The first hour with a new rig: from the box to the first cue

The fixtures have arrived, and you have an hour before soundcheck. There are two ways to spend it.

The first: plug everything in, set addresses back to back, patch, start programming. This works until something goes wrong — and then it turns out you cannot tell where it broke: the address, the mode, the cable, or the fixture itself.

The second takes the same forty minutes, but ends with you knowing that every fixture is alive and listening. The difference is the order of operations, not the amount of work.

Let's walk through the second one.

Step 1. Addresses with headroom, not back to back

The temptation is obvious: eight heads at 16 channels each, so 1, 17, 33, 49 and so on. Tight, not a channel wasted.

Don't do that.

A week later you discover the head has an extended 22-channel mode — and you need it, because it has separate gobo rotation. Switch the mode and the fixture overlaps its neighbour. Now you re-address the whole rig on the fixtures themselves, physically, and they are already up on the truss.

So addresses go in round steps, with headroom for the widest mode the fixture has. For a 16-channel head that means a step of 32: 1, 33, 65, 97. For a two-channel dimmer, a step of 10. A 512-channel universe at a step of 32 holds sixteen heads, and you should not hang more than that on one line anyway.

The second argument for round steps is human. You will remember address 97 a month from now; you will never remember 113. On site this is a conversation shouted across a dark stage: "what address is the third head?"

Step 2. A mode is not a setting, it is a different fixture

Most fixtures beyond a dimmer have modes: 8 channels, 16, extended. The difference is not the count — it is what each channel means.

In 8-channel mode channel 6 might be the gobo wheel. In 16-channel mode channel 6 is fine pan and the gobo has moved to channel 10. The console keeps writing what you dragged as "gobo" into channel 6 — and the head twitches.

Hence the rule: the mode on the fixture and the mode in the console are set together, and the second is verified by eye. In Flux Lights the fixture mode is its own row in the fixture dialog: a list of that head's modes sorted by channel count. If the new mode does not fit the addresses, the console refuses and tells you which fixture it collides with — instead of silently moving it.

Practical advice: set fixtures to the widest mode you actually understand. Extra channels cost nothing (you already left headroom), and in a month you will not have to climb the truss.

Step 3. One fixture, one check

Do not patch the whole rig at once. Patch the first fixture and check it immediately.

The check takes twenty seconds:

1. select the fixture, dimmer to full. It lit up — the address is right;
2. move pan and tilt. It moved — the mode matches;
3. step through the gobo wheel slots. The patterns change in the order the list says — the fixture's manual matches the profile.

If all three pass, the fixture is alive; move on. If not, you know exactly which step failed, and that is half the answer.

Eight fixtures is eight times twenty seconds. Three minutes against an hour of hunting that evening.

Step 4. When a fixture ignores you

The most common question on site. There are exactly five answers, checked in this order — cheapest first.

Wrong address. The fixture shows its address on its display. Compare it with the console by eye, not from memory. The classic trap: the address was set but not saved — many fixtures require a confirmation in the menu, and without it the value reverts after a power cycle.

Wrong universe. The fixtures are on the second line, the console sends to the first. On network nodes this is also the universe number inside the node — Art-Net numbers from zero, sACN from one, and an off-by-one here is entirely routine.

Wrong mode. The symptom is recognisable: the fixture responds, but with the wrong channel. You push the dimmer and the gobo spins. The channel numbers have shifted, almost always because the fixture is in one mode and the console in another.

Wrong profile. A similar model from the same manufacturer. The symptom looks like the mode problem, but only part of the channels are off — the dimmer works and the colour behaves strangely. Here the raw channel list helps: in Flux Light that is the "Channels" module in the bottom panel — every channel of the selected fixture with its own fader. Move them one at a time and watch what actually happens. A minute of that tells you which profile you need.

The signal never arrived. Checked last, because it is the most expensive: terminator at the end of the line, cable integrity, splitter power. A good sign that this is your problem: the whole tail of the line stops responding from some fixture onwards, rather than one fixture in the middle.

Step 5. Groups before the first cue, not after

Temptation number two: start programming now and make groups later, "when it gets annoying". It gets annoying on the third cue, and by then you have cues recorded against individual fixtures.

Five minutes on groups up front saves half an hour of rewriting later. The minimum set that always pays for itself: all heads, all front light, all backlight, left half, right half. The last two are for symmetrical looks, and you need those more often than you expect.

Step 6. The first cue is blackout

Record an empty stage first, not a pretty look.

The reason is practical. A cue list plays in order, and sooner or later you will need to return to the top — between numbers, during a changeover, at rehearsal. If the first cue contains light, "return to the top" means "turn on whatever was there", not "go dark". An empty first cue gives you a point where you always know where you are.

The second reason is verification. If something is still glowing after blackout, that fixture never made it into the cue: it was not selected, or it is not in the group. Better to learn that now than at the moment the stage is supposed to go dark.

What you should have after an hour

• addresses in round steps with headroom for the widest mode;
• the mode on every fixture matching the console, verified by eye rather than assumed;
• every fixture checked with three moves: dimmer, pan/tilt, wheel;
• five groups;
• an empty first cue.

This is not "preparation before the work". This is the part of the work after which everything else stops breaking unexpectedly.