You are doing your album launch, 300 people have come to see you, you get past the first two songs and then..... your pedal board dies!!!
I need to get to the bottom of why and what happened but ultimately it resulted in a massive loss of volume from my amp. When I stepped on my drive pedals everything was tinny and high end only.
In the end I needed to unplug the board and go straight into the amp which was not ideal as I had no delays or reverbs for some spacey stuff at points.
To be fair, the gig went down well and nobody noticed other than me and the band but wow was that annoying. Especially at a showcase gig!
Comments
It started at soundcheck when I put my delay and reverb through the loop. The amp went very quiet. I put everything into the front of the amp and it worked.
Then two songs in it was like the amp lost power, it was thin and lifeless even though it's a JCM 800 on about half volume (so it really shouldn't be powerless or clean).
At this point I unplugged the board and went straight into the amp. That worked fine but it did make a few songs a little tricky especially with no delay or reverb.
So a few things to investigate today, the loop and each pedal and lead.
Start by pulling out the last patch lead going to the input of the last pedal, touch that if live then put it back and pull out patch lead going into 2nd to last pedal, touch that if live repeat etc ..... that's how I found which one was bad yesterday
Also keep a bag of those cheap and cheerful coloured ones you can buy for less than a pound each. Any sign of trouble just change every single patch cable .... you can do that in less than 30 secs on most boards I would have thought
I had this at a gig at the weekend. I've moved to a small 4 pedal nano board, and consequently didn't use my Voodoo labs power supply. So I had a wall wart going into a daisychain and the connection lost power. Taped it up and it did it again so has to split the central pin a bit for a better contact, but still it makes me much more nervous than a kettle lead into a proper power supply. I've had it with patch leads as well in the past, it's seriously frustrating.
Hopefully when I get the Helix these issues will be no more.
Oh I feel your pain, have had to ditch the bored and go straight into amp 10 seconds into first song.
A good way to find out the drummer used 'the swirly noises' and me going back over to my board as markers in songs. He was quite lost.
This is the important bit. Congrats on a successful gig/showcase.
It keeps you on your toes when something happens like this as there's nothing left to rely on other than guitar playing.
The new board will reflect this. 5/6 pedals and that's the essentials only.
Seems appropriate..........
I have to partly disagree with you here. It isn't a question of reducing the number of effects. You still have a single set-up, a single effect box of each type, hence you will still have a single point of failure. If any part of your chain breaks you will have a problem. What you need is to add in redundancy.
If I sound a bit I.T. and techy, that's because I am. I'm paid to make sure banks systems don't stop working when something goes wrong. If it does then it get's fixed and redundancy built in to ensure there is a workaround. That's what you need to consider - a workaround.
I bet you have a few guitars with you when playing live and if a string pops you just swap to another guitar to get you through things. It might not be the right sounding guitar, but it makes a noise when you strum it and it does a job. Can I suggest you do the same with the rest of your chain. Get a cheap, used multifx and set it up to give you some resemblance of your sound, have it powered up up and cables going to your amp. If the worse happens to your effects board you just switch over to your multifx and you will be working. Not perfectly but enough to get you through.
You can apply the same thinking with your amp. A cheap tranny and it will get you through if you need it to. Chances you won't, but that is why you have insurance. Redundancy is your friend.
For the good money corporate \ wedding stuff though I generally use my rack which contains 2 x pre amps and 2 x monoblock power amps ..all re-patchable from the front .... I've had one side of the power amp go before but so far not a pre amp
We also carry a spare analog snake and ol skool analog desk in the van in case the digital desk and CAT 5 stage rack goes down ... got monitors of sufficient quality that they can double as FOH speakers if need be, spare mic's and spare leads for everything
I think @deano s idea of a multi effects set up with the right delays and whatever would be a good shout in an emergency ... not as good as the pedals but better than dry - straight in the amp ... specially as you can pick up a decent one for about £140 these days
I finished the song and first set with no problem, missed a bit of delay here and there..
The board problem was a failed George L cable. Swapped out before the 2nd set.