1998StandardSG Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 As we all know, if you gig out often enough you're going to have equipment fail, which will need to be replaced or repaired; but never in all my years of playing have I had a weekend like this. Here's my story. I've been doing acoustic gigs lately and I wanted a little something to add to the "show" so I purchased a Digitech JamMan Looper Stereo (fantastic pedal). Working with the unit for a while I realized that there was a bit of a "learning curve" to it but with enough practice I got the hang of it. Played my gig Friday and it was awesome! Finishing up the night I began to load my car, said my goodbyes and thank yous, and got in my car and drove away. About a mile down the road I hit a bump and heard, "TINK TINK TINKTINKTINK" and kept driving not thinking anything of it... then I realized I left my pedal on my car. Went back in the morning and found it... destroyed. Sent it to the tech and the repair is going to be $70.00. Get to the gig Saturday... fifteen minutes before I go on I hear this loud buzz out of my pa speakers followed by a loud POP!! Yep, you guessed it... my pa head fried. Got another pa going and finished the gig. Said my goodbyes, packed my car, and started driving home. About two miles down the road I hear, "KAWAP!" and my windshield spiders.... nice... So my weekends gigs cost me a total of, roughly, $400.00 Please share your stories, or am I the only one that this stuff happens to haha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tman Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Condolences. Sounds like a lot. Mine happened in 1978. Was in a Rock and roll band in Arkansas and booked a gig in Camden Arkansas. At a bar and played the first song - Feel like makin love, Bad Company. The owner came up to us and cancelled the gig because he wanted a country band and we were rock. He and a few patrons forcefully kicked us 18-19 year olds out of there. We drove the 1 1/2 hours from Little Rock and got zero money. He told us to stuff the contract, we were welcome to sue. The other guitar player ran out of gas (yes we were definitely living paycheck to paycheck). I pulled up in my brand new Toyota Corolla that I received for high school graduation. I siphoned gas through my talk box tube. I played with that ferkin tube for years after that and gagged every time from the smell of gas. Didn't cost me $400 but nonetheless, I remember the story like it was yesterday. (I told this a while back but worth repeating) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1998StandardSG Posted July 4, 2013 Author Share Posted July 4, 2013 AH, sorry to hear about that! You have to love bar/club owners!!!! And you get the MacGyver award for using your talk box tube as a siphone lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Izzy Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Oh, man...I feel for you, 1998. Glad you found a way to snas up your set though. Would love to see the loop in action. I'ma go look for it on youtube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Different tales, same stories. I think that one way or another everybody's been there, done that, if they've been pickin' a while. We were luckier on that "we expected country and you're rock" on a New Year's gig back in the late '60s. Long, long drive out here to a VFW. The folks there recognized it was an unfortunate misunderstanding, we got paid and they had recorded music and enough sound system to keep up a good evening. We had a long drive home and felt bad about it - but forever good feelings about the VFW guys. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rct Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 As bad as they may have been when they were going on, I wouldn't trade any of those weekends, all the weekends, for anything. Motor on dude, they are what will eventually be the parts of the older gentleman sitting there as his ribs are marinating. rct Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 rct... Hope you're not talking about me. I'm still at work. Just got done "shooting" a 90-minute parade in the rain, now messing with pix, then off to "shoot" a rodeo. <grin> "Old" doesn't mean watching the BBQ cooking. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rct Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 I meant me, Milo. A delightful 4th on which my only responsibility is to make sure the ribs are done right. No band, no gigs, no running around like a nut on a flatbed in 97% humidity at 94 degrees doing I'm Your Captain/Closer To Home one more time. Have my SG next to me today, I hope everyone else does too! rct Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Actually just a Gretsch and a Dot in the office. <grin> Processing parade pix before heading to the rodeo, so no time for pickin' until Sunday, actually... Funny thing about the high plains range country. It literally rained on our July 4 parade, but everybody was still smilin'. Rain means grass, grass means green in more ways than one. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaysEpiphone Posted July 4, 2013 Share Posted July 4, 2013 Sorry about your trouble's 1968StanderdSG! It could have been worse tho. Yep, I've had my share of gig trouble's with gear to man. In my early years of playing in band's in the 1980's & 1990's it was more about just getting it all to work properly! We played many of our early gig's with the PA set-up incorrectly and alway's left the venue wondering why it sounded so bad and/or why I couldn't here myself sing over the stage level's. Things improved a lot after we weeded out the bad gear and talked to some guy's that actually did sound for a living in conversation's like.... "Oh, you guy's need a cross-over and wire up your speaker's in parallel so the ohm-age will be right for your power-amp". I went to Recording school in the late 1990's where I learned even more about sound and equipment etc... I still have problem's some time's but the most I have to deal with (besides the dumb thing's) now is a cable going bad on me. That very thing hapend to me this past week-end at a gig that I shared with a 4-piece act. I did prep for the show so I was ready but when an XLR cable that worked 3 days ago crap's out on the stage, I started switching mic's and channel's and then finely the cable. It make's things all confusing for the moment until you find the problem then your like oh man! Was that all it was? Fortunately the group was patent and the mic in question wasn't for the main singer, it all gelled great after I got a good XLR cable on the mic. I need to up-date my whole system and get all new cable's and such, some of my cable's are at-least 5 years old and all of them are regular-use quality. A working act should regularly replace/update there gear as road use will ware a sound system out in a mater of just a few year's or so, there maybe some exception's but its a good practice to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1998StandardSG Posted July 6, 2013 Author Share Posted July 6, 2013 Oh, man...I feel for you, 1998. Glad you found a way to snas up your set though. Would love to see the loop in action. I'ma go look for it on youtube. JamMan Stereo, it's a great pedal if you are doing solo work and want to add a "show" feel to your set. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1998StandardSG Posted July 6, 2013 Author Share Posted July 6, 2013 All your replies are fantastic and thanks for assuring me that I'm not the only one! I do have a sound question now!! I'm using a pv10 with an fx send and from that send I'm going into a y cable into a dual deltafex and a microveb4. After that I run each rack unit into a channel on the mixer (6&5).. What I'm experiencing is that the deltafex clips WAY TOO EARLY. I'm seriously on an input level of 1.5-2. What I'm trying to do is to keep the fx independent of one another so that I'm not feeding an fx unit into another. I don't really want to dedicate one unit to vocal and one to guitar but... It's looking like I'm going to have to use my inserts. Any suggestions on how to best use these units to get a great sound for solo acoustic? Solo acoustic rig: Taylor 214 JamMan Looper Stereo, Fishman Aura Spectra, Vocalist Live 3, PV10mixer, Furman XD-8, Alesis MicroVerb4, Peavey Dual DeltaFex, BBE 382i Sonic Maximizer, Yamaha 7000s, Peavey PR12s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1998StandardSG Posted July 6, 2013 Author Share Posted July 6, 2013 here is what it sounds like with just reverb but it is SOOOOOO tinny. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RowdyMoon Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 when you said tinny it reminded me of this Monty Python sketch..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gwXJsWHupg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 Really nice pickin', first to say... Okay, this is just from an old guy who's done various sorts of gigs for ages off and on... And I'll more than admit I'm pretty ignorant of the fancies. But for a solo guitar and even added vocal, I haven't the slightest idea what all that electronic stuff is supposed to do. And for a larger functioning session with a band, etc., I'll guarantee you know more in your little finger than I do. OTOH... For bedroom recording especially, why so much stuff? I think I got wider sound just running the line out from a little SS Kustom AE amp with the mike and guitar plugged in. Thence through a simple usb connector into the computer and it's pretty much "straight." Ain't likely folks who know what sound should be would figure it's recording quality, but it surely works nicely for checking practice sessions straight through. m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1998StandardSG Posted July 6, 2013 Author Share Posted July 6, 2013 when you said tinny it reminded me of this Monty Python sketch..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gwXJsWHupg Hello fellow Python lover!!! not a very woody sound, is it?! No, not at all! Quite tinny, actually! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1998StandardSG Posted July 6, 2013 Author Share Posted July 6, 2013 Really nice pickin', first to say... Okay, this is just from an old guy who's done various sorts of gigs for ages off and on... And I'll more than admit I'm pretty ignorant of the fancies. But for a solo guitar and even added vocal, I haven't the slightest idea what all that electronic stuff is supposed to do. And for a larger functioning session with a band, etc., I'll guarantee you know more in your little finger than I do. OTOH... For bedroom recording especially, why so much stuff? I think I got wider sound just running the line out from a little SS Kustom AE amp with the mike and guitar plugged in. Thence through a simple usb connector into the computer and it's pretty much "straight." Ain't likely folks who know what sound should be would figure it's recording quality, but it surely works nicely for checking practice sessions straight through. m Thank you for the compliments, I'm still learning though and have much more to learn. One being keeping a steady time and pace and not rush what I'm doing... which can definitely be heard in that video. I agree 100%, it is a LOT of gear for an acoustic gig. I do a medley of the better half of the Dark Side of the Moon album, Robert Plant's "Ship of Fools", and numerous other songs that are heavy on the effects. With the microverb4 and deltafex, I can get achieve the desired effect better than I could with my onboard effects of my Roland amp or PV10 mixer. I'm still working with it though and I am thinking about running them both dual mono so that I can control each effect so that I can blend it better in the mix. What I mean by dual mono is: There is a left and right output on these rack effects. if you go from your fx send into a y cable (into l & r) you can output l & r back into the board on separate channels (i.e. 5 & 6) so that channel 5 will control the level of one effect and channel six with control the level of the other. Do the same with the other unit (lots of y splitting) and I can control four fx. I'm horrible at explaining anything so I apologize if I'm talking in circles... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milod Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 Naah, you're not talking in circles. You're just playing a newer concept 'stedda plain old pickin' that I've not gotten into over the years. OTOH, in terms of what you're trying for... in effect are you creating something of a phase sorta wave that's strangling your output when it hits the board since you're hitting the recording from "both sides" but not true stereo? Again, I'm just a plain old guy nowadays after messing for years to see if "stuff" bought me anything and concluded that it bought me "stuff." Gonna IM... m Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1998StandardSG Posted July 6, 2013 Author Share Posted July 6, 2013 BUT, I'm not always using big reverb sounds on songs. For example, if I play "Blackbird" I only use a medium plate reverb with a quick decay. It's enough to fill up the space but not so much that it draws attention to itself in a negative way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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