When It Rains, It Pours....

[Bruce Weldy]

Nothing instructive or maybe even interesting below.....just more exploits of a Grumpy Old Sound Man.....so, read on at your own peril....you could be throwing away 3 minutes of your life that you'll never get back.

We've been doing a private party for a company every year in San Angelo. Great pay or we wouldn't do it.

So, we headed out Saturday morning for the 4 hour drive. We've played this event at two different venues for them. One is a big events hall in a 1800s Cavalry Stable and the other at the Country Club ballroom.. This was at the Country Club, so we just took one sub as it's not a huge room, but still gets full production as usual. We hadn't played the Club in about 3 years, so we plugged in the GPS and flew down the road. (IH10 is 80MPH out past Kerrville - so we were flying)

Roll up to the Club and walk in.....it doesn't look like I remembered at all. The gal took me in this little room that was about 40x40 .....FEET! And pointed to the floor in front of one of the walls. My jaw dropped, because I remembered a nice sized ballroom with a stage. I quickly walked through a few of the connected rooms trying to find the right place....nothing looked right at all. I finally asked her if there was another Country Club in town......yep. We weren't playing at the one that we did before.

We've never played in a place this small. After scoping it out, I decided that we would run with a mono stack. If the bass player wasn't running direct with no amp, we would have left the sub in the truck - it was that small. So, I picked the position on the wall behind the band. Got the PA set up and cranked up my trusty old rack mixed that I've done a couple of hundred show with over the last 6 years or so.

iPad wouldn't connect. Powered off and on...nope. Went to the truck and got my spare router....nope. Swapped ethernet cables....nope. Tried all three of my iPads...nope. Tablets were connecting to the router, but the board didn't want to respond. The lights at the ethernet control port were flashing correctly, but once again.....nope.

As you can imagine, here I am with no mixer at 4:30pm on a Saturday after driving 4 hours to the $4k gig. Yikes...the pressure was on.

I called a local music store - they didn't have rentals, but the guy gave me a number of a local sound company. Called the owner begged to get a mixer....any mixer. Fortunately, by this time I knew that I only needed to mic 3 vocals, acoustic and bass...maybe kick. So, anything with at least 6 channels.

He was just showing up to set up for a show and said he'd have one of his guys go find something if I could meet him at the warehouse.

Ran over there and they had and old school Mackie VLZ - no mains EQ and no effects. Didn't matter, I could do the show. Got back to the venue, plugged everbody up, did a quick sound check and decided to mic the kick after all. The mixer had 3 band EQ with sweepable mids. You use what ya' got, right?

Dialed 'em up and it was fine for the room.....so, turns out that it was a blessing to be in that small room where I didn't need to mic everything. Quietest this band has ever been, but the mix was great, sound was much better than I would have expected.

My job was all the worrying and scrambling to find a solution - the rest of the nigth I sat beside the stage with the board and make a couple of little changes as the night went on.

The company was happy with the outcome (this was weird for them too, because they do a bunch of giveaways for their 200 plus employees, but they were spead around though 4-5 different rooms. This was the only venue they could get even though they tried to book the week after last year's event.

The guy from the sound company came by and picked up the mixer at the club. $30 rental and we tipped him $20 for picking it up. It was a bargain.

So, I was most appreciative that a fellow sound company came through for us in our time of need.

They company provides up with hotel rooms, so we got up this morning and did another 4 hours of windshield time to get back home.

I just came in from taking the rack mixer apart and reseating all of the ribbon cables with a dose of DeOxit5, but no luck. Tomorrow, I'm going to try reset to factory default and reloading the firmware.

If that doesn't work, it'll be scramble time. I have a guy that might be able to borrow the some mixer I have from a guy that he does sound for....that would make it easy for the show a week from Tuesday - I can upload the scene that's saved in my iPad and make it all work. If not, I'll have to borrow a newer mixer from another friend, but the scene won't transfer.

Ultimately, if the firmware reload doesn't work, I'll be buying and building out a new rack mixer....lots of connectors and soldering.

Anyway, that's been my weekend.......I'm getting too old for this crap.

[Tom Smit]

Sheesh. Glad it worked out, for you, in the end.

[88h88]

I live in fear of a piece of kit going down to the point where I cart around an extra power amp because if I have it, everything will work flawlessly, right??

[Bruce Weldy]

I live in fear of a piece of kit going down to the point where I cart around an extra power amp because if I have it, everything will work flawlessly, right??

With my rig (in the trailer), I have extra power amps, a spare console, etc. I always carry a spare router in my truck - not so much for the router failing, but the thin power cable.

However, with this band I only take my mixer and go bag as we use their PA. Of course, when we're around here I can always run home and get something. But, driving 4 hours away, we had to fit everything and everybody in two pickups. So, other than the spare router, there was no redundancy.

Funny though, I've been really considering getting another newer model rack mixer, but haven't pulled the plug.

I'm heading out in a minute to put this one back together as I tore it down yesterday and need to put the panels back on. Then I'm going to wipe it back to factory default and reload the newest firmware. Hopefully, it had just gotten corrupted and this will fix it.

[Bruce Weldy]

Wiped it back to the factory default and reloaded the latest firmware version. It went as instructed (that never happens) and came up working. I've run it through a couple of power cycles and will do a few more just to put my mind at ease.

Was able to upload saved scenes from my iPad, so it's clean now and all of the old scenes from the last several years are gone....just the latest few made the cut.

Hopefully, the disaster is averted.

Now to get ready to sing some classic country in a duo show Wednesday. Yeehaw!

[Rich4349]

Now to get ready to sing some classic country in a duo show Wednesday.

You mean you have BOTH kinds of music over thar?

[Bruce Weldy]

Now to get ready to sing some classic country in a duo show Wednesday.

You mean you have BOTH kinds of music over thar?

Yep - Country AND Western!

I'm a bit of a both ends of the spectrum guy. I play the Les Paul through a Boogie for the Rock and Blues band doing Allman Brothers, etc.....then drag out the Tele through a Fender amp for the classic country. I do everything from Merle Haggard to George Jones and Ray Price.

I've recorded a Rock CD with my old band of originals and a solo country CD of my stuff.

The third leg is our annual Polka band....we do it every year for Wurstfest and play everything from AC/DC to ZZTop polka style. 7 guys from about 4 different bands. It's a hoot. We get to play on the big stage with full production. Adamson Line array, Radian monitors. It's called the Big Tent. Seats about 2000. I used the backline provided amp - usually a Fender Blues Deluxe and my Strat-style Godin this year. We do 8 performances during the 10 day run. One hour shows with a 15 minute swap over. And yes, in full lederhosen garb....