Basic good practices for live shows and your FM3

Bruce Sokolovic

Bruce Sokolovic

Fractal Fanatic
So this happened to me last night and is a basic thing you should always be conscious of for anything that plugs in. I pulled a short IEC cable out of the bag for the FM3 and it reached my PA rack just fine, but not a proper outlet. All I had on the rack was the Furman outlet. It was well worn and a little loose but seemed to be working so I went with it. Being next to the sub, you can imagine what happened next. The plug wiggled its way out enough to power down my FM3 and the reboot seemed like forever. Lesson learned. I find also a LOT of older venues that haven’t had any electrical work done since the Nixon administration have wall outlets like this. I have a multi point 75’ snake with maybe 20 outlets on it and I always cringe in this situation. Sometimes it cant be avoided but when it can, go the extra mile.
 
Last edited:
Yep, I played at a place some years ago and the wiring looked like it hadn't been updated since Tesla invented AC electricity. Half fried my Line 6 gear so that it barely made it through the gig. Had to send it in afterwards to get Caps replaced but it was never the same. Ended up buying another unit.

I don't want to go through that again and I definitely don't want a fried Fractal. Don't hardly make any money playing gigs. Sucks when you lose expensive equipment doing it.
 
Joel.Brown333 said:
Yep, I played at a place some years ago and the wiring looked like it hadn't been updated since Tesla invented AC electricity. Half fried my Line 6 gear so that it barely made it through the gig. Had to send it in afterwards to get Caps replaced but it was never the same. Ended up buying another unit.

I don't want to go through that again and I definitely don't want a fried Fractal. Don't hardly make any money playing gigs. Sucks when you lose expensive equipment doing it.
Click to expand...
You know, I did play an older place that may have had some shoddy wiring and had a pretty new Behringer X32 mixer need a power supply. Im starting to wonder if I should move the Furman 1800AR voltage regulator out of my desk into my PA rack. It’s protecting a solid 30k worth of gear in my desk, but the PA is super mission critical, too.
 
The nuance of language is certainly interesting. I didn’t think for a second my comment could have been perceived as alluding to being victimized by Rex for pointing out my grammatical errors. Perhaps if I phrased it “this is a case of victimization BY auto correct”, maybe my thoughts would have been better conveyed.

My auto correct constantly changes IEC to IEM, and I don’t know where in the hell ‘back’ came from out of ‘bag’. I guess AI hasn’t worked its way into auto correct features just yet.
 
Been there, and watched the smoke come off the equipment that wasn’t on the power regulator I had previously considered a bit of showy indulgence in my rack. That was two decades back and I haven’t done a show since without one. Venue power is notoriously sketchy. Outdoor festival power, too!

Definitely a gigging musician’s “have-to-have” gear. Glad you got back up and running quickly, although I bet you felt like that reboot was going in slo-mo. :)
 
Most definitely agree the old stuff is a big problem, but much of the newer (last 5 to 10 years) cheaper outlets and extension cords, etc. are using a softer, lesser grade alloy for the receptacle and lose its retention strength very quickly and becomes sloppy. There’s gotchas all over.

Was also just talking with my brother how all the plastics and rubbers being used today are crap and quickly degrade become brittle, discolor, crack and fall apart.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom