How many of you take spares to a gig?

David5150

Never had to use the spare guitar but always have to take it none the less - forgot it for a gig on Friday and did have the worry that my ibanez would bust a string in the back of my head - but thankfully it didn't.

Historically I have found an amp going down is more stressfull than changing guitar as you have to rummage with power and speaker cables. I fecked this up once when my JVM died- plugging in my JMP 1 and 20 20 poweramp something was amis with the cabling and that fecked the backup. Tip - different coloured cables rather than all black ones.

Now I use the Kemper - but still have a Pod in the bag...just in case

Cirrus

I've never taken less than two guitars to a gig. I also carry a little WANGS 15 watt valve head as an amp backup, it's compact and lightweight so no trouble to sling in the back of the car.

Other than that, I've got a box of spares - strings, some valves (a 12ax7, an old quad of EL84s and a GZ34), a couple of patch leads, a longish lead and a speaker cable.

Jalapeno

PocketPoD --> PA is a good alternative ....

not_the_dj

Always. I'm not a tinkerer and to keep the gig flowing I want to be back up and running in as little time as possible.

So I always take, Two guitars, two 2x12 cabs, my main head (Blackstar HT50) and back-up (Orange Micro Terror). Plenty of cables/leads/kettle lead and spare pedalboard PSU. 

I did have to use the Micro Terror at a gig once when my previous head (Egnater Tweaker) blew it's output transformer during souncheck. The Orange performed fine, plenty loud enough for a pub gig through my two cabs. I was running a Catalinbread DLS pedal into it, and from where I was stood it sounded fine (and we got a repeat booking from the pub and a booking for a party by a guy that was in the crowd).

The bass player's amp died at a recent gig, he played through the PA for the rest of the gig which worked fine.

However if if we have an issue with the PA we're screwed!

thomasross20

All great replies - thanks so much!
Ah yes, I'll have to watch the load of the Blackstar... and yes, the speaker connections wont reach up to any head so would have to get extensions.

Different coloured cables is a really good tip!!

ICBM

If you do want a series cable made up, just let me know.

fretmeister

2 basses.

Either 2 amps (only 1 cab) or 1 amp and 1 good quality DI box (I use a Tech21 VT Bass-DI) depending on whether the PA would cope with the bass.

1 pedal board, but always a spare tuner and compressor that can run on batteries.

Spare signal cables, spare power cable. MASSIVELY long multi-block extension cable.

Tool kit, shit load of Duck tape (good for repairs and sticking down tripping hazards)

BLACK marker pen (do NOT use colours. They disappear under stage lights and you can't read the set list)

Vocalzone

Microphone Sponges (for no other reason than to keep my mouth off the last bloke's tobacco-phlegm)

And an extra £10 to buy the sound man a pie and a pint. Amazing how much better you can sound by supplying food and drink to someone!!

hotpickups

I take 2 guitars and 1 amp. Nothing has failed on me yet apart from a string breaking but that won't take long to change (always take a spare set set or 2 with me). I do have a Joyo amp simulator that I bought just for that one occasion of an amp going down. Not ideal sonically but would get me through a gig

Just a thought did occur to me. If something un fixable does happen what happens legally etc. Someone above mentioned about signing contracts to deliver etc. Has it ever happened to someone here that they couldn't deliver? What happened in the end etc?

monquixote

fretmeister said:

And an extra £10 to buy the sound man a pie and a pint. Amazing how much better you can sound by supplying food and drink to someone!!

Top tip right there. 

Most of the gigs I've done recently have been band supplying the PA, but when I used to do originals on the Camden circuit we always bought the soundman a pint of cider (note: soundmen always drink cider).

Guaranteed you would be louder and sound better than all the other bands.

Danny1969

hotpickups said:

I take 2 guitars and 1 amp. Nothing has failed on me yet apart from a string breaking but that won't take long to change (always take a spare set set or 2 with me). I do have a Joyo amp simulator that I bought just for that one occasion of an amp going down. Not ideal sonically but would get me through a gig

Just a thought did occur to me. If something un fixable does happen what happens legally etc. Someone above mentioned about signing contracts to deliver etc. Has it ever happened to someone here that they couldn't deliver? What happened in the end etc?

All the weddings and corporate stuff I do is all contracts. We get 50% upfront and the balance on the day. If for some reason the gig can't continue because the PA has blown up or the gig can't continue with the contracted lineup, because there's now only one guitar amp or something similar then they can make a claim for a full or partial refund and they would be entitled to it. 

It's the gigs where your miles from home where your most vulnerable, as you tend to only have what's in the van with no hope of dashing home to borrow something from another band and no time to arrange a dry hire.  So you have to have an amount of redundancy built into everything. 

I can remember the desk going down on one gig,  Presonus  digital but we got through by swapping over to a little analog Soundcraft we take as a spare. We then had no dynamics on anything or even a bit of verb for the vocals but we got through it and got paid. 

My Marshall EL34 100 \ 100 blew one side at another gig due to metal confetti entering it. As it's a duel monoblock design I just turned that side off and carried on with the other

One active bin on one side of the FOH stacks stopped working at one gig so we linked the one good active unit to the passive unit the other side. In the days before IEM's you could often put a wedge power amp to FOH use if you had to or if you had some nice active wedges you could move them to FOH duty if the main ones went down. A bass amp went down once so that was di'ed, There's been a few things over the years but nothing touch wood that was a deal breaker. 

The only time I've lost money in 30 years of gigging is being fined by the British Legion for going on stage 11 minutes late

ICBM

Danny's situation is totally different from most of us - in that kind of professional gig, failure is not an option and you need to build your rig in a way that allows redundancy if you don't want to simply carry spares of everything… and if possible, both. That's one reason I don't like these 'all in one' powered-desk-type PAs, which is a short way of saying 'all eggs in one basket'. Separates for everything is much safer.

But most of us 'weekend warriors' are kidding ourselves if we think we need anything like that level of backup. You can make the show go on pretty well with far less, and if anything I tend to think it looks wanky rather than professional if you've brought half a guitar shop to a little gig. As long as you pick gear sensibly in the first place and have a good idea of how to hook things up differently if something goes wrong, you'll get by even if something does go wrong and it's actually far less likely to.

Bear in mind that until the later 60s when the touring industry became really formalised, even proper rock stars often didn't really carry spares, certainly not more than maybe a couple of guitars.

Sorry, maybe a bit of a pet peeve .

EricTheWeary

My favourite 'spares' story was going to see Sherman Robinson and his keys player's, err, keys wouldn't work at all. With the help of several volunteers an upright piano was carried in from the pub next door. Where there's a will there's a way I guess....

John_P

^  A fair point,  but with the modern gear we have available for relatively little outlay, it's easy enough to carry sensible options so the night isn't ruined and if I'm being paid to entertain then I don't want to let anyone down.  
All the people who gig regularly that have posted have listed sensible backup options so the show can go on - lots of good advice in this thread for the gigging musician at whatever level they play at

ICBM

Definitely, I just think some people over-think it and take a belt and braces approach when really their trousers will stay up just fine on their own .

The most important part is to pick trousers that fit properly in the first place .

midlifecrisis

ICBM said:

Definitely, I just think some people over-think it and take a belt and braces approach when really their trousers will stay up just fine on their own .

The most important part is to pick trousers that fit properly in the first place .

that reminds me, im gonna take 2 belts and three pairs of braces to my next gig.

thecolourbox

And a spare pair of trousers

ThePrettyDamned

Op, why not get a blackstar ht dual?

It'll be voiced in a way that's sort of familiar to you, takes pedals well and is a great distortion box in its own right.

Has an emulated output - this means you can run it direct to the pa. Neat get out of jail without taking loads of space or effort carrying.

EricTheWeary

thecolourbox said:

And a spare pair of trousers

not uncommon to take a spare shirt to change into after a sweaty gig. Although I don't.

thomasross20

Will look into it. Only recently got a Riot Reloaded aswell!!

ThePrettyDamned

thomasross20;387953" said:

Will look into it. Only recently got a Riot Reloaded aswell!!

Does the riot reloaded have an emulated out, or is it just a distortion pedal?

If not, and you desperately wanted to use it, you'd need another box to run it into... Such as the blackstar ht dual others include (for less money) the joyo emulated series (American sound, British sound etc) or the tech 21 character pedals, or a pod.