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[Craig Leerman]

Hello all,

I have been having bad luck with rental consoles lately. Seems that about 1 in 3 of my fly in gigs I get a squirrelly console.  They all seem to work good at programming and load in, but then show glitches at rehearsal and show time. Luckily so far, none of the consoles has gone down on a show, but I dislike that uneasy feeling not knowing if a problem is going to raise its head during the gig.  

BTW, this is not a manufacturers specific issue, as I have had weird acting consoles from Jands, NSI, Leprechaun, and ETC this year alone. I attribute it more to the fact that they are rental consoles, and have probably seen much abuse on gigs, as well as little or no maintenance.

Problems have been as strange as a NSI 7532 blinking all its channel indicator lights whenever any fader was pushed up, to a Jands Hog not allowing us to softpatch any channels or other software functions.

So, my solution seems to be to bring a small console along with me to the gigs. Ideally, I want a small console with 8-12 faders/submasters, the ability to softpatch, and possibly the ability to "capture" the output from another console. AND, it has to be really small so I can take it with me on fly-in dates!

EXAMPLE: An "average" show for me is either a fashion show or a corporate speech/band gig. Fashion shows usually require between 24 and 48 dimmer channels and run on 3 to 7 submasters.  Speech/band gigs usually run between 30-60 dimmer channels and use as many submasters as I can get my hands on!

I don't want just a backup capture console like the ETC Reflection, as I want to be able to use the console by itself, and not just as a backup.

I also want to stay away from computer based systems like the Rosco Horizon and a fader wing because I am not that confident in Micrcrap Windows to trust running a show on a computer.

I found the DOVE Systems IQ 512 console that looks perfect for what I want to do. It does all of the above and then some.
http://www.dovesystems.com/BuildPage.php?page=iq512&d=

This would be a perfect console for my fashion show type gigs, and could do my speech/band gigs in a pinch (or as a perfect "backup" console for whatever the lighting company sends me as it can record looks)

Does anybody know of any similar small consoles like the DOVE?

Craig

[Rob Timmerman]

While this doesn't answer your question, do you run the console off of a UPS?  That many consoles going bad at show time but not during programming sounds like flaky power, especially if you share power with sound/video.

[Craig Leerman]

I don't think power was at fault with any of the problems I had.  The last board that was flaky was an NSI 7532 that the shop later told me had a loose chip. One of the other boards (the Leprechaun) looked like it had been burried in mud and dirt when we got it.  I blame most of it on bad rental companies who don't take care of their gear, and who don't check out the gear before they rent it.

Last year I received two consoles with broken off fader shafts, and quite a number without power cords!  Many rental shops just don't check out the gear between rentals.

Craig