dontfeartheringo wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 5:36 pm Chris Jury just fixed Sara Lee's bass with minutes to spare before the Gang of Four show.

Hero stuff.

It was a great honor to be able to meet them all, and to be able to contribute in some small way. Honestly a simple repair and a string borrowed from my boss' work box. Please say hello for me and let them know I'd bend over backward to help them in any way.

I had my final show w/ Billy Idol (at least for a while) last week, a corporate gig in middle america. It turned into a minor disaster.

We were on fly-rigs and back-ups, trying to keep transport costs down, since we didn't have the truck with us. This meant all the gear was essentially new to everyone. Set up and line-checked everything the night before- worked perfectly. Day-of the band does a quick sound-check in the afternoon- again everything sounds great. Show starts, and the bass sounds all wrong- only the distortion is coming through, our in-ear monitors, nothing from the clean DI. My guy definitely wants this fixed, ASAP. I'm checking every connection...all good. I jump off stage and try to talk to the monitor engineer- he has no idea what is happening as he isn't getting any DI either. we struggle through the (very short) show with it. After we're all packed up I get word that the front of house guy switched off the phantom power, and the DI was phantom powered.

I then got super sick on the way home and spent 3 days in bed.

c jury wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 12:25 am I had my final show w/ Billy Idol (at least for a while) last week, a corporate gig in middle america. It turned into a minor disaster.

We were on fly-rigs and back-ups, trying to keep transport costs down, since we didn't have the truck with us. This meant all the gear was essentially new to everyone. Set up and line-checked everything the night before- worked perfectly. Day-of the band does a quick sound-check in the afternoon- again everything sounds great. Show starts, and the bass sounds all wrong- only the distortion is coming through, our in-ear monitors, nothing from the clean DI. My guy definitely wants this fixed, ASAP. I'm checking every connection...all good. I jump off stage and try to talk to the monitor engineer- he has no idea what is happening as he isn't getting any DI either. we struggle through the (very short) show with it. After we're all packed up I get word that the front of house guy switched off the phantom power, and the DI was phantom powered.

I then got super sick on the way home and spent 3 days in bed.

Chris, purely out of curiosity, but what's the reaction from the band and crew to this sort of thing? Do they blame you? Because you're the tech, and/or the new guy? How stressful is it at the time, and during the post mortem?

I ask because this kind of moment (as someone in stupid bands, rather than teching for big rock) is the precise kind of thing I dread, and that I literally have nightmares about. Whenever I'm under-pressure, it's either dream about exams or gear and/or performance disasters.

Dudley wrote:

Chris, purely out of curiosity, but what's the reaction from the band and crew to this sort of thing? Do they blame you? Because you're the tech, and/or the new guy? How stressful is it at the time, and during the post mortem?

I ask because this kind of moment (as someone in stupid bands, rather than teching for big rock) is the precise kind of thing I dread, and that I literally have nightmares about. Whenever I'm under-pressure, it's either dream about exams or gear and/or performance disasters.

In the moment it is 100% my fault. They pay me a lot of money so they don't have to worry about any technical issues. My guy, in this case the bass player, should literally walk to stage while I hand him his pack for his in-ear monitors, put a tuned bass in his hands, switch on the wireless and he plays his parts. Anything other than that happens = I have fucked up.

It is pure stress, made worse by the fact that everyone has their own thing going on, so they may not care, may not help, or you may be fucking up their world, so they may be actively shouting at you. When the show is over everyone has more of their own things to take care of, so getting a postmortem is unusual. I was lucky in this case that my guy was upset and it seemed like a potential sound issue, so he mentioned it to both the Monitor and Front of House engineers, who figured it out and took the blame off of me. We have had 2 further conversations about it, mostly debriefing communication, so if we can't figure something out on-stage, we can at least give him a more survivable monitor mix.

Couple all that with the travel and the loading/unloading a semi-truck worth of gear every show, it is a taxing job.

c jury wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 12:25 am After we're all packed up I get word that the front of house guy switched off the phantom power, and the DI was phantom powered.

I'ts been my opinion forever that every active DI should by law have an LED indicator on it that is bright enough to see from FOH.

Also, never a bad idea to thru jack into a passive DI as a back up if you are using an active DI. I've had more than one Countryman completely shit the bed on me. Honestly, I avoid active di most of the time these days because I've had such topsy turvy adventures with them.

Sorry that all went down. That shit ages a man.

Hoooooooo, boy.

Nightmare fuel.

Monitors are the source of all woe. I don't have anything to add that I can say in a public forum, but I'm glad you survived it, forum member c jury.

Kniferide wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 12:48 pm I'ts been my opinion forever that every active DI should by law have an LED indicator on it that is bright enough to see from FOH.

Radial J48 does, but you have to remember to position it to be visible from FOH which is not possible most of the time given sight lines and position of the di's usually being on the floor.

I'm here to chime in on the commiseration too. Powerful lesson and the most powerful lessons don't come without brutal pain most of the time. There's always changes between sound check and live performance. 99% of the time it's just the sound in the room has changed w/ a bunch of heads in there but that 1% is a real bastard.

I understand how in the moment, it's considered your fault but FOH tech completely fucked you on this and I cannot figure out how THEY didn't put it together (or why/how the fuck they turned it off?!?!) and if the DI they're using didn't have indicator lights on it, there's no way you would be able to check the board. They should have had this figured this out < 30 seconds.

It really sucks when there’s a situation that optically looks bad for you and you don’t get a chance to add your experience to the overall narrative.

Was this incident something that may affect you getting called back? If so, I’m sorry and that’s unfair. If not, I imagine soon this will just be a war story you all can laugh about.

Garth wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 7:34 am I understand how in the moment, it's considered your fault but FOH tech completely fucked you on this and I cannot figure out how THEY didn't put it together (or why/how the fuck they turned it off?!?!) and if the DI they're using didn't have indicator lights on it, there's no way you would be able to check the board. They should have had this figured this out < 30 seconds.

I agree with that. especially on Digital boards, it is increasingly unlikely that PH PWR gets turned off by accident since you gotta navigate to it on a screen. Possible he recalled a scene from before he applied power? I remember more than once on a Midas where the power buttons were on the back close to the xlr jack if you were doing a reach around to plug in something you could hit it and not notice. Still, it's his job over there at FOH.

I cannot recommend these enough. Great little tester with tone and power indicator. If you were back there stabbing lines it would have showed you that there was no power on it. They are a little spendy but not really compared to a Q Box or some other thing and really tiny. come with a pouch so you can wear it on your belt like a pro!

https://sonnect.com/

Great little life savers.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 7:48 am It really sucks when there’s a situation that optically looks bad for you and you don’t get a chance to add your experience to the overall narrative.

Was this incident something that may affect you getting called back? If so, I’m sorry and that’s unfair. If not, I imagine soon this will just be a war story you all can laugh about.

No impact long term.

Our monitor guy is used to doing much bigger shows, and lots more of these highly choreographed events. He described this one as essentially an awards show- where multiple bands are using moving stages to make change-over pretty much instantaneous...but everyone has to be well-practiced for it to work. And it did work. We just had a grittier bass sound than was ideal.