Talon/mjg ignites/ ematch reliability and acceptable failure rate

[mb_pyro]

Not sure if this is the right place for this so mods feel free move

I have been using talon for years and had found them pretty reliable. Some years back I got a bad batch but since they have been fine. I simply buzz them and if I have continuity I would go ahead and use them. Worked well until this year. Seem another bad batch this time they fail after the fuse is inserted. The issue took out better than half our show. Really sucks when you only shoot 1 or 2 times a year.
We normally would get a couple out of say 50 talons that didn’t show continuity so we would discard them and move on. We considered this acceptable as long as we were confident the rest would work properly. Is this about the same for all talon users?
After this year we are seriously looking to moving to either ematch or mjg igniters.
Out of talons, mjg igniters or ematch would you guys consider the most reliable and what would you consider an acceptable amount of bad talons/matches in a box?
Oh yeah if it matters we have always bought or talons from what we considered reliable sources not random china or ebay sites. We are also not planning on inserting matches into lift charges.

Thanks for any input

[hatsgoods]

i prefer the mjg firewires. out of using them for about 3 to 4 years now in about 12 or so show, ive had on box of 40 in the box that had 3 of the heads missing. meaning that there was no flammable composition on the end inside the red cup / tube thing. talons on the other hand i have had more fails then a firewire. so i tend to stick to the mjg firewires. out of a bag of 250 three meter talons ive had about 7 fail to complete the circuit and 3 that had a good circuit reading during testing from the firing system but did not fire when the time came to hit button on remote.

[themadness74]

Well, I'v only used talons so I can only speak to my success with them. I got a killer deal on talons about 7-8 years ago and bought like 4 cases worth (I'm guessing 3,000-4,000 talons ). I think I'm down to my last 800-1,000 or so and I'v had near 95%+ success rate with them. I honestly can't remember last time I'v had a failure. I do a couple small to medium size shows a year plus I'v started doing individual product demo/videos the past year and a half using talons and I have no complaints what so ever.

[mb_pyro]

Thanks for the input guys. I think for me it's just bad luck. 2 orders lots out of many buys on the talons. I am curious about how mjg vs ematch however?

[BobinNC]

I have used MJG ematch for years, and found about 99% success rate, but that is including all failures, which can be due to anything. I have only used the firewires about 10 times, but I have had pretty close to the same success rate, maybe 98-99%, but I do things carefully and test stuff well. I have found the firing system to be the main issue, older systems can have a 95% firing rate, but the Cobra has been close to 99% or so in most cases. I have had one or two cases where there was a problem and it went down, such as an antenna falling off or down, but the new mesh system has made that less of an issue, as I had a module work fine without any antenna ( I forgot to atach it, Doh) since it was near another module. But it had great signal from nearby and showed continuity in the testing and fired 100%. So I was be happy with either MJG emath or i-match. The cheaper orange wire Chinese e-match gave me abotu 97-98% success, so even that as pretty good.

One hint. if you wire the cues from last to first (say 18 first, then 17, etc), you will end up with the wires for cue 1 on top of cue 2 on top of cue 3... That makes for fewer issues. I learned that from an old guy years ago, and that raised my cusscees rate (especially in tight spaces) by 1 or 2 % for electric shows. Not a huge difference, but if you do everything the best way, it adds up to better shows.

[Pyronut]

I use both, MJG and Ematch. One issue you need to understand is that MJG isn't regulated like ematch is but you probably already knew this... lol
Between the two, my failure rates are more of human error. I don't use talons as they are unreliable, IMO, and the filament breaks way too easy.
So basically what I'm saying that out of a box of either MJG's or Ematch, I have not had issues bad ones.