Would a nearby lightning strike possibly fry my Axe-Fx 3’s USB socket?

Joe Bfstplk

Joe Bfstplk

Legend!
Hi. Neighbor's house got hit by lightning mere yards away from my office, where my AxeFX3 lives.

I went to turn it on this afternoon, and all seems ok, except AxeEdit says it is "Disconnected".

Tried loading AxeEdit on my travel computer (an old MacBook Air), and it reads "Disconnected" on that as well.

Tried switching out "printer" USB cables, no joy.

The neighbor's roof, where the lightning hit:
20191106_073839.jpg


I guess if there's nothing else to try, it's a call to my homeowner's insurance and cross my fingers the rat bastards actually cover it.
 
Damnit man. That really stinks. Guess I will be adding the insurance my electric company keeps hounding me to take. Our meter has a lightning suppressor on the back of it. I keep my AFX3 connected through an APC 1500 at home but I don't know if that would help in the case of a lightning strike.

Welcome for Floriduh.
 
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It sure can
MrGuitarabuse said:
Bloody Hell... Scary stuff
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Yep. One summer when I was in the backyard shooting a video of some ominous looking clouds, I found something in the last frame of the video, which I only saw after slowing the video down. It’s not a lightning bolt, it’s a leader. They shoot up from the ground and are what lightning bolts may or may not ‘connect‘ to.

1573086651500.png
 
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Toopy14 said:
It sure can


Yep. One summer when I was in the backyard shooting a video of some ominous looking clouds, I found something in the last frame of the video, which I only saw after slowing the video down. It’s not a lightning bolt, it’s a leader. They shoot up from the ground and are what lightning bolts may or may not ‘connect‘ to.

View attachment 59897
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Holy... Never heard of this, but learn something every day. (thanks google)
I assume its something like described in this article
https://www.britannica.com/science/lightning-meteorology#ref121907
 
FractalAudio said:
The USB port has ESD protection but lightning can easily cause transients that exceed the limit of those.
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It's like Storm said - you know what happens to an axe fx USB port that's been struck by lightning?

The same as everything else! As AMAZING as the axe is, nature is still the boss

Toopy14 said:
I pull the plug on all my gear and computer when a storm is approaching.
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That's a great practice!
 
Tom Morris said:
^^ Yikes. ^^
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I didn’t see it while I was recording, so I was quite surprised when I saw it. There was no sound at all, so I knew it was a leader.

One time, I was driving my buddy to his house when it started to get really dark from approaching storm clouds. As we were driving, I turned to him and said ‘oh, oh’. He said ‘oh, oh, what? I said, ‘do you smell that?’ and he replied, ‘yes, what is it?’. I said ‘it’s ozone’. He said...’what the hell is that?’ I said, ‘well, hang on because we’re about to get hit by lightning or it’s going to be really, really close!’ Sure enough, we turned into his driveway and the loudest bolt of lightning I have ever heard, struck his neighbours tree next door. The next day you could see the burn marks on the ground around the tree.
 
Close lightning strikes can be brutal, and there's no way to predict what they will kill and what they will spare.
 
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