Chuck
one a fair bit of theatre work (not on the stage), and can happily handle the lighting and/or sound desks
KME
Good for you mate. I'm happiest driving a Midas board, in my element, but lighting desks, eek! My lampy's been trying to give me lessons on how to use his Pearl Expert, but it ain't sinking in......duh. I can physically sort the lighting fixtures out, but the magic that is the control desk is a bit trickier.
I nearly got caught out the other week when I was dropped in front of a Yamaha MC7L digital desk for the very first time, 2 hours before soundcheck. Talk about flying by the seat of my pants, luckily the House Engineer babysat and rescued me several times during the show.
Technology moves on so quickly these days, it's difficult to stay on top of things.
MrSworld, Golden Scan (Mk4) are up there with the best intelligent stuff, still considered really high end, but that being the case I don't come across many - they aren't cheap and if you don't have someone who knows them inside out, along with some good control, you won't get the benefit.
Too many cheap Chinese lumps of crap about, with bad motors and dodgy optics, people buy them for the price of a Golden Scan lamp, stick them on random chase, job done.
Mind you, when it comes to tours and temporary jobs, I still say that Martin are pretty unbeatable. Macs are cheap (compared to Vari-lites etc) and accessible, you can always lay your hands on some to fill out a hire job. Easy to service, simple and not back-breakingly heavy, you can really get good results quickly and easily, they travel well even when lugged about by knuckle-draggers (unlike Golden Scans!!!) The biggest pain is laying out for flight-cases when you pick up a load cheap! I shudder to think what I'd do if I had any early Golden Scans knocking about, I'm sure they would be worthless, whereas even Mac250s are prized by Diamond Dave the Double-Deck DJ and are well worth sticking on E-bay for beer tokens!
