last night SUCKED

[Not Serial]

did a two nighter, friday sat for one of my favorite bands, if not my favorite band locally. these are truly great guys to sit in front of for four hours. excellent...you get the idea. i look forward to pushing faders for these guys, and thats rare for me.

 

friday went great, awesome show. however -

 

the venue we were in should be burnt to the ground. the last time i was in this venue doing sound was about 9 years ago, and back then they had a SINGLE 15A OUTLET for the stage area I KID YOU NOT. no possible way to tie into a service either. totally a joke. besides this, the stage area is just an awful setup; this place has a reputation for sounding like ass. almost all bands would have to run "PA on a stick" and at max TWO par cans - anymore and POP goes the breaker. NOBODY SOUNDED GOOD IN THERE, EVER.

 

i do not know exactly when, but at some point in the last couple years they installed a 220 outlet for the stage, i beleive a 100A panel. it LOOKS like a 100A hookup but looks can be decieving with incorrect wiring, which is the case (i found out).

 

so here i am friday, i have 2 3402 bridged into 2 mtl-1x's, and a 3402 dualed into mid/highs (ev, i dont know model# - two drivers/horn), 4 wedges run off of 2 3402's (rediculous) and 16 par cans (par 60 i beleive). basically a "little mini rock show" setup.

 

the 220 is hooked into a distro, a 50A breaker on each leg broke down to several 20A breakers each feeding a 15A duplex outlet (IT AINT MINE FOLKS!! beleive me, i know i know). after setup i see what the venue has for power by "power testing"

 

i eventually had all 16 par cans up at full power for ten minutes before show time, no problems. i figger i am good to go and forget about it. i am partially right.

 

friday goes well, awesome in fact. i really enjoyed the band as did the crowd. by third set i had the system 100% in the green everywhere and it absolutely pounded - and i am NOT kidding. even though all channels, subgroups, master and amp racks were never hitting yellow at all - i still managed to knock out a couple ceiling panels during the drum solo. this floored me. it wasnt all that loud either. the guitar player placed his drink on one of the 1x's and it prompty flipped off. i have never seen that happen before.

 

we all go home afterwards in the rare glow of a great show.

 

SATURDAY -

 

 

i have to get up early and sit through 9 hours of JUJU in blazing, sickening heat. i like JUJU - in fact JUJU is waay cool stuff, i wish i knew more about it but this heat was obscene. it aint right. band shows up with a k-mart PA and walmart instruments. music was ok. it is what it is.

 

didnt have time to go home and change clothes, drove straight to the friday night setup. ahh, air conditioning - thank god. i make it there 2 minutes before showtime. i hate crunches like that, i really - really hate that.

band walks in, i fire up the distro, and .........

 

THE WHOLE FRICKEN BUILDING GOES DOWN. emergency lights come on. i am not kidding the WHOLE FRICKEN BUILDING GOES DOWN BEFORE ANY SOUND OR LIGHTS HAPPEN. all eyes turn to me, because of course this is my doing. i can see because the emergency lights are on, and i quickly think about what could have happened - and nothing makes any sense. i wasnt making any sound, no cd even. no lights at all. if something horrible happened in the PA, i should have tripped breakers at the distro, nothing tripped.

 

within a minute i figure out if the WHOLE FRICKEN BUILDING WENT DOWN, something very bad happened far upstream from me. i find the manager who tells me this happened before ONCE, a month ago. he says the buildings MOTOR is old (does he mean the transformer, or is this terminology i do not understand?)

 

we go through the building and find service entrance after service entrance (how many does this place have, anyway, i counted five) but i never could figure out where this 100A outlet went to.

 

he calls an electrician. 9:45pm saturday night, electrician shows up. WTF? is that possible? i guess so.

 

he immediatley goes to this sidecar box off an addition service UPSTAIRS (!!!) the dual 50A breaker is NOT tripped. he shuts off the breaker and turns it back on. building comes back up. pa up. i am at a total loss to explain what happened. {censored}ty breaker? i dont know. it wasnt tripped.

 

10:15 show back on. my fault its late. i get much {censored} from everyone except the band and management as to the delay, and the heat because the AC went down with the building. no pizzas either, no ovens right?

 

band gets done with first set at 11:30. silence, no lights - starting up the cd player and........WHOLE FRICKEN BUILDING GOES DOWN A SECOND TIME. NO LIGHTS, NO MUSIC, AND THE POWER GOES DOWN FOR THE WHOLE BUILDING AGAIN.

 

 

all eyes are on me and yelling starts.

 

i fail to see how any of this is my doing, but i understand that morons can conclude its my fault.

 

manager come over and says when your ready to start i'll turn the breaker back on. ok.

 

back on, and something is terribly wrong. i can have 3 par cans on and i trip breakers on the distro. ok, voltage dropped to nothing - i get it. at this point i want to {censored}ing leave, so does the band. show declines at this point.

 

i go into LIMP MODE and run it real low, maybe 77db tops. 2 par cans. WTF IS GOING ON?

 

12:50 break time. silence. no lights. fire up cd player and you guessed it... the WHOLE {censored}ING BUILDING GOES DOWN A THIRD TIME. at this point i do not care anymore, lets pack it up and leave. {censored} it. band concurrs. cant do it, must play last set.

 

end of last set i TRY TO BRING THE WHOLE {censored}ING BUILDING DOWN. pounded the absolute living {censored} out of it (still green of course) voltage must have come back up because i have 16 par cans up 100% on chase and its ok, everything is fine. set ends close to 2am, cool pa down, shut pa off. tearing down stage and....

 

 

WHOLE {censored}ING BUILDING GOES DOWN.

[Mogwix]

Oh man hahahaha

[tubedude]

Wow!

[joel77]

I feel your pain, man!!

 

I hate places with poor electricity. They just suck! I don't think most owner/operators of these joints realize how dangerous this situation can be. If I was an ass I'd turn 'em all in to the electrical inspector. But I guess it's part of the job.

[Mogwix]

Similar situation working with a local sound comp, outdoor gig, full setup, lots of people. We have a portable stage (transport trailer with a custom cover, front is removable so it's a covered stage, awesome setup). I get my partner to turn on the generator and I plug in and power up. Everything's great, line voltage is steady and during soundcheck not so much as a cough or hiccup in the generator, steady she purrs.

 

So anyways, moments before show time as I'm playing CD's, power out. Oh thank god this didn't happen mid-set. Partner checks generator, out of fuel, so he gasses it up, and we're back in business. Halfway through the first set (between songs THANK GOD) power drops again. This time I go over with the assistant to check the generator. Out of fuel, what the? So I watch him put fuel in it and I realize he's only putting in little bits at a time. "ARE YOU TRYING TO SABATOGE THE SHOW??"

"I didn't want to use all the gas at once..."

"!??!?"

 

We fill it right up and for the next 5 hours the show runs full tilt and kicks like no other. Great turnout and massive praise all around. Apparently my partner thought putting in little bits at a time would save fuel? The guy who usually does the sound couldn't because he was off at another deal and told me to run this show.

[pro1-54]

Well, I don't have very many bad gigs as of late but last night was one of them.

The band does 4 - 40 min sets during the night. First 3 sets go off without a hitch. Went outside for the 3rd set break and upon returning the DJ is telling me he had to turn the monitor amps down because they were crackling loudly -hmm. I look at the monitor console and 4 channels are spitting out nastiness. Then all of a sudden, FOH goes out. I take a walk out to FOH and find that the board is freaking out worse than monitor world. I can smell fried components.

Ended up mixing the 4th set from the monitor console.

 

When the lights came up, I found the problem - someone managed to spill liquid into the console even though it was covered:mad:

[Craig Vecchione]

Yeah, that sounds like either a bad transformer or (much more dangerous) some part of the service wiring is hanging on by a thread and ready to open completely.

[Mogwix]

Originally posted by pro1-54 When the lights came up, I found the problem - someone managed to spill liquid into the console even though it was covered:mad:

Yep, no matter what you do, somewhere down the line some stupid-ass is going to spill something on your gear.

 

Little fact of life.

[IsildursBane]

Dealt with a bad transformer a couple weeks ago - had enough circuits on the one good leg to run sound, but not enough to do any lights.

 

The show was outside and started at 8:30pm.

 

-Dan.

[agedhorse]

Load should be balanced across all legs... forget that "sound all on one leg" theory, it's complete bull{censored}.

[IsildursBane]

Originally posted by agedhorse Load should be balanced across all legs... forget that "sound all on one leg" theory, it's complete bull{censored}.

 

Of the 3 legs, only one was providing 120V. One was 70V, the other 45V.

 

Along the lines of your comment, I've had problems splitting lights & sound onto different legs when running off a generator. A couple weeks ago, it just happened that our 4 light trees (4x500w Par64 per tree) were plugged into one leg and the sound into the other. When the lights were all turned on, it increased the load on the genny, which tried to compensate by increasing the power to both legs. The volt meter on the foh power conditioner was all over the place that night.

 

-Dan.

[belayslave]

man! original story sounds like a nightmare. i know the feeling...

 

was working at an outdoor festival last year. we were in a tent which was mostly enclosed and it was pissing with rain for day 1 & 2 of a 4 day festival.

 

all run off generators, and i'm not sure of the power of this generator, but it was a pretty decent size. Had a 3-phase outlet and whole bunch of single circuits. (btw i don't know too much about power at this stage.)

 

We had a 8 can light rig (Par60's) - run off the 3-phase. and approx. 5k FOH rig. + mons, FX racks FOH console etc. off various other circuits.

 

The generator had one big f-off cord coming out (3phase??) to a breaker/distro board.

 

also running off it was 2 chillers (i.e. beer chillers) which apparently draw about 13amps each.

 

So did a number of bands during the day fine. Only 1 beer chiller running.

 

night time, pouring with rain. second chiller gets fired up, pull the trigger on it and the whole rig - lights, audio, beer chillers, freezer truck, coffee tent etc - everything around our stage dies!

simple to fix as it was purely a breaker which had tripped. but a pain non the less. and it happened lots of times during the night. and a few times with only 1 chiller running and lights not at 100% either.

 

electrician (who had had way too many drugs for the whole festival) was bugger all help, mentioned something about a grounding problem. the grounding pole was a 1/4' rod stuck into the ground next to generator. don't know how far it went in but it stuck above ground a lot.

 

so either it was drawing way to much power or it was the grounding problem. anyone any ideas with the limited info i could give??

[MDLMUSIC]

I once played a wedding reception gig in the ballroom of a fancy (Well, fancy for Lancaster) hotel. About halfway into our first set, the power goes out. The manager goes and resets the breakers and we start back up. A few minutes later, the power goes out again. The manager comes over and tells us that we need to take a break because every time they start the coffeemaker, the combination of the band and the coffeemaker is too much for the antiquated electrical system to handle. WTF??!??

 

So, believe it or not, we had to work our breaks around the kitchen staff's need to make more coffee.

 

Incredible...

[agedhorse]

Originally posted by IsildursBane Of the 3 legs, only one was providing 120V. One was 70V, the other 45V. Along the lines of your comment, I've had problems splitting lights & sound onto different legs when running off a generator. A couple weeks ago, it just happened that our 4 light trees (4x500w Par64 per tree) were plugged into one leg and the sound into the other. When the lights were all turned on, it increased the load on the genny, which tried to compensate by increasing the power to both legs. The volt meter on the foh power conditioner was all over the place that night. -Dan.

 

Those measurements indicate a complete failure somewhere. I would not connect to a source like that since there is always a possibility that you will experience voltage rise under load due to the fault that caused the imbalance.

 

Splitting lights & sound like that will cause terrible regulation problems in a smaller generator where the load is a large % of the capacity. It's due to the way the voltage regulation (field compensation) is accomplished. It's not THAT problem with the utility power since your load is such a small % of the capacity but the neutral impedance will cause a similar effect (especially on 3 phase) and noise issues can be magnified.