Strand 300 vs Strand 520

[paulears]

The 300 at my old college is now getting on - being bought when it had only just come out, and has been worked hard. One small hardware fault, but a trip back to Strand sorted it out - students pushed, pulled, twiddled and truied to bend the faders and hit the buttons with things much harder than fingers and I'm guessing the rubber actually helped here. With a couple of cases to keep it safe on the truck, it did very well. The only weak link is the mini din plugs on the trackball and keyboard - pins get bent too easily, but this is a pc issue really.

[LeeStoddart]

Thanks everyone for excellent and very much to the point information. We are scheduling a demo of both boards in the venue and I for one certainly feel much better prepared for what will be seeing and the sorts of differences we will want to explore.

 

Thanks for being such a great resource.

[Martin]

Having only one attribute wheel on the external trackball on the 300 series needn't be a problem if you put your attributes into groups. Although I have had reliability issues on the 300 series, mainly relating to the external trackball on several different 300's. This may have been fixed on newer consoles though.

 

Programming moving lights on one monitor is a bore as you usually can't see what half the attributes are doing since the cue list takes up half the screen. So a second video card for the 300 would be a very worthwhile upgrade for more than the occasional use of movers.

 

Also you loose the LCD's on the 300 (except the one for the 6 softkeys). Again not a major issue as you can get most of this info from the monitor.

 

Overall Strand have done a great job of stripping down the 500 series to the basics in the form of the 300. The 300 does represent very good value, without making too many compromises. It's an ideal desk for the small to medium scale venues that don't require some of the more advanced features of the 500 series (most of these features seem to be covered in this thread).

[paulears]

small point, but having rows of faders near the front of any control, is much easier on the arms when you have to poise your hand(s) above the bump buttons ready for a 'flashy-flashy' cue. Faders on the top panel, at full arm stretch kills your arms! - on a 300, you can rest your wrist on the table top.