Awesome gig today.....

[Sg-ocaster]

NOT!!! Ugh....played a private party today. One of those under a pavillion with orange cords run to the stage deals.
We get there and I imediatly realize I cant run my rack of Crest amps off a 16ga cord so I ran my 12ga twist locks out to power. Decided to just use one of the orange leads to run the powered monitors we use. The PA is run off the house wiring and the orange cord from a pole barn. Fire up the monitors and smoke belows out. There was somekind of back feed between the pole barn panel and the house wiring were I drew the amp rack from that took out the powered wedges and backfed to the front rack and took out my Ashly double 31 EQ with it.
After scrambling to figure something out Im forced to abandone monitors and go without, by this time Im stressed and getting a headache and barking several F flavored phrases and its time to start, I have no time to get dressed or even do a sound check, so we have to start right up with only a line check. First few songs are plaqued with FOH feedback till the soundman got it straight. Then we played a whole night blind no vocals what so ever on stage, up front we hear a faint twinkle of vocals off the front, but the bass player and drummer cant hear squat, so there is blunders throughout the night.
I should know better too test outlets too as years ago I had power supplied with Grd and hot reversed at one of these type of gigs which nearly electrocuted me and blew out the main cabs.
Ugh.....sometimes I gotta vent.

 

[Vinsanitizer]

Lemme guess: it was in someone's back yard and there were less than 20 people there. You took the gig because, "hey - might as well, it's a chance to get out and play in front of some people. Plus, free food & drinks!", right?

Anyway,

I call those "pop-up stages". I learned my lessons early-on from those embarrassing wastes of time.

Oh - and renting gear for gigs. I think I did that twice: once was a Marshall (2203/4) half stack that didn't make it through the first set before it blew up. The other was a 3-way speaker PA system: the horns blew during the sound check 30 mins before Go time.

You live and learn. Don't do that no more, see.

 

[Sg-ocaster]

Not so much, we are booked pretty steady, they saw us and liked us and wanted us at thier party. We were paid our normal rate(plus food and drinks) . Im just glad it wasnt the FOH that got toasted. Now I got upcoming dates to fill and no wedges...gonna have to dig up anopther ashly EQ and run my backup mains as side fill monitors which is a PITA cause now I gotta drag out another amp rack.
For a long time I was testing outlets etc... with a multimeter. Caught one club that had 183V on a 110V outlet. I just got relaxed and stopped doing so and paid big time for it today.

 

[Crikey]

Expensive lesson.
So when uou use a multimeter and find electrical issues, how do you rectify those before you plug in?

 

[South Park]

sub panels that are added on don't always meet the code , you can test them for voltage thats about it

 

[Sg-ocaster]

Generally If I find issues Ill attempt to hunt for other outlets or ask to pull the cover on the panel to look. Usually its a miss wired outlet grd/hot reversed or hot/neutral reversed etc.....or a loose neutral in a 2circuit quad type thing.
The 183V club I put the system back in the truck and used a single spare amp and my backup mains and board...no subs and they got what they got and we never booked there again. I forget were I drew power from.
Ive tried to avoid having to run a 220 power tap/panel etc... as it gets to be a PITA and with LED lights I seem to get away without one. But I may build one to keep in the truck incase of disaster wiring.

 

[Sg-ocaster]

Tonight we assess the damage. So far I know one wedge has 3 fried ICs on the input board. We have to pull out the FOH rack and wedges and see whats gotta be repaired. Ugh.....