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Leap frog PSU


Renato

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I'll note here for the Zero88 folk that trying to find spare parts and similar hardware support on the Vari-lite pages is fruitless if you are outside of North America (US/Canada/Mexico). There is no selection for Europe/UK/Asia and the "old" links on the Zero88 website don't work for spare parts or European/UK distributors etc (or at least those I found on the Blue Room [e.g. https://www.blue-room.org.uk/topic/61134-zero-88-fat-frog-psu/?do=findComment&comment=497542] or this forum).

Searching the Zero88 site for "PSU" or "spare" comes up with nothing or takes you to the Vari-lite page for distributors which suffers the geographical limitations stated above.

At this point Zero88 support for the common man outside of Vari-lite's traditional NA territory has just disappeared. If you're "in the know" you know where to turn, but the Vari-lite website doesn't do that for the general populous of non-NA Zero88 users. Maybe there is a route through the Vari-lite website, but as a "casual user" I couldn't find it. Can this be addressed?

Finally google found me a page (no idea how I'd get there otherwise, and going back "out" to the Vari-lite main webpage, I can't see how I'd get back here): https://www.vari-lite.com/global/products/frog-series#_spareparts

For the OP - the official part number is thus: 5537500

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As far as  I can see, it's still available as a spare part so your local dealer might have one on the shelf or might be able to order one from Signify.

Be aware though that lead times for ordering spares (when in stock) is about 10 working days because treasury/accounts functions seem to be 'off shored' to India (I've been waiting 10 days for payment to be acknowledged for an order placed 5 weeks ago!).

I have some on the shelf (as 'new old stock') along with some Frog 2 PSU's that will also work however, exporting from the UK to the EU isn't cheap these days - they screw us at every turn :(

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Ian Knight aka The Service Guy - www.serviceguy.co.uk

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On 5/20/2023 at 1:58 PM, kgallen said:

At this point Zero88 support for the common man outside of Vari-lite's traditional NA territory has just disappeared. If you're "in the know" you know where to turn, but the Vari-lite website doesn't do that for the general populous of non-NA Zero88 users. Maybe there is a route through the Vari-lite website, but as a "casual user" I couldn't find it. Can this be addressed?

A bit reminiscent of the Avolites website (I had a customer bring me a Pearl 2008 to checkover last week) - I spent ages wandering the Avo website for some sort of manual and eventually Google found it for me under some obscure link - I sense a common theme amongst American companies 😉

It was bad news for my customer though - the desk needs someone a tad more knowledgeable than me to check it over & there seems to be no one except Avo themselves who will admit to repairing the darn things (or even having spares for them!) - I'm still waiting for a response to the contact form I filled in asking them if they knew of anyone in the Midlands.

I guess to a degree, Zero users should be counting their blessings (for the moment certainly) that there's a relatively decent (compared to Avo) support 'structure' in place in the UK.

Ian Knight aka The Service Guy - www.serviceguy.co.uk

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12 minutes ago, iank99 said:

I guess to a degree, Zero users should be counting their blessings (for the moment certainly) that there's a relatively decent (compared to Avo) support 'structure' in place in the UK.

Absolutely, and we'd be lost without them 🥰

But the Vari-lite site doesn't really help you get to them... (well yes I know there is a page of bland "contact" details but ye know it's a bit detached from what there was on the original Zero88 site, which unfortunately now just takes you back to that same Vari-lite page!).

I'll just keep nudging Jon and Edward to get the Vari-lite "masters" knocked into touch :ph34r: although I'm sure they feel equally frustrated!

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On 5/20/2023 at 1:58 PM, kgallen said:

I'll note here for the Zero88 folk that trying to find spare parts and similar hardware support on the Vari-lite pages is fruitless if you are outside of North America (US/Canada/Mexico). There is no selection for Europe/UK/Asia and the "old" links on the Zero88 website don't work for spare parts or European/UK distributors etc (or at least those I found on the Blue Room [e.g. https://www.blue-room.org.uk/topic/61134-zero-88-fat-frog-psu/?do=findComment&comment=497542] or this forum).

Searching the Zero88 site for "PSU" or "spare" comes up with nothing or takes you to the Vari-lite page for distributors which suffers the geographical limitations stated above.

I'm guessing you are referring to this page here...

https://www.vari-lite.com/global/support/where-to-buy

This page used to be map-based, but was not functioning how we wanted it to. This was actually changed last week to be in the table database format, and the website team are transitioning our distributor data to it. You therefore came across this page at the worst possible time!

On 5/20/2023 at 1:58 PM, kgallen said:

Finally google found me a page (no idea how I'd get there otherwise, and going back "out" to the Vari-lite main webpage, I can't see how I'd get back here): https://www.vari-lite.com/global/products/frog-series#_spareparts

On the Vari-Lite site, if you need a spare part, you MUST go to the relevant product page first:

This is exactly how the "old" Zero 88 website worked too, having discontinued the less-than-ideal knowledgebase site several years ago.

On 5/20/2023 at 1:58 PM, kgallen said:

For the OP - the official part number is thus: 5537500

On 5/21/2023 at 8:33 AM, iank99 said:

As far as  I can see, it's still available as a spare part so your local dealer might have one on the shelf or might be able to order one from Signify.

Yes - a 42w 4 pin XLR PSU is still part number 5537500

 

Edward Smith
Product Specialist
Email Support

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It's magic when you know!

https://www.vari-lite.com/global/products/leap-frog-series#_spareparts

That extra level of indirection via Vari-lite doesn't help dig down to this info. Prior to the merger I think we finally got the "new" Zero88 website to a workable structure where both new and legacy Zero88 products could be found very quickly from the A-Z Products pages, and wham you were straight into the pages that gave you all that info. I guess we've now lost all of that with Vari-lite and the focus is back on new sales products. I hope we can claw back that legacy support data in an accessible form and that tag-line "...and yes we still support them all".

(I searched "zero wire" as a stress-test example and did indeed get to a page, so that is a relief!)

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