Showtec Easy Fade 36

I needed to do an install that would be used by many people with no understanding. This desk was perfect. It is not designed to have many features - I consider this the aim of the product and the reason it is so successful.

Programmable desks even in manual mode require some knowledge to get it to work correctly and there are controls that people will find intimidating.

This desk can be explained to anyone in 5 minutes - and that's it's glory.

In practice:
It works well - the auto fade is decent and the rack mounts are accurate.
There are only 2 complaints I have.
1. The plastic sliders can come off
2. They've inverted the intensity control on the auto fade section but not on the A&B master light section which makes no sense to me at all!!

Besides those tiny issues a perfect desk for a small price.

At twice the price of other more complicated DMX controllers with programmable features you might wonder why anyone would want to buy this. I read all the reviews and noticed fairly quickly that a lot of people who'd bought the more complicated controllers just couldn't understand how they worked. A lot were re-appearing on eBay.

I'd just bought 2 Stairville CLB2.4 Compact LED Par Bundle sets of lighting and wanted a simple way of adjusting each of the 8 lights for colour and intensity to provide a stage colour wash for a band. No flashing, no auto fade, no changes half way through etc. This seemed to be the only thing around that did it and I have to say it does it well. It's quite chunky - I'd have liked something a bit lighter and more compact but there you go. Each fader controls a single channel so the red/green/blue of each light can be adjusted individually. 8 lights = 24 channels. No idea what happens if you need more. 2 of the faders also control flash rate - not required for me but that's the only feature you get. There are also controllers for fade delay rate and master/grand master fade.

A few more features would future proof it, but for now it does the job well and can't see us needing anything else. If you have the luxury of someone to twiddle the knobs while you're doing your stuff (e.g. theatre work) then this makes on the fly changes a doddle. The build quality suggests it might be with us for some time too...