I'm normally not afraid of any console. I can sit down and within half an hour figure out the basics and how to write enough cues to punt through a show. Until today.
Some companies are really good at making boards that run conventional lighting fixtures. It is my firm belief that these companies should not attempt to manufacture moving light consoles. It will only give them a bad name when they fuck it all up.
Today I am lighting a show for People magazine. My client is Rihanna and she is playing a short set for a party the magazine is throwing at a club in NYC. The house rig here is quite nice. Bunch of mac 2ntours and 700 profiles. All new. The pars are new as well and Jeff the house LD has done a good job of designing something well thought out and easy to make looks on. There's only one problem. The owners didn't bother to buy a proper console one can rock on. Instead they bought something made by Leprecon. The LP-X48.
It's got 2 pages of 48 faders you can use for fixture channels for your dimmers. This is OK right? No, because the soft patch function does not work. How does one sell a console that you cannot patch the dimmers on? So I'm stuck with a 1-1 patch. This means that my green wash covers channels 4,17,32 and 48. There is no way to bring up all 4 dimmers at once unless I waste one of my valuable 12 master playbacks.
I can punt moving lites on 12 faders, but I cannot use the conventionals tonite. Shame, rig would have looked good with the pars.
The 12 faders have one major flaw. One has to put intensity in them to use them. This is ridiculous. I like to put stacks of color bumps on faders that change colors without bringing up intensity. The same with gobos. Seems like there should be an unwritten rule for this. Why would a company build a console where you have to bring a fader up to 10% just to change a gobo? Basically, this console will not change colors or gobos on moving lites unless the fader you have put these cuelists on is up to at least 10%. So now all my lights will have to ghost the whole show and the only way I can black out is by using the grand master.
But it gets better. On faders where all I want is movement and intensity, you must ghost these lights up with a fader to preset your lights in a proper focus position. So if you have a soft quiet ballad and wish to preset all your lights down stage center on an artist, you are screwed. You must bring the fader up again so the whole audience will see the dim lights move to the proper position, then fade them out so you can pretend nobody saw that you suck as an LD.
Why don't new clubs actually call lighting designers before they listen to salesman tell them what they need. This console cost 5k. I can go on ebay and find a used Pearl or Hog 500 for the same price. And they work great.
Not since the days of the ill fated Celco Navigator have I seen anyone get something so wrong. I mean, these guys at Leprecon have always made good products before. How did they let something like this fall through the cracks?
Anyway, I'm just venting here. I use Leprecon products all the time for conventionals and have always been happy. But then again I used to use Celco's all the time, until they attempted to make moving light consoles.
