Has someone ever damaged your gear?

[rodl2005]

Gear... amp.
Back in about '78, a sax player knocked a beer off a a high shelf into my tube amp. She, the amp,( the sax player was/ is a she too) went off like a Dalek on self destruct mode. Blue arcing lights and even the not so mythical magic smoke.
Ended the night for that amp. Which was a made in Australia Bassman clone, Vase Bassman 120. Iirc.
Couple of weeks and $150 bucks later she was as good as new.

I learned to not put drinks anywhere near an amp.
Hasn't happened to me again

 

[dbsfgyd1]

My son was telling me about a bass player he is jamming with in the Bay Area who has a 78 Fender P. For some reason, it became very wet and the player's wife unknowingly put it in a gig bag. (Yep. Rode hard, put away wet) Some time later, the guy goes to retrieve the bass, and it has suffered extreme duress. The bass is saved, but not without harsh discoloration. And, it had stayed in tune.

For me, one of my son's high school friends dropped a Rickenbacker 620, and it carved a trophy divot out of it. Still played.

Anybody else?

Yes. The worst was I was playing my Stratocaster as an assistant sound guy hauling a mic stand tripped and the bottom on the mic stand took a dime size chip out of the bottom of the guitar. He offered to have it fixed, but really had no resources to pay for it for one, secondly, it was a limited run in that color and odds are it couldn’t be matched well enough to preserve the potential gain in value as a collectible.

 

[carsbybigd]

Had a buddy ask to borrow my BC Rich Mockingbird bass . Let him use it as my band had no up coming gigs . Got it back 3 weeks later , opened it up looked inside , looked good . About 2 weeks later I picked it up to play and it didnt feel right . Nothing jumped out at me but it just didnt have the same feel to it . Checked the serial # ( had my receipt from the store where I bought it new ) and sure enough the numbers didnt match ! Called him up and asked about it , he didnt know what I was talking about . Asked him to come by . About an hour later he came over ,again questioned him, he denied everything , until I pulled out my receipt and showed him . He said hang on , went to his car and brought in a case with my bass . Apparently he had knocked it over and damaged the head stock and the lower point and promptly started looking for an exact copy of my bass and bought a new one to replace mine .

 

[carsbybigd]

I told him that was completely unnecessary and said if he had just told me, it would have been forgiven . I took the imposter gave it to him , got mine back and he was all apologetic . I was a bit pissed that he had knocked it over but understood ( plus the fact that he had looked all over to find 1 just like the one he borrowed !) Needless to say that was the last time I ever let someone borrow a bass !

 

[One_Dude]

Not a bass, but rather my Epiphone EJ 200 acoustic guitar in pristine condition. It was at a local Bluegrass jam, and it was partly my fault because I leaned it against a bench instead of securing it while I was eating. The senior mother of one of the main players bumped the bench and down the guitar went. The damage is strictly cosmetic, but I was seriously pissed at myself for setting the stage to let it happen. I have always been very careful to protect my instruments, except this once, and it won't happen again.

Thump on,

One_Dude

 

[SAlcott]

I was playing a gig in a tiny Upper East Side club when a guy saw his ex through the window and went berserk. I couldn't get unplugged from the amp, and he ran into my 200 year old bass on his way out; $5000 in repairs that took 4 months. I don't worry too much about a ding on even my nicest bass guitar.

 

[roller]

My old SWR Triad cabinet was on consignment at a local music store. One of the guys who worked there was a bassist... and also happened to be an oxygen thief.

I got a call from someone else at the store that the 15 in my Triad was blown. Yup, turns out the "Mayor of Smartsville" blew the 15 (probably took it on a gig) and tried to snake out of it.

But not to worry -- I called their hand on it and they ended up compensating me for it.

Last time I did business with those cats.

 

[mongo2]

Late 70's a well known local guitarist/singer wanted to sit one night at a show but didn't have his guitar so I lent him mine for a few songs (I played guitar too). Half way through his last song he started banging the butt of my Telecaster against the wall instead of strumming. I haven't let anyone borrow an instrument since.

About 15 years later I lent a cabinet loaded with a 15" EV to a friend for their audition set and he somehow managed to rip the cone apart without telling me about it and without offering to fix it. Lost a driver and a friend that night. I never lent anyone anything after that.

 

[Killing Floor]

I have a gash on the back of a bass from a crash cymbal on a stand falling off a riser, hitting the bass that was on a guitar stand. I had a bass that a drummer tried to play by whacking it with his sticks. Tons of divots. At least it wasn’t a very valuable bass.

 

[TheReceder]

Bandmate failed to close a trailer door. I had an old 2x15 cab that went out and fortunately slid more than it rolled... scraped up but it still functioned.
Unfortunately, the guitar players Musicman head didn't do as well.

Tube heads seem less immune to gravity.

 

[Gorilla Fingers]

Had a guy snap the pickup selector switch off a lawsuit gold top LP copy. He paid for a new one.

I also loaned a bass and a guitar to a couple of friends for a show, only to have both get stolen from the club we were playing at. If that counts.

 

[smurfco]

I don’t have any real horror stories but I’m pretty lax with my gear. Anybody can play it if they want to, and unless they intentionally damage it or do something just really stupid I’m not going to get too upset about it. Things get knocked over, things fall out of stands, it happens. Nothing in my collection is really irreplaceable, and it’s all just stuff anyways. Have at it

 

[five7]

When I was running sound in the 90's, Leon Russell came to a venue in Golden Co. which was one of my house gigs. His bass player had the promoter call me and see if i could supply a bass. Being the good guy I am, I said sure and lent him my 65 jazz. I wasn't working that show as I was at another venue in Denver working that night. At the end of my show I called to tell to one of my sound guys to make sure and grab my bass. They couldn't find it and called me back to let me know. I got in my truck and flew down to Golden. When I got there, I found out the band was on the bus. Went and knocked and they let me on. "Where's my bass"? "Oh we were hoping we could use it a few more nights". Shook my head, grabbed my bass and left before I lost my temper. Heart was pounding.

 

[Inara]

I guess my worst one was when a roadie forgot to close the back of our gear truck after a show, and my bass flew out the back when he hit a bump on the interstate. It got run over by multiple vehicles at highway speeds, and basically nothing was salvageable. Hardshell case didn't help in this extreme instance lol. At least it was a cheapie. I also once had a drunk guy trip and spill his drink perfectly into the vents of my amp, which fried it. And I've had drunks stumble up on stage and knock basses over a few times, with no major damage from these incidents. Fortunately I haven't had any mishaps like this in quite a while.

 

[TheReceder]

Dumbest guitarist ever.

We were setting up and he was helping out by running mics and cables.
I had a hand built 7 ft folded horn with a single JBL E-140, it was a new rig so it didn't have a grill yet.
The guitarist hung the mic cord under my head, in front of the cab, and duct taped the Mic to the aluminum speaker dust cover denting it. Obviously, it didn't have a huge impact on the speaker performance, but it was like having a big tattoo on the front of my rig saying, hey look at me... I'm stupid. Worst thing is it was scratched up in the pattern of the windscreen so even after I popped it out with some masking tape it was still bugared up.

 

[P. Aaron]

Stinkin' cats clawed up the cloth exteriors of both bass cabinets. Annoying but, they still sound ok.

 

[P. Aaron]

When I was running sound in the 90's, Leon Russell came to a venue in Golden Co. which was one of my house gigs. His bass player had the promoter call me and see if i could supply a bass. Being the good guy I am, I said sure and lent him my 65 jazz. I wasn't working that show as I was at another venue in Denver working that night. At the end of my show I called to tell to one of my sound guys to make sure and grab my bass. They couldn't find it and called me back to let me know. I got in my truck and flew down to Golden. When I got there, I found out the band was on the bus. Went and knocked and they let me on. "Where's my bass"? "Oh we were hoping we could use it a few more nights". Shook my head, grabbed my bass and left before I lost my temper. Heart was pounding.

Trust NO one.

 

[Marko 1]

Worst happened to me, I supplied the trailer with PA and other gear for a band, but at the time didn't have a vehicle to pull it. The BL did, so I ended up just letting him keep it at his house. Well, it got stolen. Whoever did it abandoned the trailer on a country road so I got it back, but empty. Close to 7k I had in gear. I'm skipping some of a far-more complicated story so as to keep it short, but it was a situation where no insurance would cover it. In any case, I did replace most of it with better/updated stuff, though, so I don't miss most of it.

 

[Hounddog409]

2018, played a corporate gig at the George R. Brown convention center in Houston.

Sound check completed, 4003S on the stand. I was taping setlist on the floor in front of my monitor. Stagehand walks right through my bass and keeps going. Bass on the floor. Nice chunk on edge below nobs gone.

Dude didnt stop, didnt pick it up, no apology.

No functional damage, just urked at the douchbagary.

 

[JonathanPDX]

I had blues jammers blow out some 10's a couple of times in the past.

A drunk dancer at a biker club fell off a table, hit her head on my headstock, and landed on my cabinets, which titled an inch from tipping over (on top of her) and then fell back into position.

Same dancer ended the night swan-diving into the steel guitar and guitar rack, knocking everything over.

Sold a wireless unit to a blues guitarist. On our first gig (a festival) he threw the guitar in the air, it came straight down through his hands, landed on the transmitter, and it exploded into a million pieces.

At a gig a year or two ago a VERY large guest guitarist decided to sit on the (expensive vintage) guitar amp rather than a chair. He bent the cable into the input jack, which lead to all sorts of other damage and expensive repairs.