New or repair

[konopacki]

Hello all,

 

 

I am on the board of directors of a new theater group with very limited assets. We were given a NSI MC 7524 lighting board by a disbanding theater group. It served us well for our first performance. We lost our technician due to his needing to move to new employment, and I have been annointed the new technician, although I have very limited experience. Two days before out last performance, the lighting board circuitry appeared to have fried. I was able to scrounge up two borrowed boards (our dimmers are both microplex and DMX) for the production but we are now faced with a decision about our lighting board. I opened it up to briefly look at the circuitry, and it appears that some chips are burned out on the potentiometer boards controlling the channels. The other boards looked fine visually. When plugged in, the board looked like it was going through a continuous loop of a preset program. My question is, is it worthwhile to repair this board, or will the cost be prohibitive? The board was certainly overkill for our production needs, but I have always felt it's best to have too much than too little. The board is about 10 years old and out of waranty.

[paulears]

Hi - I'm not sure we can be of much help, as we're mainly a UK forum, so this isn't a product I personally have ever seen over here, although a bit of checking on the net soon brought up what it actually is!

 

Here, spares would be impossible - but maybe over your side of the water, things might be better. At ten years or so old, I thinky I'd be looking at a new one - there are many available that can do simply twin presets with memory, or of course the popular software versions that may suit you if your needs are simple and you don't need a hardware control surface.

 

Sorry I can't help further.

Paul

[pritch]

It might be, depending on what the chips are, that you can just get replacements off the shelf. This won't be the case if they're a PIC or something else that's had programming built in by the desk manufacturer though - if it's just something like an analogue multiplexer or op-amp, then you might stand a bit more of a chance.

 

Failing that, as Paul said there's probably not a lot more that most of the posters here can offer. Perhaps try Control Booth, as that seems to be a bit more US-oriented - maybe somewhere there will be familiar with your gear.

[Don Allen]

This is a reasonable twin preset memory desk with two usefull attributes, the Micro-Plex output and the rotary encoder or joggle wheel. Have you contacted NSI to see what cost a replacement module is (the faulty pcb)?

 

You are fortunate that your dimmers are both DMX and Micro-Plex as you can change to another brand desk. If you change to another brand desk, try to get one with a jogger wheel.

 

Depending on your venue size, try to get a 48 channel desk as you can always add dimmers later on.

 

Have a look at budget desks such as the Showtec Showmaster 48 UK link These are usually sold into schools as a budget desk.

 

You can also ask Control Booth about where to source second hand desks.

 

Don