Phil O'Keefe Posted December 5, 2007 Share Posted December 5, 2007 So I'm in the middle of a session last night, and started hearing this strange buzzing / shorting out sound, looked in the direction it was coming from, and my 17" CRT for my Gigastudio / softsynth computer is totally freaking out. As I start to get up and walk over to it, one of the clients says "it's smoking". And it was - a fairly large amount of smoke was starting to come out of the top of it. I reached down and unplugged it, then disconnected it from the computer and took it outside... It stank too. Today I went down and got a LCD display to replace it. That only leaves me with two remaining CRT's - one on one of my internet machines, and one on my office machine; with LCD's on my laptop, three for my main DAW, one for my wife's Mac, and now one for the softsynth computer. I've had CRT monitors die on me before, but never in quite so spectacular a manner, and never in front of a client. Made me nervous. I think I'll probably replace my remaining two CRT's sooner rather than later... If that monitor was left unattended (say, left on overnight to do backups or something) when that happened, it might have caused a fire. Has anyone else had any gear die a spectacular death right in front of a client before? If so, please tell us your horror stories... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 No, not in front of a client. But one of the few times - and the last time - I left the guitar strings unclipped and hanging out on my headstock, I bent down during rehearsal to adjust something. One of the unclipped strings somehow stuck into the electrical socket on the wall. This resulted in a zap, some stinky black smoke, and a fried guitar string. Damn!!! Instantly noticed by the rest of the band, too. Those CRTs have a lot of electricity coursing through them, and with prices on flat-screen monitors the way they are... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 ...it really doesn't make sense to use anything else - especially considering all their advantages - no EMI / RFI interference to cause buzz and hum on your gtr tracks, less energy consumption, less radiated heat, etc. etc. Please let me know if I left anything out while completing your sentence Ken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 BTW, that guitar story sounds scary! Were you holding the strings when it hit the AC outlet - did you get zapped? I've gotten hit by AC hard a couple of times - once on camera in mid-gig, where it was just a source of amusement for the rest of the band later (it snapped my head back pretty hard when I went up to sing - big blue spark visible on the video), and once where it dang near killed me... but that's a story for another time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KHAN Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Not a studio story, but I was tuning my Strat a few minutes before a show. And in front of about 1500 people, my speaker cab that was tilted back against my rack fell back and knocked over my Les Paul. Snapped the headstock almost completely off. :mad::mad: I'm a moron. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 Hey Khan, great to see you. Gibson headstocks are their weak link. Did you tell the audience that you were rehearsing for the "Who-esque" big finale? I was at a rehersal one night, and my Ovation was sitting on a gtr stand a few feet to the side of my amp. We finished a song, and I turned around to say something to the drummer; just in time to watch the neck on the Ovation snap. No one was anywhere near the thing (and if I hadn't turned around and watched it happen with my own two eyes, I might have suspected otherwise...) Turns out it had a bad neck / heel glue joint, and it just snapped. Either that, or it just couldn't withstand teh brootal jamz we were laying down... BTW, in fairness, Kaman sent me a new one - actually a model higher than the one that was defective... but only after I got shoddy "repairs" done by two authorized service centers that only made things worse - and it's not easy to make a guitar with a broken neck "worse". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KHAN Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Hi Phil! I don't post too much anymore, but I've been reading. Great job with the forum! ` Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members D Charles Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 I've witnessed a couple of Marshall amps and had an Orange amp do some sort of fireworks, but never a CRT. I finally got an LCD for my DAW, not because of a failure, but because these old eyes are getting weird and Sonar went to such small graphics. Still got the 15" CRT on the net computer. It's got this weird horizontal line where text is compressed so it's thinking about giving up. I've got this huge massive 17" CRT that will be taking it's place. Thing is, you could land a small airplane on the space it takes up. Ken, I've been playing guitars and around wall outlets on a regular basis for almost 39 years and I've never....... Thank God you weren't touching the string at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members D Charles Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Khan, cool to see you! You remember me don't you? (There's eleventy nine hundred seventy five geetar pickers in Nashburg...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 ...it really doesn't make sense to use anything else - especially considering all their advantages - no EMI / RFI interference to cause buzz and hum on your gtr tracks, less energy consumption, less radiated heat, etc. etc. Please let me know if I left anything out while completing your sentence Ken. You did not leaf anything out!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Ken, I've been playing guitars and around wall outlets on a regular basis for almost 39 years and I've never....... Thank God you weren't touching the string at the time. Y'know what's weird about that is that I almost never leave the strings unclipped. I was just running late, and didn't want to waste any more time in rehearsal. And yeah, I'm so happy I wasn't touching the string. Talk about strange. Whewwww!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Hi Phil! I don't post too much anymore, but I've been reading. Great job with the forum! ` Post more, dammit!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KHAN Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 DC of course I remember you from Musicplayer and from Lee's What The...? forum. I used to post a lot more back then. But I realized had actually had nothing to say most of the time. Ken. Nice to talk to you. I'll try to post more often. Now if I could only find those animated spam gifs. :phil: In the mean time, please enjoy the definitive version of Stairway To Heaven. [YOUTUBE]3WfoccRna6I[/YOUTUBE] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 That's BRILLIANT!!! :phil: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GZsound Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 One of the first things they taught us in Electronics school was that all electronic equipment is made out of smoke.. And if you EVER let the smoke out......it won't work anymore. I once had a mixer overheat so bad it started melting the plastic knobs before catching on fire and giving out a huge THUMP! that popped two of my Sunn 15" PA speakers.... Back about 1977. I think it was a Tangent board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 One of the first things they taught us in Electronics school was that all electronic equipment is made out of smoke.. And if you EVER let the smoke out......it won't work anymore. I haven't heard that in YEARS! Sorry about your Tangent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dean Roddey Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 The wierdest thing I hever had happen with a CRT monitor was back when I bought a 21" CRT, back in the day when a 21" CRT was freaking huge and extremely heavy. I wrestled this monstrosity out of the store and into the car and out of the car and into the house and out of the enormous box and onto the desk. It obviously got all kinds of banging around during all this. I hooked it up and it came and looked great and I was all happy. So I go get a cup of coffee and come back and sit down and then sit my coffee cup down, and it taps the the side of the monitor, so softly that I'd have had a hard time doing it any more softly if I'd tried to, and the monitor blinks off and won't come back on. There's a big Sony place here in Silicon Valley and I had to take it there. So I had to wrestle it back into the car and over there to get it fixed. It turns out that an internal power cable came loose. So all that banging around didn't do it, but that itty bitty tap with the coffee cup did. What are the odds? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 Sorry Dean... but I was picturing that in my mind, and it was kind of like the Pinto scene in the B-movie Top Secret... you know, everything is blowing up all around it and the Pinto sails through unscathed, but at the end, something barely taps the Pinto's bumper and .....ka-BOOM! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members opultaM Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 No, not in front of a client. But one of the few times - and the last time - I left the guitar strings unclipped and hanging out on my headstock, I bent down during rehearsal to adjust something. One of the unclipped strings somehow stuck into the electrical socket on the wall. This resulted in a zap, some stinky black smoke, and a fried guitar string. Damn!!! Instantly noticed by the rest of the band, too. QUOTE] Almost the same thing happened to me. During hte last song of our show, i broke a string on my other guitarist's backup guitar (I had already gone through my main guitar and my backup). The string hung down and when I bent down to adjust a pedal, it went straight into the open socket on my board. A bright white light just shot straight up in front of me, followed by a crumbling bright red string. This was right around the time that Great White killed themselves and others with pyrotechniks. So I went up to the club owner afterwards and apologized, telling him I had no intention of burning his club down Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DontLetMeDrown Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 The wierdest thing I hever had happen with a CRT monitor was back when I bought a 21" CRT, back in the day when a 21" CRT was freaking huge and extremely heavy. I wrestled this monstrosity out of the store and into the car and out of the car and into the house and out of the enormous box and onto the desk. It obviously got all kinds of banging around during all this. I hooked it up and it came and looked great and I was all happy. So I go get a cup of coffee and come back and sit down and then sit my coffee cup down, and it taps the the side of the monitor, so softly that I'd have had a hard time doing it any more softly if I'd tried to, and the monitor blinks off and won't come back on.There's a big Sony place here in Silicon Valley and I had to take it there. So I had to wrestle it back into the car and over there to get it fixed. It turns out that an internal power cable came loose. So all that banging around didn't do it, but that itty bitty tap with the coffee cup did. What are the odds? lol. This thread is hilarious. Keep em coming:cop: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MrJoshua Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 It wasn't that spectacular, but I ran sound for a band here locally at a small gig (about 50 people at a private party). The band was late, so I was running CDs through my system to keep people happy while the band setup. I have two DI boxes for the keyboard player, and he plugs the first keyboard in - no problem. He plugs the second keyboard in - HUGE pop through the system (even though the channel was muted and the trim and fader were both all the way down, the mains were up for the CDs) and two channels on my Mackie died. The only thing I've been able to figure was that the outlets, which I thought were on the same circuit, were actually on different circuits and we had a ground problem. I found out later that the guitarist's mic was shocking him (why he didn't say anything at the time I never found out) so I strongly suspect that it was a ground loop. I engaged the ground lift on the DI (which I should have done to begin with) and switched the keyboards to different channels, and the rest of the gig went very well. And the next day my Allen & Heath MixWiz showed up anyway, so losing two channels on the old Mackie wasn't too bad. I did have one other experience. My old band was playing a benefit show for a local club that burned down. We were about halfway through our last song ("Where Is My Mind?" by the Pixies) and I'd been doing my normal jump-around-like-a-fool act, but on this song I thought my amp sounded kind of funny for some reason. So I squatted a bit to get my head closer to speaker level, and my knee snapped. Dislocated kneecap - my knee bent sideways and I went straight down on top of my Warwick 5-string. Had to finish the song lying on my back in the middle of the stage. Thankfully the bass pulled through like a real trooper, but I got to leave in an ambulance. Thank goodness it was our last song! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted December 5, 2007 Author Share Posted December 5, 2007 Thank you and good night! What a way to leave the stage... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Danny (NS::U) Posted December 7, 2007 Members Share Posted December 7, 2007 One of the first things they taught us in Electronics school was that all electronic equipment is made out of smoke.. And if you EVER let the smoke out......it won't work anymore. It's absolutely true! Cables carry smoke between devices. That's why "oxygen free" copper is so important. You don't want to dilute the smoke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members PKO Posted December 7, 2007 Members Share Posted December 7, 2007 So I'm in the middle of a session last night, and started hearing this strange buzzing / shorting out sound, looked in the direction it was coming from, and my 17" CRT for my Gigastudio / softsynth computer is totally freaking out. As I start to get up and walk over to it, one of the clients says "it's smoking". And it was - a fairly large amount of smoke was starting to come out of the top of it. I reached down and unplugged it, then disconnected it from the computer and took it outside... It stank too. Today I went down and got a LCD display to replace it. That only leaves me with two remaining CRT's - one on one of my internet machines, and one on my office machine; with LCD's on my laptop, three for my main DAW, one for my wife's Mac, and now one for the softsynth computer. I've had CRT monitors die on me before, but never in quite so spectacular a manner, and never in front of a client. Made me nervous. I think I'll probably replace my remaining two CRT's sooner rather than later... If that monitor was left unattended (say, left on overnight to do backups or something) when that happened, it might have caused a fire. Has anyone else had any gear die a spectacular death right in front of a client before? If so, please tell us your horror stories... A couple year's ago I was at a motorsports part's store and when the guy was putting me into their computer the crt next to his started smoking and then a flame started in the back of it.The other sale's guy was about to throw a cup of water on it and I screamed "UNPLUG IT FIRST"!.I actually could smell something burning when I walked up to the counter..........right before it started smoking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members offramp Posted December 7, 2007 Members Share Posted December 7, 2007 Thank you and good night! What a way to leave the stage... Bet that's the last time someone told him to "break a leg" before a gig. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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