A good moving light desk

[gareth]

Certainly, don't think about making a decision based solely on the advice of inexperienced people posting suggestions on a public forum while only having the most basic grasp of your situation and needs.

 

As to who are you refering, or are you just generalising to people who are under a certain age?

Not a specific reference to any individual contributor - merely a broad suggestion. As with any open discussion forum, when one considers the value of any advice given here one should also consider the knowledge and experience of the advisor.

[Chubbs the Techie]

The Jester ML is FANTASTIC for schools. My school have one, as do two surrounding schools. They are 1) Good at what they do. 2) Reasonably priced. 3) Quite frankly p*ss easy to use at a basic level, and the instruction manual is very good meaning it doesn't take a non lighting person long to learn how to use even advanced features. Also, you can drop it four feet and it'll be fine, which is useful for a school.

[richard_cooper]

Wouldn't recommend a PC/dongle/wing-based solution for school use - too many elements to the system, too many layers of complexity and possible points of failure. Stick with the one-box solution.

 

+100 really this is a very important point if it gets disturbed, who's going to put it back together?

 

I've no other suggestions over what has been stated. For student use our Fat Frog has worked out well, and a Jester 12/24 is a good match for our studio. Having said that I have students also comfortable with our Congo to a fairly advance level. The only desk thats seemed a problem with the kids was a 520i not sure why they just never seemed to 'get it'.

[steve1159]

I've nothing really to add to what has already been said but will ask a couple of questions.

 

You state that this is for a school install and that you will be getting a couple of moving lights. I would firstly question how useful just 2 moving lights would be? Equally there is the age old debate of moving lights in schools-use the search function to find what I mean. If any sort of decent professional company is involved in the process I would be suprised if they have specified moving lights but not considered the desk so you may find your original question is academic as it has already been decided. The other alternative is no professional advice has been sought and you may end up with a collection of various bits that don't really give you a big improvement. e.g. more dimmers but no upgraded power supply or moving lights but no hard power or DMX to them etc etc

[tommulliner]

I would firstly question how useful just 2 moving lights would be? Equally there is the age old debate of moving lights in schools-use the search function to find what I mean.

Well, it wasn't my idea to get just two, if it was up to me, the rig would be fuull of them!

 

 

If any sort of decent professional company is involved in the process I would be suprised if they have specified moving lights but not considered the desk.

They were thinking of the zero 88 frog which I have used before just for a small production with normal lights, no movers or leds etc. I didn't like it that much and I thought it was a bit out of date. thats the main reason I did this, to find a better desk with the money avalable.

[Big Jay]

If I'm honest Tom, With the budget your said, £1500, your not going to get anything big, the jester is the biggest your proberlly going to get, unless you find a good 2nd hand desk and then your not going to get anyting big. Can you tell us a little bit more about the events you hold there, the quickness of programming needed, these sort of thing will help us help your futher

[tommulliner]

Well, We do our main show at christmas, which this year is "back to the 80's". And in the summer, we do a smaller production, which from now on will be as big as the christmas production as now we can use our new kit we're buying instead of hiring out which we do at christmas. (its expensive to hire out twice a year I was told). Also, I think that the plan was to hire out the hall and tech to am dram groups in the area to get a bit more money for the school. There are battle of the band competitions through the school's music dep as well as small presentation evenings and ocationally a disco type rave event.

[Big Jay]

I still think if you can get the budget, the Element or Ion would be a great contendar, especially if your planning on hiring out the venue, the desk is so easy to pick up and it is entering alot of the UK venues, amdram and pro. I was speaking to the guys at ETC yesterday and got a few prices.

 

Element 40- 250 is listed at £ 3,700.00

 

Element 60- 250 is listed at £ 4,500.00

 

Ion with a 2x10 Fader Wing will be in the neighbourhood of £ 6,500.00

 

But the lowest priced element is still way out of your budget. Im sure the Jester users will be able to shed light on its performance with the information ou provided.

 

Jay

[tommulliner]

But the lowest priced element is still way out of your budget.

 

Your right there, it is way out, if it was up to me, we would have the best lx desk on the market, but sadly the budget wont cover half that! just getting some new lights is a bonus for us as we havn't had any for in the range of 10-15 years!

 

Its actually nice to have the alcora, its better than having a total manual desk with no programming ability! We look forward to christmas because we get all the hired kit which is really good to have a 'play' around with, and now, we will have our OWN kit! cant wait.

[DrummerJonny]

purely as a matter of interest, how much influence in the buying process do you have?

[tommulliner]

purely as a matter of interest, how much influence in the buying process do you have?

 

buying, none, I am going to recomend a desk that would best suit our needs. Put it forward to the teacher incharge of organising the process of doing up our hall. and hopfully we can get a decent desk that would do us for a good few years instead of some cheap thing that we all hate to use. recently, we've been hiring desks for a few days at a time when we needed them for shows etc, just because our wiring ****** up! and its just been stress for the crew. so now with having our own kit, there will be no more emails twice a mounth to the guy we hire from asking for a desk and some cable to run to the demux! he lives like 35 miles away so getting the kit to us was a night mare as well for him.

[hadyn.williams]

For what it's worth I(what with all the support for Jester ML) 'd give a MASSIVE +1 to the smartfade ML. Although I haven't had any experience of the Jester, or much experience recently with Zero88 in general, I have to saa support for the Smartfade is great and ETC are a really good bunch of people. It may be worth having a chat with them direct I've always found them a really supportive company.

[Shez]

I made the choice a few months ago between a Smartfade and an ML48. Having encountered a Smartfade in a different college a few months previously, it was an easy call. Non of the staff there knew how to use it and despite being reasonably experienced in lampy land, it took a bit of head scratching to get my head around it. Biggest irritations: using the same faders for two different sets of channels and also for the subs, and the way that the faders don't automatically change function if you switch banks and fade them out. I expected Pearl type behaviour there - instead you have to fade out, change bank and then change it back again in order for the fader to change. (clumsy explanation, I know!)

 

It would have caused massive headaches for our students if we'd gone down that route so the ML48 was the way to go. I've programmed some basic states that cover the majority of what they need to do; they can access them on the bottom fader bank and any individual specials on the top bank. Dead easy. Apart from one isolated incident when someone had played a little too much with the ML buttons which took me a while to undo, I've never been called out to show anyone how to use it or otherwise sort out problems. Thumbs up here.

[CharlieH]

I've downloaded both Vista and Cuelux, and I prefer Vista any-day of the week. Our school hasn't got any moving lights (unfortunately), but I have used Vista with a friend of mine (works in the west end), and played with it in offline mode and I would definitely recommend it!

[tommulliner]

I still think that vista would be too expencive for the school as well as not practical. Although, it would be great if we could have got the T2 or T4 Console.