Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

So last night I get everything plugged in for the open mic I host. I bring mics, mixer, monitor, etc, use the house powered speakers which are suspended from the ceiling.

Time for sound check. Nothing! Neither mic, or DIed guitar has any sound getting to monitor or mains. Unplug, re-plug, turn off mixer, turn it back on (hear a 'pop', that's good), but still nothing. One of the old timers comes over, says check the channel mutes (but the monitor doesn't mute with those), push them all once. twice to make sure they are not muted.

Panic! 20 minutes to show time. One of my friends, a regular there, volunteers to go get his Fishman, I ask him to go ahead. Back to the mixer, start pushing buttons (might as well try something). All of a sudden feedback!
Never noticed the 'Break' buttom right under the main LED meters before - mutes everything! Had someone call the guy who had gone for the Fishman, and he was back before the OM started. How the button got pushed in is a mystery.

Today's chore (done): read the mixer manual again!

Yes. We had a sticky switch on the mixer output and after chasing everything I worked that in and out several times. Shazam! Fixed

When in doubt RTFM.

Similar stuff a couple of times. It happens if you play for 30 years...

Local gig a couple of weeks ago, got there and one of the mains was dead. Nothing...9V battery got no pop, that means dead speaker. Plugged in pair of smaller ones with 10" woofers, got it working, spare set intended for monitors dead too...never did figure that one out, he got it home and they worked perfect. Still do...I went over and did some troubleshooting, push the cone of the dead 15" in the mains, SCRATCH...scarred voice coil, had to replace it. A new Black Widow 15" is around $150...

I think I just convinced him to start transporting speakers face up or face down, instead of standing in normal playing position. That way when you hit a bump the speaker moves in the direction it normally does in use, and won't bang the voice coil against the housing and scratch it. I've been carrying my Kustom 2x12 and Super Reverb lying down since day one, 20 years later the Kustom is still working perfect. These mains were less than 10 years old. Food for thought...

"spare everything" I guess is the way to go, but having two of everything when moving gear sucks! I may look for a cheap 4-channel mixer as a spare.

Yep, spares are a good thing. I carry spare cables, loads if picks of course, a spare mic, 4 or 5 guitars, spare distortion pedal ( my old favorite Ibanez SD9 is getting flaky) spare 9V batteries, and we got lucky and had 2 pairs of speakers intended for monitors. If I had one a little easier to lug around I'd carry a spare amp...

OK...mine was funny now but at the time it wasn't, playing a new place and mgmt doesn't tell us about the acoustic band playing til when we were supposed to go on, so no biggie we talk with the other band and they're cool about letting us store our stuff to the side during their break. They get done and we're frantically setting up and we're good to go and as I tell the band let's go...nothing out of my amp. I check cables, power supply,everything and then I walk back to my amp and notice my stand by switch was off and I'm cursing to myself about this so I turn it on and tada...sound!!!! Needless to say we had a great show but those few min felt like an eternity getting something out of that amp....lol!!!!