Snap
02-06-2006, 11:58 PM
That is a necessity if you don't know what you are doing. I would reccomend anyone getting a new show or if you have one now that isnt shot to hell already to get one. In my case with my show I never had one. My show ran excellent. Before I stored it last year it ran perfect. In my case I knew how to take care of it without one. My air compressor and extra tank were outside about 50 feet from the show. I also had my hose running straight up in the air for about 5 feet. Most condinsation that built up would fall back down in the tank. Comming into the house I had 2 water seperators. My show was never left aired up for long periods of time. If I ever left it aired up it was for maybe 3 hours and that was on a very rare occasion. Usually when board members would come to watch it. And even during that time I would go behind the curtain and empty water seperators and use the extra hose that was connected to blow any condinsation out. Also cleaning the mac valves regulary is a must. But definately get an air dryer if you plan on using your show alot and especially if it's gonna sit aired up for along period of time. I have seen a lot of shows ruined because of the condinsation build up. Aarons was one of them. I got it fixed twice but because the show never had a cut off valve ...everytime anyone would use the air compressor in the building it aired all of the shows up. And they would sit like this for hours and hours at a time. To top it all off......His air dryer had been broke for about 4 or 5 years. I ended up putting new mac valves on all of the characters while I was there. After I had fixed the show twice it would last for alittle while then end up slowly but surley going back to it's original state. I had asked Ronnie the tech before me how much had he done to Aarons show and he told me he had never touched it. So for 5 years without an air dryer.... Show getting aired up all the time and sitting all day sometimes..., No maintenence. Thats what I ended up doing was changing out all of there mac valves with new ones. I also got a guy to come out and fix the air dryer and I put a cut off valve on the show. It should last forever I am guessing now. Or at least a good 50 years. I still think Aarons show needed new masks and I would have made a few other adjustments. But because of new programming being used alot with old programming it just didnt work out the way I wanted it to. Aaron would watch it and say it looked great when I would run an old show but when I ran a new one the movements would slam a little. The reason for this was with new programming the show was slowed down drastically. So when programming a character a movement was having to be held down by the programming button to make a full movement. With the old programming the adjustments were faster. So when programming them you would just tap a programming button depending what movment it was. So we had to find a happy medium. And alot of the new programming was not programmed to perfect timing like the old. No heart in it at all in my opinion. Thats why I always played nothing but old programming. I had my own show set up to run those excellent. Even with Showbiz's programming on the later shows was not as good as the early stuff done by Creative but alot better than the new stuff done by Creative.