# No mute lights!



## gabe (Jun 4, 2006)

So today had been the usuall controlled chaos of a load in. Now, I'm a freshan and the senior TD is graduating and I'm next in line. So this was my first time "in charge" of a load in although it was a small show and it was only me and a good friend. So I come back to the church at 5:00, show starts, act 1 goes fine, then in act 2 there is a song that has two soloists and I have there mic #'s written down and I unmute them as the pick the mics up. Now we usually use our venue's board but the church had nothing so we brought our own. And this board of ours has no mute lights so you have to just look and see which ones are up. Well, somehow, right before this song I get all confused and mute the solo mics and unmute every other mic sitting on the floor. Then I get confused as to why I'm not getting sound and I start bumping stuff up. Then I get crazy feedback and I kill everything uber fast, It took me a good 30 seconds to figure out what I had done and fix it, DOH! Oh yeah, and we're buying a new board, and it will have mute lights.


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## disc2slick (Jun 4, 2006)

Haha, ouch man, I can totally see me doing something like that. Live and learn, eh?

-dan


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## Eboy87 (Jun 4, 2006)

Yep, I just did that yesterday. Except on our board, the mute and PFL are one under the other, with no lights. The dance song ends, and the lady in charge wants to introduce the next song, picks up her mic, and nothing happens. I wasn't paying attention, and hit the pfl instead of mute. ohwell


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## soundman1024 (Jun 4, 2006)

I had a problem with mute lights once, well not mute lights but yeah. We had a rental monitor console once, it was a Ramsa. When I first saw that board was when I learned that Ramsa made boards. It was in horrible condition, it needed to be plugged in for a few days to warm up before it was ready to operate as close to right as it did. Anyway the thing didn't have mute lights, it had on lights. When the lights were on the channel was working and when they were off it wasn't working. Backwards from normal. I'm glad we aren't using that beast now. I heard someone bought it from the rental company. I can't imagine someone would want that board. *shudders*


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## Eboy87 (Jun 6, 2006)

Hey, soundman, yep, I was mixing on a RAMSA when I made my boo-boo. Except ours doesn't have any lights except the power light, the group/LR meters, and the signal/peak lights on the channels. Did your's look kinda like this:




Oh, btw, RAMSA isn't the manufacturer, Pannasonic is, at least if it's the board I'm thinking of.


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## Chris15 (Jun 6, 2006)

Panasonic and RAMSA are owned by the same company, Matsushita Electric, who also manufacture Technics. RAMSA is a part of Panasonic, so the board could be of either brand, but I was under the impression that they manufactured audio equipment under RAMSA.


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## Eboy87 (Jun 6, 2006)

I dug into this a few years back when I was researching all our equipment. Panasonic's website had all the information relating to the RAMSA mixers. They don't anymore. But the box that thing came in says Panasonic on it, as do the boxes for the crappy RAMSA speakers we have.


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## Chris15 (Jun 6, 2006)

It all comes from the same factory, no matter what brand name it has on it.


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## gabe (Jun 6, 2006)

soundman1024 said:


> I had a problem with mute lights once, well not mute lights but yeah. We had a rental monitor console once, it was a Ramsa. When I first saw that board was when I learned that Ramsa made boards. It was in horrible condition, it needed to be plugged in for a few days to warm up before it was ready to operate as close to right as it did. Anyway the thing didn't have mute lights, it had on lights. When the lights were on the channel was working and when they were off it wasn't working. Backwards from normal. I'm glad we aren't using that beast now. I heard someone bought it from the rental company. I can't imagine someone would want that board. *shudders*


What kind of crazy mixed up engineer designed that! Oh well, now I'm trying to master this terrible recording, we had an 8 track hd recorder with 2 inputs. The first input was a mic on the base/guitar amps and the second was the console output. There was a mic patched into the console that was supposed to pickup both the chorus and the piano, needless to say that didn't work. I'm going to pitch buying a 24 channel board the Mackie 24.4 if I'm lucky. *crosses fingers*


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## MHSTech (Jun 7, 2006)

I wish our board didn't have mute lights. That would give me a good excuse for "accidentally" muting a teacher during a practice.


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## soundman1024 (Jun 12, 2006)

Eboy87 said:


> Hey, soundman, yep, I was mixing on a RAMSA when I made my boo-boo. Except ours doesn't have any lights except the power light, the group/LR meters, and the signal/peak lights on the channels. Did your's look kinda like this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It was a bit similar. The faders look the same. I believe the model on it was an 828. I'm not certain. It was 40 or 48 channels on a good day, 35 to 43 on a bad day, I don't remember the frame size. It had 16 aux outputs, however the last 4 were double-stacked if you follow. I think there were 8 subs, but I don't remember too well. I just looked on their site, but I didn't find it there.

Ohh yeah, the rental we had was missing faders like yours appears to be.


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## Eboy87 (Jun 17, 2006)

Actually, I pulled the faders off. Look up near the meters. So far, everyone on that show asked why I took them off. I just think it helps group things. Anyway, yeah. Sounds like your board was better. That thing there only has 4 auxs, and 4 groups, well, only two groups if you run the mics into them panned. 

All in all, I like my Onyx better. It's got mute lights, plus a four band EQ, with the sweeps on the mids. The phantom power also has lights on it. On that RAMSA, I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out why the condenser I put in the piano didn't work. Turns out I didn't have the phantom power on on that channel. Oh well.


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## PhantomD (Jun 18, 2006)

Hmm...I'm quite used to using "ON" light systems (Yamaha), good enough for me.

I don't mind the "mute" systems though...never had problems with adjusting.


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