I leave my gear ,except guitar and Tyros in the car year round. Here in Norway where I live, it is cold and humid half the year at least. The car is parked in the garage plus I had a heating fan mounted so that the PA and my beloved reissue Fender amps stay tempered at any time.

I didn't leave my stuff in the car all the time, but on those two & three-nighters I sometimes left the amps in over night. I always TRIED to bring in the keys. But when I did leave stuff out, I always covered them it with nice, heavy blankets. It seemed to minimize the frosting and brittleness. Of course, I always got to the next job a little earlier to let things thaw before the job. Always try to let the equipment acclimate to the new temp before turning on the juice, otherwise.... CRACKLE city.

Here in Michigan we are very cold in the winter and sometimes very hot in the summer. This can cause not only condensation but expansion and contraction. This eventually could cause some solder joints on the circuit boards to become bad. I will leave the PA in the car but I always bring my keyboard inside. It may be just fine going in and out of the cold and heat but I don't want to take any chances.

Scott, I too used to leave my Gulbransen Theatrum organ, Leslie 142, driven by a Fender Bassman amp in the trailer year round. I wish I still had that bassman. It was built like a tank. Between the jarring and moving around, and the changes in temperature, I was always fixing the Gulbransen (for 10 years I was a tech). I NEVER had to touch the bassman.

Tom

Don't blankets just reflect body heat?
Do you really think that blankets keep a cold item warm in the cold?
I'm serious here ...... I don't think it makes a bit of difference unless the kb generates some heat on it's own.

Set me straight someone ( who actually knows for sure! )

In the days when I played Cordovox I would sometimes leave the amp/tone generator in the car, especially on multi-gig weekends ... Often, when I turned the unit on, I would get this sound like someone leaning on a bunch of keys at once ... the hairdryer became standard equipment ...
Now, I NEVER leave the gear in the car/truck overnight...

UD ... Wouldn't the blanket provide some kind of insulation from the cold? ... I don't know,, just asking...
t.

U.D.

You are correct about the blankets.

Insulation is different from heat generation.
If there is no heat present in the items covered by the blanket - I don't see how any heat can be generated or optimized by a blanket. Sounds too simple to me, but I could be wrong. It's physics, I guess, right? No heat - no heat to keep in !

Tony I remember the tube-powered Cordovox would sound like a synthesized vacuum cleaner, trying to get on key as it was warming up. Suprisingly, it always made it back on key, tho.

How different are the components in the music gear from the electronic stuff we see in today's cars trucksRVs? They have processors, intricate sensors, disk-drives, TV monitors (etc, etc) any they sit out all the time. Even relavtives I have up in the more frigid central BC Canada area don't seem to have problems with this.

Ed

Hey, what do you want from me, I'm Polish...

Hey!!! I resemble that remark