How many of you take spares to a gig?

digitalscream

ICBM said:

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.

The obvious thing to do if you've got two guitarists is to bring enough spares between you. Sharing a spare amp and a spare guitar is sensible, but having a spare set of leads and sundries each also makes sense. To me, anyway.

Handsome_Chris

Two pre-amps, two power amps, two midi controllers.  I've had my AF2 let me down once, luckily it was at @Danny1969's.  This let me know what a showstopper not having backup can be.

As for playing songs without guitars, Kraftwerk seemed to manage.

thomasross20

Would speakers ever crap out? Highly unlikely I'd think..

digitalscream

thomasross20 said:

Would speakers ever crap out? Highly unlikely I'd think..

Yes. They can and do - not often, but I've had it happen. It's not necessarily just the speaker - the jacks might fall apart, or somebody could put their foot through it etc.

Teetonetal

+1 for a magnum 44, just plug it into the speaker of my combo - never actually needed it though. Other than that I always take 2 guitars 

I use a pedal board and always take a spare wallwart PSU and Daisy chain so that I can at least use some of them my T-Rex PSU breaks down.

Of course if I ever do a gig without any of the above spares, then it goes without saying I will need the spare...

ash96

I always take a spare guitar. After about 30 gigs of not snapping a string mid song, I only took one to a pub gig and snapped a string within the first 4 songs.... The awkwardness of changing a string on stage while the singer 'banters' or people jam around a riff to kill time is enough to warrant the other 30 times of not needing it.

At the moment I don't take a spare amp (unless I know my amps just been fixed/acting funny) but I do know how I can go through the PA super quick and it still sound good. 

I'm going to get a micro Terror that I can send through my combo in case of emergency anyways.

And I always take spare leads, strings, batteries etc.

ICBM

thomasross20 said:

Would speakers ever crap out? Highly unlikely I'd think..

Rare unless you put too much power through them, but it can happen - especially if they're being driven by a solid-state amp which develops a fault and sends DC into the speaker. So if your main amp is solid-state, don't count on a spare head sorting the problem. This is a particular problem with bass amps because they're often very high-powered, so a fault can send hundreds of watts into the speaker which gives almost no chance to turn off before it fries.

(With your particular amp it's impossible that both power sections could destroy both speakers at the same time though - because the first failure would blow the fuse and shut the other power amp down - so you will have at least one.)

littlethoughts

We used to take a spare guitar with us when we had two guitarists. Now we just wing it. We have a go-to song that can be thrown into our set with no guitar or bass in case of a string break (almost entirely keyboard driven), so plenty of time to change one

Should really get a DI thing though...

We've never been precious about our kit and are always happy to let other people plug in, in the hope that the favour is extended! So far no problems. If we were ever paid actual money (as opposed to bullshit money back on ticket sales beyond a certain number) we'd be more serious about having backups.

mike_l

ThePrettyDamned said:

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.

The Digitech pedals have a Mixer out on them for DI'ing into a PA.

If you have a few pedals you like, that could easily go at the end of a pedalboard to DI into the PA. For the limited dollar you could do a lot worse.

IE if you have a chorus, wah, drive and delay pedal as the basis of your sound then you could easily do

guitar-wah*-chorus*-drive*-delay*-digitech**-PA

*this isn't a fixed order, you can put them in any order that works for you.

** Bad monkey, hothead etc, I think (of the top of my head) the Digidelay and multichorus all have the mixer out.

thomasross20

I'll need to check if the riot has an emulated out.
If you have only one pedal with emulated out, can you put pedals preceding this? I assume so!

ICBM

I don't think the Riot has an emulated out.

Yes, you can put any non-emulated pedal before the emulated one, and any modulation/delay/EQ/clean boost type pedals after one - just no non-emulated dirt pedals after it. Ideally you do only want one, since stacking more than one emulation tends to overdo it and make everything very nasal.

If you don't have any emulated pedals you can use a Red Box or similar at the end of the chain.

mike_l

The Riot clone I have on loan doesn't have an emulated out, just a normal input and output.

monquixote

Yeah the Riot doesn't have an emulated out. 

My suggestion would be a Tech21 Blonde V2. You can use it as an overdrive, or hit the speaker sim button and use it as an amp sim into the PA.

darcym

two guitars, have them both tuned and ready to go, fold away stand to have it on (you can buy the small stands that fold up and fit in your gig bag).

Big gigs, I'll either use two amps so one acts as a spare by nature, smaller gigs, take one amp, if the amp blows either the gigs over of use another bands if playing with it. If the amp goes to be honest, that's me done, spare cable/strings/multi tool and strap all fit in the gig bag pedal board, or for the big gigs, the rack has an extra draw that contains cables and stuff.

If I'm playing in a function band or dep gig, I'll take what I need for the event, eg: paying function gig, I'll take a spare amp in the van as under no circumstances should my equipment failure have an impact on their event.

Beexter

Always take two guitars to a gig - we play covers so having the choice of single coils or humbuckers is good and means I have back-up in case a string goes. It's happened. Also, I carry a Tech21 Liverpool pedal so if my Vox goes down, I could get by going straight into the PA.

For PA, I use two powered speakers for FOH and 2 passive monitors run off of a separate power amp. If one element of the PA goes down, we could still get by. Reminder to self though - I need spare fuses for everything 'cos I don't carry them.

ICBM

Beexter said:

Reminder to self though - I need spare fuses for everything 'cos I don't carry them.

There's almost never any point except for valve amps and then only if you change all the power valves (for a blown HT fuse) and rectifier (if it has one, or for a blown mains fuse).

When the fuse blows on any solid-state amp, the chances are that changing the fuse will just result in another blown fuse. The fuse is only there to prevent the damage from getting any worse.

Even if you do, never change a fuse more than once - if it blows again the amp is going to need a repair. A short circuit will not magically go away no matter how many times you hope it will if you just try again . And never, ever use a larger fuse value or wrap the blown fuse in foil - all you will do is increase the cost of the resulting repair.

thomasross20

Referring to ICBM's earlier post, that's interesting - I never knew the emulated out pedal could be anywhere in the chain (other than before distortion.. or specifically, emulated out distortion)

ICBM

thomasross20 said:

Referring to ICBM's earlier post, that's interesting - I never knew the emulated out pedal could be anywhere in the chain (other than before distortion.. or specifically, emulated out distortion)

Essentially it's just a preset EQ, so as long as you don't put it before something which adds more dirt and hence restores the 'un-EQ'd' distortion sound, it will work the same as if it's right at the end.

Think of it as like the amp's preamp - any effects you would normally put in the loop will work fine after the emulation, which means you can combine it with the distortion in a single pedal. If you're using a totally separate emulator like the Red Box it is probably best at the very end though.

EricTheWeary

thomasross20 said:

Referring to ICBM's earlier post, that's interesting - I never knew the emulated out pedal could be anywhere in the chain (other than before distortion.. or specifically, emulated out distortion)

no, never occurred to me either. Interesting.

thomasross20

Cheers, ICBM!

By the way, you ARE an engineer, right?