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Usurping the power.

chokeslam512

chokeslam512

Nov 2, 2008
1,459
18
Kansas City, MO
#1
Last night I was all set to play a show up at the Whiskey Tango in Grain Valley, MO. I got set up, sound checked my gear, everything was good. Our singer and g***** player had just finished the acoustic opener set so now it is time to rock. I intro the first song so all goes well until ANYONE else plays anything... drummer included. Then My rig would cut in and out and maybe be audible for a half a second while the other members were playing, otherwise when there was solid tone, it was really quiet.

My rig:
GB Shuttle 6.0
Sansamp (Worthless... details coming)
SWR Goliath Jr (8 ohm)
SWR Big Ben (8 ohm)

There was no House PA and I was not running direct into the PA that was brought because it was really small and there were no extra XLR cables. I would occasionally hear the guitar fade in and out of the pa monitor during the set as well.

I really am thinking that it was a power situation. I found out later that we were all running off of the SAME effing outlet. What kind of Mickey Mouse operation does that?

The G***** player from the other band had similar problems, bbut his weren't intermittent, his rig was just extremely quiet the whole time even though it was cranked to the max.

So what say you TB braintrust? Was all the other Equipment hogging the power? Is there something that can be done to avoid these issues next time? I would assume have a separate outlet for everyone would be a good start.
 
#3
Your Shuttle has a protection circuit that looks at the line voltage (indirectly) and if an undervoltage condition exists, will mute the amp and shut down the PWM modulator to protect the amp. This undervoltage threshold is on the order of about 95 volts.

The fact that the other amps were having problems also plus your symptom leads me to believe they had a severe undervoltage condition which is (generally) caused by inadequate circuit ampacity and branch wiring to the receptacle. This should be investigated by a competant electrical contractor before any amps are damaged.
 
#5
agedhorse said:
Your Shuttle has a protection circuit that looks at the line voltage (indirectly) and if an undervoltage condition exists, will mute the amp and shut down the PWM modulator to protect the amp. This undervoltage threshold is on the order of about 95 volts.

The fact that the other amps were having problems also plus your symptom leads me to believe they had a severe undervoltage condition which is (generally) caused by inadequate circuit ampacity and branch wiring to the receptacle. This should be investigated by a competant electrical contractor before any amps are damaged.
Click to expand...

This happened probably a hundred times last night. Is there a chance that something was damaged in the amp? Should I take some counter measures to make sure this doesn't happen again?

This response is exactly why you guys at GB have made me a lifelong customer. Keep up the good work.
 
#6
The undervoltage protection will keep your amp safe.

Really, there's nothing you can do to protect yourself from this kind of problem. Power conditioners are totally useless, and a voltage regulator may cause other, more dangerous problems due to the way they work. The only thing that would work ok is a suitably rated (for dynamic load) UPS that's a double-conversion, always on line unit. I would guess about 600VA would do, and the cost would be in the $500-$1k range. Hardly a practical solution.
 

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