FIX IT OR REPLACE IT? U2 BROADCAST WEIGHS IN.

Luis told us about five Wheatstone R55e consoles that he encountered on a recent trip back to the Dominican Republic. “The funny thing is, I installed them eight years before I left [the] Dominican in 2010 and moved to the United States. All five are still working, but now the parts aren’t as easy to get and it makes sense after all this time to update to DMX consoles,” he said.

His point: sometimes it makes sense to update gear if for no other reason than the possibility that it will need to be serviced someday. Other times, it makes sense to keep and maintain what you have. “But only if you have quality gear worth maintaining,” said Markos, who spoke to us in between flights to Latin America. 

The same day we talked to Luis and Markos, our Support Tech John Davis reported in from Montreal of a Blade I/O unit running for 1,156 days straight. Then our Senior Sales Engineer Jay Tyler, who happened to be on the other side of the world at the time, chimed in that he was about to stop in on two Blades there that had been running for more than 2,000 days, or more than five years straight. 

You can see where we’re going with this. 

Obvious solid keepers are the consoles and support infrastructure that work year after year and are near the beginning of their product lifecycle. But careful. Markos warned that the life of a console has more to do with modern engineering and quality construction than year of build. “Some of the newer local-made consoles I’ve seen look like they’re 30 years old,” he said, adding that you’re better off keeping your older Air-4 workhorse rather than buying a mixing board that isn’t going to last.

This is especially true in countries where high import tariffs can double the cost of buying new, although our new Audioarts AML console goes a long way in bridging that budget/quality gap as a Wheatstone engineered console at a value price. “Right now, there seems to be a trend to buy new if at all possible, in part because of all that old gear that has been in service for a while,” commented Luis.  

Whether you keep it or replace it, both Luis and Markos point out that it’s important to consider ongoing maintenance and support. We agree, which is why we’ve doubled down on parts inventory the last few years, especially critical components that could become hard to source during normal disruptions in the supply chain. Some of the many components we stockpile are for products we made years ago that can’t be easily sourced anywhere else. 

Finally, Luis and Markos stress the need for good technical support – a critical, often overlooked consideration in the “fix it or replace it” equation. We can think of many places around the world where qualified broadcast engineers are still very much in the studio and in the field, making general maintenance and repairs a matter of routine. Even so, Luis and Markos point out that broadcast engineers everywhere have a lot on their plate, handling everything from transmitter issues to IP networks, cameras, security, and streaming on the regular. And it’s true: Wheatstone tech support has become much broader in scope to support our broadcasters in the field, and we have increasingly relied on expert partners, integrators and especially full-service distributors like U2 Broadcast to add more value to our products and support services. 

“It’s so much more important today to know the technology from the studio on out to the transmitter, and to speak the language,” commented Markos. 

U2 Broadcast, located in Miami, Florida, now covers Latin America from Argentina to Mexico as a critical technical sales and support resource for Wheatstone customers. Luis and Markos will be visiting more than a dozen Latin America countries in the coming year. To find out when they will be in your area, email [email protected] or [email protected].