basilh
From:
United Kingdom
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Posted 31 Jul 2010 7:57 pm |
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Maybe this SHOULD belong in electronics, but it does relate to my making music and playing in a live situation.
55 year playing and tonight I got caught out "Big Time".
Just before the soundcheck one of our road crew told me he had to plug in the power supply to my effects unit as it had come unplugged when they set it up. I promptly checked it to find that the 15volt AC supply for my ProFex II had been plugged into my Axon II Midi guitar controller that worked on 12vAC. I switched off the Axon, unplugged the supply from the mains (You should ALWAYS unplug power supplies from the mains first as a no load situation can easily blow them) and reconnected correctly.
Apparently no harm done. I checked my midi on my Tele, checked the guitar sound and checked my steel guitar.
At this point I should mention that midi, electric guitar and pedal steel are all going through a STEREO Morley pedal.
I'm sure you'll appreciate that when you check sound individually it's just with the pedal barely on. anyway I'm waffling.:
At the start of the show I immediately noticed a lack of volume from all three inputs with a leaning towards the Electric guitar being the loudest, the Midi second and the steel very much quieter, with my volume pedal full on. I initially suspected batteries in either the pedal, splitter-box, graphic pedal or guitar LoZ matching unit. Bright led's all 'round ruled this possibility out.
As I am the only band on stage it was not possible to stop playing and check everything, so over the next few tunes I surreptitiously altered the ins and outs trying every possible combination to try and isolate the fault.. 40 minutes of hell later I had about 1 1/2 minutes to check the amp whilst Bob made an announcement, I turned most knobs and returned them to original positions just in case, and maybe dislodge dust on the track or similar foreign bodies.
Upon "Twiddling" the input knob on my Profex I discovered that it had previously fallen off and been put on incorrectly, In fact what was my NORMAL position of 3 O'Clock was now in effect 9 O'Clock so instead having the volume on the input at three quarters it was only a quarter on..totally making the eq, compression and reverb etc. FUBAR.
It wasn't the roadies fault, it was the lighting engineer who spotted it on the ground and refitted it.
No excuses, I should have checked more thoroughly. Had I played a few licks and looked at the green LED on the input of the Profex I would have seen that it WASN'T being driven sufficiently. One can't turn all controls off and then reset them before every performance, that would be unnecessarily complicated, BUT one could be more diligent, AND I WILL. |
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