GENERAL QUESTIONS / BUYER / STUDENT

Unfortunately all of your console choices are no longer for sale new.  These have all been replaced with more modern consoles.

The ETC Obsession II has been replaced with the Eos 

I'm not sure what Leprechaun has replaced the 3000 with but I know they have at least modernized the product line.

Strand has replaced the 500 series as well

Now for your questions.

A.  what kind of programming with just a few keystrokes?

B.  Not sure what you mean.  Each of these consoles have different channel counts but channels are less important now the number of attributes or universes of DMX are more important.

Hope this helps you out.

I'm going to try to answer the questions I think are behind the questions - I'm assuming you're working from a textbook or course materials which are dated (because the consoles are out of date, not because their comparisons are invalid). What you're asking is rather like comparing VHS decks these days - There's better stuff out there currently, by the same manufacturers, using different methodology, design concepts, and execution.

ETC also has a policy not to allow the slamming of other manufacturers' products on this forum, so I'm going to keep my observations general; having said that, the Obsession II was, hands down, the best console on your list. 8^)

In their day, these represented some of the top consoles on the market from each of their respective manufacturers. They were all capable of doing similar things, and none of them did them the same way. A direct comparison is possible, but it would be a subjective one for the most part. All of these consoles would have been loved or hated by various operators, based on their personal biases. They would have been able to control lighting systems of differing sizes, with some being arguably better suited than others at various tasks.

These consoles might seem simple to use, in the same way that a dentist's drill is simple to use, in theory - and while programming might be accomplished in a few keystrokes by an experienced, skilled operator, you may not get polished results immediately. All of these consoles are complex; and one could spend years learning them, and what best practices would be for their optimal operation. They're all finite, though, and therefor have intrinsic limitations - number of sub faders, pages, memory, universes of control, users, screens, channels, physical size, features, even the communication protocol(s) it uses... in fact, any characteristic of any console could eventually be a limiting factor for it.

Once set up correctly for their venue(s), even comparatively inexperienced users might operate any of them with a minimum of difficulty. Most consoles were also sold with a varying degree of channels and outputs, depending on the needs (and budget) of the customer, so the second part of your questions doesn't make sense really, and would reflect more upon the finances of the space, or on the person who specified the console originally. If the answer to B is "No", then the console's owner may not have had future system expansion in mind, may have wanted to upgrade at a later date, or possibly just got the best available on the market at that time. In some situations, you could rephrase question B to be "Is your console the wrong size? Does it have features you'll never use? Could you have spent your money better?"

Console selection has a lot of variables which influence what the end purchase should be, and it may not be that the best console available is necessarily the best fit for the situation. You don't need a flagship of a console to turn on your yard lights. You can't fit a 5' long console in a 19" rack. Will you need to train everybody who comes into your venue, because you're running a rare console? If you need twelve faders, and only have ten... the list goes on.

Sorry I didn't answer your questions, but I hope my observations help.

Thanks, so much for your feedback.

Roxy