Seeing others play barefoot scares me.

[Oddly]

Everyone probably has pasty white feet on the Emerald Isle

Hah! Very true! That explains it.

 

[Gringo Basso]

Anyone from L.A. remember Rik L. Rick from F-Word? That dude never wore shoes 24-7/365 walking around Hollywood, onstage, anywhere. Strange dude, RIP.

 

[ghostinthemach]

Never been comfortable bare foot.
Drives my wife crazy (the original barefoot country girl). Fortunately I've always had this quirk. Another reason I think I'm a born bassist. It's in my dna.

 

[Fat Freddy]

Ronnie Van Zant used to sing barefoot a lot....

Why?.....

"I like to feel the stage burn".....

Can't argue with that really....

 

[Engle]

This^ is the reason I won't buy a guitar w/o a cover for the vibrato bridge on the back.

Recently I found a nice guitar, but the only thing wrong was no cover on the back.
Searches for where to buy one were fruitless, so I passed.

How people lose those kind of baffles me.
OK not really, they take it off & never put it back, but why?

Just make a cover out of an old LP!

 

[SouthLatitude]

Electric outlet tester, stray voltage tester, rubber soled footwear, tools of the trade when working with electricity. Your gear gets moved, bumped around, wires get pulled, coiled & uncoiled, wear & tear leads to potential equipment damage & failure. The venue, notoriously the bars... are all the outlets wired properly? damaged? are they labeled for current load? who checked them? what did the last band do to them? Gear needs solid grounding, you need to be insulated.

 

[Axtman]

Everyone knows that bars always have the most code compliant electrical wiring! ;-)

 

[crossthestyx]

I don't see any great danger. Have never heard of people getting electrocuted just by playing barefoot. I guess it could happen if he was standing in a puddle of beer. However I see the real danger being if you have ugly feet, or haven't trimmed those yellow toe nails in 3 years, and you climb trees regularly. If your buddies band room smells like dirty feet, well.. I guess you know the reason.

 

[Spectrum]

When I was a teenager my band's rhythm guitarist had a kickass old Fender tube head and a 4x10 Celestion cab. I'm pretty sure it had a 2-prong plug. Playing through it one day in the concrete-floored basement of the practice building I noticed that the strings would give me a fair to midland tingling sensation, and that was with shoes on! At the time I was too dumb to know how dangerous that was, lost touch with that guy a looong time ago, but I hope he's okay and that that awesome amp got a proper repair.

I think the majority get it from coal.

Coal, nuclear, gas, etc. all use heated water to make the 'trons go zoom.

 

[verstft]

Serious questions. Has anybody ever gotten shocked from their bass? My understanding was that powered microphones can be very dangerous if you have a ground issue and it touches your lips. Also, filter caps in an amplifier can be lethal if they don't bleed and discharge properly. How would you create a loop with your guitar or bass though?

 

[gln1955]

Electrocution aside, there's a place we play that has a carpeted stage that is sticky from all of the beer and other crap that's been spilled on it. It's so gross I don't even want to pick things up from it. No way I'm barefoot on that stage.

 

[Slough Feg Bass]

when I play pool parties and beach parties, I will play barefoot no problem.
Not in bars / nightclubs though...those stages often have splinters.
at the rehearsal space I have a nice pair of slippers I wear.

 

[Spectrum]

Serious questions. Has anybody ever gotten shocked from their bass?

See my post above:

When I was a teenager my band's rhythm guitarist had a kickass old Fender tube head and a 4x10 Celestion cab. I'm pretty sure it had a 2-prong plug. Playing through it one day in the concrete-floored basement of the practice building I noticed that the strings would give me a fair to midland tingling sensation, and that was with shoes on! At the time I was too dumb to know how dangerous that was, lost touch with that guy a looong time ago, but I hope he's okay and that that awesome amp got a proper repair.

I should add that my usual gig apparel includes long pants and biker boots. I hate flip flops and sandals; but I will wear them to practice when it's stupid hot and humid out. Never for a performance.

 

[pcake]

keep in mind that sometimes your rig may have a 3 prong plug, but the electrician who set up the stage may not have grounded the power.

and other things can happen. from the time i was 14, i was a mostly barefoot flower child even though i once stepped on a lit cigar (wow, did that hurt for a couple days) and a couple other events including glass and metal splinters. then in the early '90s a close friend of a buddy of mine got a flesh eating bacteria that started on the sole of one foot when walking barefoot. they saved him, but it was horrible and he spent quite some time in the hospital.

since then, i've been a shoes sort of gal. i also started wearing shoes on the beach after seeing a hypodermic needle buried in the sand that i luckily didn't step on.

i love walking barefoot, but having that free feeling isn't worth the serious and sometimes life threatening risks!

 

[Johnny Crab]

A long, long time ago during the 1960's my Dad left a soldering gun on his workbench in our CONCRETE-FLOORED garage. Being about 9 or 10 years old, I thought I'd try it out when he left the room. I was BAREFOOT and the soldering iron had a METAL trigger and it was plugged into a 1950's 2 wire wall outlet. When I pulled the trigger:

1) My body completed a circuit to ground
2) I got the <deleted bad word> zapped out of me
3) Tasted iron in my mouth
4) Literally saw stars(vision pathways hosed for a few seconds)
5) Almost fell down

I was EXTREMELY lucky that the zap or me jumping or something allowed me to let go of the thing and drop it else I'd not be here now. NEVER EVER AGAIN fooled with electricity barefoot. That event taught me to very much respect what can happened very quickly.

Later in life(1970's), learned additional safety rules in tech school and even later(1980's) learned additional safety rules in engineering lab(480 VAC motor lab). I'm so "OCD" about electricity now that, while I will work on live circuits, I will NEVER knowingly put one hand on a ground device and the other on something that is AC-powered(you get current across your heart=you're done). Even my washer & dryer have a bonding wire(#6 gauge copper) connecting them so wifey or I cannot get zapped if one of them develops an electrical leak(GFCI or not). I will work on live circuits if I have to but usually keep one hand behind my back and/or use insulated gloves.

@Axtman your friends are flirting with disaster and gambling with their lives.
Here's a link to an electrical forum with some info:
Mike Holt Enterprises - the leader in electrical training.

 

[Road Hat]

Maybe the OP's friend just wants to play with more...(wait for it)...sole?

 

[mikewalker]

Nope but you'll fry the batteries and internal components in the pickup before feeling anything, and you'll stop playing just by the sound produced. You'll ruin the gear and pickups, but you won't get electrocuted. And there's always these ceramic/plastic pots around that costs a fortune. And if you "hear" anything like that when playing I wonder if the first thing you do is reaching for the knobs, anyway...but one should be very very - extremely - aware of unplugging and grabbing the cable plug of your input jack. Very few would reach for the cable end. If you touch the steel chassi you're toast. But I think something has gone short/haywire before you even think of reaching that. Somewhere else a fuse blew.

Good point about the cable ends!

I routinely heatshrink over the connector shells, keeps the 'barrel' kind from ever coming loose AND insulates ...

 

[mikewalker]

Ha, I'm remembering plugging a bass into two devices once & the Peavey nearly fried, but the Fender was fine. This is probably the reason, and I had to get a Radial Engineering BigShot AB pedal with the isolation transformer & ground lift.

but back to that statement about guitars, aren't they still "grounded" the same as ever?
albeit differently on a Peavey, but still the same for an old guitar vs. a modern one

Cavity shielding will always still go to the signal ground, but EMGs (maybe the SD actives too?) allow you to DISCONNECT the string ground, so your body is no longer a (relatively hi-impedance) ground path.

[And one that runs from hands, right though your heart and down to the ground, at that...]

 

[David Vector]

I think I'd leave the sex-ay barefootin' thing for PR photos. Steven Wilson is a brave guy. I'm too much of a klutz and am always stubbing my toes on things just walking around the house in socks. I don't even wear flip-flops much anymore...nothing like having a misstep in them and scraping your toe on asphalt.

 

[mikewalker]

I've only ever been zapped once: in the old, old pre-EMG days, and it was string ground from fingers connecting to a live AC neutral 'ground' on an old metal grille shure mic. Blue sparks tunneling through one's lips - memorable...