Dead Equipment

We seem to have an amazing snowball effect taking place at IBC. Let's recap the things that have fried over the past 6 months...

#1 - Our 56 Channel Allen and Heath dies in the middle of a service. Not only did it die, it took two fairly new power supplies with it...Odd. The fluctuating power blew almost 25 capacitors on the console. We quickly fixed the low voltage issues.
We sold this puppy on eBay for a few grand, sorry if you missed out. (I don't think the guys that bought it knew we had a lot of issues with it.) Gosh, I hope they don't read this.

The Studer Vista 5 - 42 Fader Version replaced this toy. I still wish we would have gotten more lighting gear instead, but I can't have everything.

#2 - Panasonic Projector #1 starts flickering in the middle of a service. Shortly after we grabbed our Genie Tower and Meter...Jim who works with me found out the hard way that the plug was shorted..you can guess how. We remembered to check the lamp hours and housing, everything was in good shape. The problem was something greater than I could ever explain.

#3 - Panasonic Projector #2 starts flickering two weeks later. We quickly sent this one back to Panasonic to be looked at. As it turns out...the bulb actually was the problem this time.
Our friends over a Christie or Barco will be getting a call in the next few months.

#4 - Par64 Cans causing issues. I have taken down 10-12 since I have been here. (Also dozens of Kliegl fixtures) I also found out the hard way that aged inventory of Pars were shorting due to improper wiring. It was a "shocking" discovery.

#5 - Strand 521i Lighting Console begins acting strange during the Christmas Concerts that will draw thousands over the first few weeks of December. We simply thought it was just the outdated software and continued to press forward with hours of programming.
A few days ago we updated the software (which by new I mean Strand last updated it in 2003).
A day following that, the thing just starts firing cues, changing fade times, calling up moving lights, randomly typing in commands. Surprisingly enough, this thing runs off of MS-DOS!
I had no choice but to call up a few of my contacts and get another Lighting Console sent to me that day. We had previously looked at the ETC Congo - Full Size (their new console line is sweet), turns out it is the perfect console for what we are doing...not to mention I'm a HUGE ETC fan.

Our friends over at Clark Pro Media overnighted it to me about 10 minutes after I talked to Matt Card, one of their Vice Presidents, along with one of their engineering guys. Before they would even offer a demo or even attempt to quote me a price, they wanted to be sure this is the console we NEEDED. Talk about Customer Service, these guys have their game down.
Though UPS delayed the shipment, we got it in here and set it up in under 2 hours.

I hope we buy it!!


That's all for now. I have lighting to design for 7 services in the next few hours, wish me luck.