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Hey Guys,
Long time no see......
I'm just about coming to the end of renovating my motorhome......soon be on the road....
Anyhow, this week we had a couple of gigs in the diary so I thought I'd look to using the AW2400. I first used one on a few theatre type gig back in 2010. Then I found it a bit limited, especially without the 'aux on faders' facility that even the AW4416 had! I didn't know the unit then as well as I know it now (it's foibles etc), and having gone through the whole Behringer X32 mixer series in the intervening years, the last year saw me buying a Yamaha O2R (well a few because they're so cheap) and doing the last few gigs with that. The only problem with the O2R is that it is a big old desk..you can just about man handle it alone, but in a flightcase, it's definitely a two man lift. So when this AW2400 popped up for sale in April, I bought it. The seller said it had a dodgy fader and channel 5 select didn't work. He didn't mention that a few other faders were suspect and a few other select buttons didn't work. Anyhow, I stuck with it as it had only cost me £300. I figured it was worth that in parts should another machine come up in better condition which I could use as the major and have this as backup.
So I did a couple of gigs with it as is. We'd done a couple of rehearsals with it and at the first gig where the backing tracks were re-played from the AW2400 itself it behaved itself. For the gig last night though, where we were also doing the DJ'ing and running the tracks from a laptop via a Line 6 Toneport SPDIF.......we had a problem. After performing two slots the rest of the evening was spinning disks..the faders had a bit of a mind of their own. This made the SPDIF distort (although I had attenuated the INPUT channels), the faders are not calibrated correctly and between switching LAYERS, would intermittently go much higher. Earlier in the week I had contacted Yamaha UK to be told that all their spares were now contracted out to a company called Sontek. I found the Service Manual on line and managed to get a copy. I'll upload it here if there's a 'files' section. I noted the parts I wanted prices on (the generic push button, a few LEDs and a few faders) and contacted Sontek. Rather disappointingly, they said that the generic push switch (which features on at least 40 places on the board) is discontinued. Some of the LEDs are discontinued. The faders are still available as is the whole fader board. It isn't cheap though (almost £400) and although the faders are around £20 each, I reckon all my faders are not 100% fully functional. There are 13 faders so around £260, then soldering of 13 faders mean it probably is worth buying the whole board. I have just bought another unit from a German dealer who's been trying to sell it for some time, so I'm going to see what condition that one is like, though I reckon I will jump on the replacement fader board as the unit is unreliable as is.....and with a new board I would know that it wasn't going to be abused. I reckon the person that had this AW previously was one of those types that hits the buttons and forced the faders on more than one occasion.
One main reason I'm looking at the board again is to possibly stage a musical that I wrote a while ago. The digital mixers like the X32 and the ALLEN & HEATH QU32 are great digital mixers, but you have to rely on recalling SCENES to operate in a theatre type environment and without some kind of MIDI automation, have no way of integrating the 'live' singers with the playback. I want to automate the whole mix if possible, so that an operator could recall a locate point (or MARKER), press PLAY and have the new SCENE kick in for that song, with the live singers already automated. It would take much rehearsing and the radio mic position of the singers would have to be fixed (on their foreheads) but I reckon it could be done. The biggest problem might be the 'lag' of a 2005 designed machine keeping up with everything.
Phew.....I'll keep you posted.
Al
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