium]

We have a Leigh Millennium at my school and its such an old desk that there is a buildup of dust or something in the grandmaster slider and it never goes to Full. It bounces between 99 and 98 when the slider is all the way up. Not a show stopper, but it bugs the crap out of me. The other thing is that its a memory console with two scene capability and has two DMX universes. It has an A/B fade and a C/D fade so it has go, hold, clear, etc. times two. Hit the wrong Go button and you're good as screwed without making it look even worse that the lights not changing when they're supposed to in the first place.

Good thing it crapped out on me this weekend right before a show. Maybe the school will finally fork out for a new one. Spend some $8,000,000 a year and can't find a dime for theatre.

Same thing with our Status! it doesn't have a Go or Hold button, you push the sliders up to activate the cue/two scene operation. And if you move them when not intended to your screwed and only way we know how to get control back is to flip the Two-Scene/Multiscene switch. Which makes all active lights go out then come back on as the board wants them too.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

There really isn't anything I don't like about our Express, it just isn't meant to be used with more than two movers.

Now, the Emphasis, its really rather worthless except for the ease of saving and loading shows.


However it's very possible that that all will be replaced with an Ion in a years time.

 

[MillburyAuditorium]

To whoever mentioned Leviton.

Goodie for us we have a FULL ColorTran system ^^'
Personally I don't see much of a problem with our fixtures, they aren't the best, but the all have shutters, one Far Cyc can light up the whole stage. Although the color bars are horrible. The dimmer rack, a i96 is pretty nice actually, nice desighn too. Spacers every few slots, No complaints there.
Oh but dont get my started on Leviton boards... I think they should stick with home controls

I am going to be racking (correct use? xD) the administrations heads off to let us go through ETC and our Leviton Guy. (Funny, our board craped out last year, so Leviton guy comes in, takes it for half the year to fix it. And lets us borrow his personal Expression 3 xD That should definatly say something, heh.

 

[Jinglish]

Our drama department bought an Innovator 24/48 when they started converting the old cafetorium into a real theater over the summer of '06. We don't even bother using the cue system because everything just ends up getting deleted anyway; all of our shows are programmed into subs. Our i48 Quad rack is also noisier than hell (and right next to the stage, so it's quite audible during shows), and five or six of its dimmers don't seem to work properly for some unknown reason. I guess this is what you get when you have a drama head who hears that the lighting techs would like a mover or DMX toys and then goes and buys two 150W Martin 812's.

I'm actually hoping that our board gives us more problems soon, just so it can be replaced with an Element or a Basic Palette II. I think it may have deleted a submaster during our last show, so maybe my wish will come true...

 

[xander]

I think it would be interesting to steer this conversation away from "What's broken on my board" to more of a "What features/design/syntax/etc do I not like about my properly functioning board."

For instance:
I am using a Strand 520i right now that has the worst color buttons on it. The last 520i and 550i I used didn't have this problem, so I am not sure why this one does, but the majority of the keys (everything except the 0-9, Rec functions, and display buttons) are a dark gray with light gray writing. Um...how am I suppose to read them in the darkness of tech!? It's fine for the keys I use the most (which ironically are the ones that are white with gray writing, therefore readable) because I know where they are and don't need to read them. But things like Sub Page, or Bump Mode, or the FX functions, when I occasionally have to find them, it's near impossible.

-Tim

 

[Grog12]

There really isn't anything I don't like about our Express, it just isn't meant to be used with more than two movers.

Originally it wasn't meant to be used with movers period.

 

[Travis]

Our Light board was totally screwed up by a summer program that knew nothing about lighting and tried to use it. Still fixing it after at least 6 months.

 

[mstaylor]

What in the world did they do to it?

 

[w3st0n21]

Right now, i hate nothing about our console. (we just got the element). but our old console, the strand LightBoard M, i have a whole list of problems. the biggest thing is everytime we turned it on we would have to hit the reset button on the back for it to work properly. that stupid thing. urg, i get frustrated thinking about it and we dont even use it anymore!! hahaha

 

[mstutzman]

So far I am truly in love with my new Ion, but aestheticly it is a big black punch box. The matt black takes on all kinds of finger prints, and the option for a little light is in the worst possible palce. It is not sleak, nor ergonaomic in any way. No wrist support at all. It also bothers me that the LCD screens on the main console and the fader wing do not match in color. Last but not least the option to attach the fader wing makes it incredibly difficult to carry without stressing that joint/connection.

Why would you design such a better console than the Obsession II, but then put it in in some scrap metal painted black?

 

[candyfreak]

We have a Leigh Millennium at my school and its such an old desk that there is a buildup of dust or something in the grandmaster slider and it never goes to Full. It bounces between 99 and 98 when the slider is all the way up. Not a show stopper, but it bugs the crap out of me. The other thing is that its a memory console with two scene capability and has two DMX universes. It has an A/B fade and a C/D fade so it has go, hold, clear, etc. times two. Hit the wrong Go button and you're good as screwed without making it look even worse that the lights not changing when they're supposed to in the first place.

ETC Expression and Express do this too, it's not an uncommon thing. Simple fix: Pay attention to which button you're pressing

I just finished off a 2 week run of grease, and I did this a lot more than once (I tend to not look at the console when I hit go). oh... and I have an ETC Express 72/144, no real complaints, extremely easy to use. Just that it's outdated, and heavy (a problem when moving the board into the house for tech rehearsal.)

 

[Tex]

Just finished a convention using a Strand Pallette VL. We were excited at first that we had a very new, very sexy console. Then we started programming. This thing locked up about every three hours and when rebooted, would retain all of the programming, but none of the lights would respond. The vendor spent hours with us trying to correct the problem, but it never worked right. We spent a few hours hanging truss, conventionals, 4 Studio Spots, 4 studio colors, 5 Alpha Spot 300, and 3 Selador strips. The only thing that worked reliably were the conventionals and two of the Alphas. I never loved my Innovator until this weekend.
This was probably a bad console issue, but it soured me on Strand products.
We also had to replace the wireless DMX units we were using (City Theatrical) with cable when they wouldn't work from 100', but that's another rant...

 

[chris325]

I'm actually hoping that our board gives us more problems soon, just so it can be replaced with an Element or a Basic Palette II. I think it may have deleted a submaster during our last show, so maybe my wish will come true...

We were lucky (or unlucky) enough that our i96 dimmers and Innovator 600 decided to fail during a catch-up rehearsal between two weekends of shows. If it had failed around 24 hours later (when the show was being reviewed for Illinois High School Theatre Festival) we would have an excuse to replace it. (We ended up being selected for the festival.) Considering that a lighting failure would have certainly made the difference between us making it and not making it (We ended up being selected for the festival,) I'm sure we'd have that shiny new Element in the booth if it had failed.

I guess I'll just have to deal with the green, purple, and yellow paperweight for now.

 

[avkid]

It refuses to understand that new fangled DMX stuff.

 

[Morpheus]

It refuses to understand that new fangled DMX stuff.

haha!

There's an old controller we have in our basement lab that looks similar...

there are only 6 dimmers it controls, but they're on channels 18-24, because as the channel faders kept dying, they kept plugging the control cable into the next slot

 

[SAWYeR]

I can confidently say I enjoy eating dirt more than I do programming the SmartFade, or SmartFail, DumbFade, SuckFade, SuckFail, etc in DePaul's blackbox. What an awful console. Howver, give me our Ion or my company's Hog III and I'm a happy camper xD

 

[DuckJordan]

its horizon, Effects controls are annoying to work with, if your lights go miss hap its annoying to have to select the numbers with the mouse and set them the appropriate level, its also very touchy in the way that "if I am running with another program, then i will randomly fail" . but other than that i would use it again simple to get running and ok to program

 

[CSCTech]

The more I read about other boards and locking up, crashing etc.. I am starting to like my Status 24/48. It has never froze or crashed on us. The only reason I want to hook a battery up and fry the thing and watch it burn in hell is because it has physical problems with it, half the knobs are missing, the battery circuit to the RAM is fried so it will not save anything when it is turned off, we are still looking for the right memory cartridge to fit the thing to save the show and a basic setup if..when the board decides to turn off and dump itself.
And the fact that it has 48 control channels and we have 96 dimmers.

 

[chris325]

I am starting to like my Status 24/48. It has never froze or crashed on us.

Wait... you've got a Colortran console that's never frozen or crashed? In my experiences using an Innovator 600, I've had it crash/freeze/fail 7 times in the few shows I've programmed on it. And it gets hard cleared on a fairly regular basis (I know a factory reset isn't supposed to be done more than once in 6 months, but it becomes prone to freezing not too long after a reset.)

 

[DuckJordan]

Wait... you've got a Colortran console that's never frozen or crashed? In my experiences using an Innovator 600, I've had it crash/freeze/fail 7 times in the few shows I've programmed on it. And it gets hard cleared on a fairly regular basis (I know a factory reset isn't supposed to be done more than once in 6 months, but it becomes prone to freezing not too long after a reset.)

to add to colortran consoles, we had an old innovator and it was prone to crashing which it led to its ultimate fail of loosing any control over the lights and itself. we just unplugged it and from then became a prop which we scrap for a computer fan. although we still do have an old NSI 2 scene preset board.