Horror gig - Axe stopped working mid-gig!

guitardoc

Experienced
Last night I experienced a horror gig. I adjusted all my presets with 8.01, checked every single preset to make sure they worked allright, backed them up, packed all my stuff and went off to the gig. So far so good.
The gig went allright as usual at first. However, when I called up preset 11 (which is a preset with about 80% cpu with nothing fancy in it, just an acoustic simulation and some mid-gain sound) there was no sound at all and the display flashed CPU overload. In the middle of the gig in front of several thousand people. Shite.
I quickly restored the backed up Bank A but to no avail. Preset 11 remained f****d up. So we had to skip the song with preset 11 and wanted to go on but from then on the sound came out of the unit delayed by about 2 seconds. I had to tell the FoH and the backline guys to mute everything so I could reboot the Axe without popping anyone's ears. From then on at least the remaining presets worked allright as long as I didn't touch preset 11. That was one horror gig believe me.
This morning I rebuilt preset 11 by copying the respective blocks from other presets and rechecked everything twice. Backed everything up and rechecked again. Now I'm headed to tonight's venue and my fellow band members are giving me a hard time regarding reliability for tonight's show, so please keep your fingers crossed that last night's nightmare was a one time experience...

However, has anyone experienced something similar and what was the cause? I'm an otherwise happy MkI user.
 
Exactly: a nighthmare. You must have feel alone in front of thousands of people...
could happen with any equipement though. That is why professional have backups even when playing conventional gear.
Good luck for tonight.
 
Last night I experienced a horror gig. I adjusted all my presets with 8.01, checked every single preset to make sure they worked allright, backed them up, packed all my stuff and went off to the gig. So far so good.
The gig went allright as usual at first. However, when I called up preset 11 (which is a preset with about 80% cpu with nothing fancy in it, just an acoustic simulation and some mid-gain sound) there was no sound at all and the display flashed CPU overload. In the middle of the gig in front of several thousand people. Shite.
I quickly restored the backed up Bank A but to no avail. Preset 11 remained f****d up. So we had to skip the song with preset 11 and wanted to go on but from then on the sound came out of the unit delayed by about 2 seconds. I had to tell the FoH and the backline guys to mute everything so I could reboot the Axe without popping anyone's ears. From then on at least the remaining presets worked allright as long as I didn't touch preset 11. That was one horror gig believe me.
This morning I rebuilt preset 11 by copying the respective blocks from other presets and rechecked everything twice. Backed everything up and rechecked again. Now I'm headed to tonight's venue and my fellow band members are giving me a hard time regarding reliability for tonight's show, so please keep your fingers crossed that last night's nightmare was a one time experience...

However, has anyone experienced something similar and what was the cause? I'm an otherwise happy MkI user.
I can understand ... it's about corrupted corrupt presets, even to me it happened ... anyway, in the habit of predicting live serious concerts, I've always avoided updating fw while avoiding being in similar situations to yours.
 
I never EVER do a show with new fw unless I've played on it for at least a week while running over my set in real time to make sure things work as they should.

I had that happen to me with fw 7xx. Something that worked great on 6.02 stopped working and claimed CPU overload once I loaded the patch in 7xx.

This post you shared should be a lesson to everyone that just updates and goes to play a show. Cliff and company are usually 98%-100% spot on with these updates to where they are quite harmless.

However, I've always been a firm believer in being the guinea pig in my studio for a week or longer before I test this stuff out on the fans.

This way you cut down the possibility of an issue down to just about nothing. Lesson learned.....I hope the tweaking you did fixed the problem. Thanks for sharing this with us.
 
I once had a simple Wah pedal break down on me (the pot inside broke), right in a long solo intro in front of 8000 people. real heart attack moment, but thankfully my guitar tech was on top of his game, bypassing my board immediately and switching me over to my b-rig before figuring out where in the chain something went wrong.
I guess saying that you need a backup rig only works as long as the presets are actually tested beforehand. if you have the same corrupted presets in both units, even 5 backup units wouldn't help you. the Axe definitely cuts down on things that can go wrong, but that doesn't mean nothing could ever go wrong...
 
When I still used pedals I once had a catastrophic pedal board failure during a gig. No sound at all whatsoever. I was rearranging cables left and right, trying to find the problem. I managed to find it and finish the show but it cost us valuable playing time. I swore that night that my rig would be simplified. I was using two massively large pedal boards, connected to and from another. When I got home I took them apart and managed to squeeze only what I really needed, no more frills on a single board. It was still large, but at least only 60% of what it used to be.

I also learned the hard way not to experiment with adding and exchanging new pedals before a show. Turned out the new pedal wasn't as good or easy to use as expected. That was not a fun show. Never change things up in your rig without at least one, better two, rehearsals first to work out the kinks. Which is why I currently still haven't upgraded my Axe's firmware from 7.02 up, as we're currently recording.
 
With my tube gear I used to bring a gig bag the size of a small zeppelin because of all the tools and spares I might need - as it was I personally only ever needed one replacement pair of matched tubes (and 2 slo-blo fuses the first of which blew pretty 'non-slo' as I watched the tubes to see which one was shorting). However I also had to do some quick soldering on the other guys' guitars and countless cable repairs.

With digital and SS stuff now ...... it's still quite large actually .... you never know maybe the venue's bathrooms might need some plumbing or something,
 
OK since we're all sharing horror stories, here's the story that landed me here using Fractal gear...

We had just won a huge battle of the bands contest. Nice lump sum of cash and quite a few nice venues showing interest to have us play.

We get this casino to book us for insane money. They are so stoked to have us, they treated us like royalty. They advertised the heck out of it and come show time, it was a packed house.

I'm the middle of "Somebody get me a Dr." right at the solo section, my rig just dies. I was a die hard Digitech 2101 user at the time. That thing just worked for me...what can I say.

So I wiggle a few cables and turn it off and reboot. It gets me another 10 minutes and it dies again. I have no backup rig. I'm done for the night. I look out to the audience and say "I'm sorry...my rig died". I was so embarrassed, I felt unprofessional, I just wanted to hang myself.

I mean seriously, I never thought of bringing any type of back up being in a cover band. We didn't get huge gigs with huge pay like we do now. Anyway...

The sound man comes out from behind the stage with this little Marshall amp. I can't think what it was, but we have the amp on our Fractal gear. The amp kicked butt!

So that bailed me out for the night...thank God he had it! But I'd need something with the power and versatility of the 2101. I really got killer sounds out of it that nothing else could do and I had gapless program changing. Nothing did it as.we'll as the 2101 with dual s disc.

I can do some sick stuff with that 2101. Running with the devil horn sounds, Steve Stevens ray gun sound, B3, string sim, vintage Eddie tones, you know....all the stuff the Axe does that nothing else could do other than a 2101 for the times.

After much research and a few good friends telling me how awesome the Axe is....here I am and you guys are stuck with me! Lol!

I made sure to always have a backup rig after that time. Lesson learned....XL+, AxeII and a AX8 just about always for every show. Best investment I ever made for guitar coming to Fractal. :)
 
All you guys helped me a lot by obviously keeping your fingers crossed the whole last night - I didn't have any problems with my gear at last night's show!
I admit I felt a little uneasy every time I called up the ominous preset 11 but everything worked like a charm.
Maybe now is a good time to buy a backup unit - at least now I have an excuse when asking my wife for the money for a brand new XL+. :)
 
All you guys helped me a lot by obviously keeping your fingers crossed the whole last night - I didn't have any problems with my gear at last night's show!
I admit I felt a little uneasy every time I called up the ominous preset 11 but everything worked like a charm.
Maybe now is a good time to buy a backup unit - at least now I have an excuse when asking my wife for the money for a brand new XL+. :)

Glad to hear it all worked well. Hey, if your patches aren't too CPU intensive, the AX8 may be the perfect backup rig for you and you'll save a couple bucks too. Something to consider. :)
 
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