"I heard good things about the Hog iPC from Butch Allen, who's using it on Garbage, so I was excited about it," Smith says. "So when we were in Boston, I switched out the day of show. I was freaking out at first, thinking, 'What am I doing?'. In this show, there is no room for error, but I felt confident with the console. I powered it up and ran my show and I haven't looked back."
Hog iPC is the newest product in the Wholehog family of controllers, and the industry's first hybrid console - it's designed to use the Wholehog 3 operating system, but is also backward compatible with the classic Hog2PC software. Shipping began in March from High End Systems' manufacturing headquarters in Austin, Texas.
Hog iPC allows up to 7 universes of DMX, so for the large festival tours this summer, Smith will link his original Wholehog 2 - which he is not using now - with the Hog iPC and slave the desks together to allow for more fixture control. Discussing the various features of Hog iPC, Smith enjoys the fast "save show" process. "Saving a show to CD Rom is so much quicker. On the Wholehog 2 is used to take me 10 minutes to save to disk. Now, if I blink, the show is saved on the Hog iPC. The touch-screens are rockin' and the key action is nice. The wheels on the bottom of the roadcase are also a great idea."
After this spring's US leg, the tour will do the circuit of summer UK/European festivals, returning to North America for an arena tour in the autumn.
(Lee Baldock)
