Philips 200 Plus console sub master "malfunction"

[RLES Music Man]

I'm an amateur theater teacher with 27 years of music teaching experience.   We have a Philips Strand Lighting 200 Plus 24/48 console (64341).  We have Jr. Broadway production coming up on May 4-6.  I started to train my tech crew on the lighting we would need for the show and we can't get the Sub Master to turn up once we program something.  All lights seem to be working in the Single Scene (SS) setting/function.  The recording process seems to function correctly, but after turning all lights down in SS and switching to Sub Master there is no light response.

To be honest its very strange because that is the overall problem.  It has responded occasionally.  My first attempt after erasing a pervious show is what alerted me to the problem.  After erasing I attempted to record our first scene by myself.  It recorded but then as stated above it would not turn up under Sub Master setting.  I erased and attempted again and still nothing worked.  I did not erase that one scene and just left it as it was.    That is when I took my crew in and was going to "teach/show" them how it "should" work.  Somehow it was successful for three kiddos.  They each created a light scene and recorded it.  They even worked under Sub Master.  So I thought the glitch had fixed itself.  So I taught them how to erase and we started all over.   That is when it malfunctioned once again.  We created a scene, recorded, went to Sub Master, and got nothing!  It did work briefly one time but it did not come up all at once it faded in gradually.  But then it stopped responding all together.

Any troubleshoot ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[kgallen]

If the desk has an internal battery, I'd start by checking that if you're getting intermittent behaviour.

@ianknight and others will be along soon...

[alistermorton]

Does this sound like this thread? I don't recall it ever being resolved. @Edward- Z88 - did you ever get to the bottom of it?

[ianknight]

19 hours ago, RLES Music Man said:

I'm an amateur theater teacher with 27 years of music teaching experience.   We have a Philips Strand Lighting 200 Plus 24/48 console (64341).  We have Jr. Broadway production coming up on May 4-6.  I started to train my tech crew on the lighting we would need for the show and we can't get the Sub Master to turn up once we program something.  All lights seem to be working in the Single Scene (SS) setting/function.  The recording process seems to function correctly, but after turning all lights down in SS and switching to Sub Master there is no light response.

To be honest its very strange because that is the overall problem.  It has responded occasionally.  My first attempt after erasing a pervious show is what alerted me to the problem.  After erasing I attempted to record our first scene by myself.  It recorded but then as stated above it would not turn up under Sub Master setting.  I erased and attempted again and still nothing worked.  I did not erase that one scene and just left it as it was.    That is when I took my crew in and was going to "teach/show" them how it "should" work.  Somehow it was successful for three kiddos.  They each created a light scene and recorded it.  They even worked under Sub Master.  So I thought the glitch had fixed itself.  So I taught them how to erase and we started all over.   That is when it malfunctioned once again.  We created a scene, recorded, went to Sub Master, and got nothing!  It did work briefly one time but it did not come up all at once it faded in gradually.  But then it stopped responding all together.

Any troubleshoot ideas would be greatly appreciated.

AS @kgallenhas suggested - it might be a battery issue, never had many issues with 200 series desks to be honest but they are about the age now when batteries will begin to fail & so much of the internal lookup tables that the desks software uses internally are likely to be in battery backed RAM.

It would be interesting to know if you can leave the desk powered on for a couple of hours, do a "Reset All" (it will be in the system menu somewhere) & then try creating scenes - if it's a battery issue then I would expect the issue to 'disappear' whilst the desk is powered up (if you follow my train of thought).

I suspect that your desk is going to end up on someone's workbench for a battery change & PCB clean up though 😞

[Kazeja]

Wasn't there a console where by if you entered sub mode, the top bank of faders would remain as individual channels and the bottom bank became the subs?

Maybe recording subs onto the bottom bank may cure the problem.

[willjam39]

The Z88 Jester did this 🙂