Last night's job was one fraught with problems. First, the job was contracted to being at 5:30, however, the lady that hired me changed the time to 5:00. The only person she forgot to pass this information along to was me. Consequently, I arrived at 4:40 to set up and quickly discovered the hall was filled with people. After a quick setup, the van was parked and I fired up the system. For the first hour and a half, it was cocktails, then dinner, during which time I played soft, Christmas, background music.

Piece of cake--at least until I then found out that there would be a performance by the residents of the Assisted Living Center who were bussed to the party. 25 chairs were lined up in front of me and the residents were placed in the chairs, each with a six-song lyrics sheet in hand. Still not a big deal for me, at least until the guy that owns the center wanted to make a speach. He asked to borrow my mic, which is the reason I have a spare, inexpensive hand-held mic with me at all times. He made his speech, which took another 15 minutes, then sang songs for 45 minutes, and at this point I only had 25 minutes left to perform.

When I switched on my wireless mic, some awful static came over the system, which I quickly squelched by turning off the volume. I then put on an MP3 file to play while trying to diagnose the problem. I plugged a small headset into the wireless reciever and heard "Do you want fries with that." Wonderful, a fast-food eatery just down the street was on the same freqency as my wireless system.

Undaunted, I plugged in my trusty mic cable, bypassing the wireless system. For the first time in years I had a mic cable go bad, probaly because the guy giving the speech was standing on it the entire time he was talking and shuffling his feet a bit. I then opened my little bag of spare parts, plugged in the spare mic cable and finished the remainder of the job.

Today, it's off on another job, however, I'm leaving a bit earlier than usual so I can stop at the local music store and pick up another spare mic cable--you just never know!

Merry Christmas everyone,

Gary

Wow, you're a trooper. I wish I was that organized.

I did a gig recently where I was using the house system and I spent 20 minutes trying to get ANY sound. Finally discarded the house cable and put mine it and bingo. Then plug in guitar. Spend ten minutes more jackin around trying to get ANY signal. Discarded the house cord, put mine in, bingo, no problem. Two bad cables in one night. From now on, I'll just use my own.

Way to go, guys. In this business, you gotta be prepared for anything!

I carry extra mikes, cables, cords and fuses for amplifiers.

At the restaurant I work most often, employees are thrown in the pool right behind me on their last night. It's done after dark, so somethimes I don't see it coming. I've had keyboards knocked over, shaving cream sprayed into my arranger, guitars knocked over and buckets of water thrown into speaker cabinets. Major damage each time.

I've also had tubes go bad, power surges knock out power strips, tripped circuit breakers that were impossible to locate...whatever. Playing outside is rough!

Replaced and repaired a lot of equipment over the years....Been a hell of a ride...wouldn't change a thing!


Russ

Dean and I set up for a Nursing Home show Monday. I hooked everything up and turned it on. The Tyros booted up but wouldn't make a sound. I switched cables, checked connections, rebooted a couple of times--nothing.
I tried the headphone jack--nothing.
I was just about to fall back on the laptop when I decided to try the sub-outs. I routed everything to them, switched the cables and they worked. I used effects from the outboard mixer and made it through the show.
Two hours later, we had another show. I plugged everything in again, and the Tyros worked fine.
I brought it into the house Tuesday and hooked it up with headphones, and it worked.
I took it to the job Tuesday night, and it was perfect.
BUT, now I'm a little apprehensive. Was it a one-time glitch, or will it come back?
DonM

Don-

I've had the same thing happen to me 2-3 times. Typically, I've put my two 1/4 cables into the aux in/loop return set of inputs instead of the main outs.

Which will do it everytime...


Bill in Dayton

Hey Gary,


I know there's one spare your not carrying around anymore.


That "spare tire"

Yep, that spare is gone forever. The gal that hired me for last night's job just called and thanked me for the evening, then added "Please don't loose any more weight! You look great now, but if you loose more I'll worry that you're really sick of something." One more pound to go and I'll have reached my goal weight of 175, which according to my wife is 4 pounds heavier than when we got married. Hell of a milestone.

If you look at the photo page on my website you'll get an idea where I was headed. In those photos I tipped the scales at 215, and when I jumped on the diet, I hit 225. Gotta' take some new photos for that page!

Merry Christmas everyone,
Travlin' Easy
Gary

[This message has been edited by travlin'easy (edited 12-15-2004).]

On a very few occasions I've had a glitch with the Tyros. However, a factory reset has always handled it.

So Gary.....I'm curious...
Did you order the fries?

------------------
...L

So Gary I assume it's been a srrict South Beach Diet? Or what? I'm back up to 215. I got down to 204 a few months back but the New Orleans trip did me in.

I also assume you have to be on your toes every second just like my low fat and the Atkins I did years ago, right?