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Gear Disasters Thread

#21
Our band hosted open jams for several years. One night I decided to bring my pristine '75 Super Reverb amp to play with. As we were tearing down & loading out I was carrying it, with both hands, in front of me, amp facing forward, starting down the two steps off the stage and someone had left a guitar case laying on the floor in front of the stairs. I tripped on it, couldn't get my balance, and I and the amp went forward, all the way to the floor. The amp landed flat on its face, I landed on top of the amp & about broke my kneecap on the floor. I had visions of the cabinet being smashed, and of course the silver panel had to be mangled, as fragile as they are. But once I had caught my breath and took the cover off the amp...it was unscathed. The only damage was to the slip cover where the knobs had cut holes in it, and one badly bruised knee.
 
#23
A ridiculous stack of speakers (Avatar 1x15, 1x12, 2x10) with and Eden WT550 on top and an auralex gramma underneath. I left them in our practice space, it seemed sturdy enough. Little did I know the air conditioning broke and it got very hot, enough so that the gramma sagged and the whole stack went careening off into the middle of the room. I completely destroyed a mic stand and the eden took out our snake with it's face, bent the snot out of it and broke 4 or 5 of the sockets. The Eden was literally undamaged, in fact my whole rig was just fine... stacked up a more sane set of speakers and that was it... that was 8 years ago and that amp still works like crazy.

I also one time forgot to put a 2x10 hartke cab in my trunk and backed into it with my car.. also worked fine but had a nice chunk taken out of it.
 
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#24
kcole4001 said:
This may be an suitable reaction to a drink on your amp:
Click to expand...
What should I have done here? This is my (fragile?) 34 lb 2x12 with a 3 lb TH-350 on top that I supplied as backline for a multiband festival :nailbiting: :

AmpSit.jpg
 
#26
I think going with hollow points is a bit of overkill....... :laugh:

In that case i would have indicated from side stage to get off the amp and cab. If he didn't get the hint i'd have politely explained between songs that it's a fragile unit and not a seat. I see this as different to the drink thing as so many people think amps are fine to sit on, whereas anyone with half a brain knows not to put drinks on gear. In saying that, if he continued to sit on it after being asked to stay off then I'd go up and kill his power, disconnect the amp and leave him with just the cab as a seat.

I don't have any problems in walking on stage to deal with issues when other people are using my gear. If you're polite and respectful of my gear you'll never see me on stage unless you ask for some help. If you're not, you'll soon be playing unplugged.

Apologies for the off-topic......
 
#28
kcole4001 said:
Same solution (thanks to Chef, who originally posted this)

679040_zps7m6xhsj5.gif


All ya gotta do is pull back the slide, the guy should get the hint....
Click to expand...

Just make sure you use proper stance if you pull the trigger, otherwise you might cold cock yourself.

Back on topic.

Probably the worst thing that happened to me was a cold solder joint in a new SRW head. Had to use a guitar combo amp with the regular speakers unplugged, the speaker out went into an 8x10 bass cab. Worked fine.
 
#29
Session1969 said:
Last weekend, my tuner vibrated off my amp and turned my pre- gain all the way down as it fell. It took an entire song without bass before I figured out why I had no volume.
Click to expand...
I had a similar panic not too long ago. I had a (sealed) water bottle sitting on top of my rig. The whole thing has no vents at the top, and the power section is in the bottom of the cabinet, so the head is actually just a preamp. The on/off switch for the powered cabinet is on an angled panel at the back of the cabinet. I can get fairly animated during songs, which means that stepping on the tuner at the wrong time does happen. When my sound disappeared, I assumed this was what happened. It wasn't, and I spent the rest of the song messing around with everything I could think of to get the sound back on. No FOH support, by the way, so when my amp got silent, there was no bass. Finally, I looked at the back of the amp to see if somehow the cables had become unplugged or gotten loose. There was the still sealed water bottle, upside down, suspended in the cables and neatly resting on the now turned off switch to the powered cabinet. We were playing outside, and a gust of wind had blown through just exactly right to tip the bottle over. So much for being smart enough to keep it sealed.

Moral of this story - don't put anything on top of your amp, even if it cannot spill or make a mess. It can still make a mess.
 
#31
Gaolee said:
I had a (sealed) water bottle sitting on top of my rig.
So much for being smart enough to keep it sealed.

Moral of this story - don't put anything on top of your amp, even if it cannot spill or make a mess. It can still make a mess.
Click to expand...

I agree, particularly after hearing of John Swartz's episode. Even if it's a sealed water bottle, in a hot room or outside on a hot day the condensation can produce quite a bit of water on top of your amp. I wouldn't have even thought about that prior to reading his post. Thanks for sharing that one John.
 
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#33
Gaolee said:
There was the still sealed water bottle, upside down, suspended in the cables and neatly resting on the now turned off switch to the powered cabinet. We were playing outside, and a gust of wind had blown through just exactly right to tip the bottle over. So much for being smart enough to keep it sealed.

Moral of this story - don't put anything on top of your amp, even if it cannot spill or make a mess. It can still make a mess.
Click to expand...
Why don't they put cup holders in cabs?
 
#36
I had an incident quite a few years ago. I got the chance to tour for a metal band for 3 1/2 months straight. To keep this short, a company who shall not be named, gave me an awesome endorsement deal but when it came time to purchase a rig with the endorsement deal, they were unable to assist me and didn't seem to give two craps. I was ready to drop some money on a 4x10 cab and amp for this tour and mark this tour as my "welcome to the family" kind of thing. Life is funny at times and has a sense of humor... So, as a last second choice, I had to buy an extremely used rig from a guitar shop in New York before the tour. I had sworn off this company but my only option was to buy a extremely beat up rig from the same company. It was the only option I had at the time and considering I needed a rig within 3 hours of doing a single practice with the band before we hit the road for the tours the next day.

Fast forward 2 1/2 months, this rig has been giving me problems. Strange volume swells, random noises, you name it. We had just finished one tour ending in California, the next tour started the next day in California as well. So here we are, headlining, first show on the new tour and on the last song of the set, my amp dies. I was beyond furious. So, here I am on stage, trying everything I can to fix the issue but nothing seemed to work. In a moment of pure rage, and without actually thinking it through, I slammed my hands into the amp, pushing the amp backwards. What I didn't seem to notice is that the stage had a 3 foot drop right behind my rig, not just to the stage floor, but 3 feet past the stage floor to the actual floor. So, there goes the amp, crashing down behind the stage in the darkness, and me looking like an idiot.

After that, I just took my bass off and proceed to do vocals with the singer and head bang on stage. The set ends, show is over, I grab my stuff while the guitarist is asking me what happened. Told him what was going on and he gives me some friendly crap about the issue. But wouldn't you know it, life strikes again. I plug everything back up, amp turns on. I play a few notes to test it and it was working.

The kicker is that for the last month of touring, all the problems I had been dealing with were gone after one hulk smash. After the tour was over, I took the rig back to same shop I got it from and got a little over half of my money back. I still wonder what ever happened to that rig but still to this day, I have sworn off anything from that company for fearing that it's cursed.
 

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