I mean what could go wrong

or the imortance of having a plan b (and c-z)

http://forum.speakerplans.com/sound-reinforcement-for-school-stage-mic-advice_topic94054.html

Ive just had quite a few things go wrong in very short order

1. The order from Thomann didnt turn up in time for the play so no new lights or mics, stands, cables, mixer or delay speakers.

no problem, I have a plan B, the main front speakers, amps and processing are mine and were going to be loaned to the school anyway. I still have a mixer, cables and mics I can loan them, Ill just have to borrow some mic stands from a local musician

2. I open my storage shed. there is an awful lot of water on the floor, following endless rain and wind the roof has developed a leak. luckily everything is on pallets or wheels so nothing is actually sitting in water. however everything feels slightly damp. also, one of my pair of feedback destroyers (I know but given the deployment they were essential) is nowhere to be found.

I move everything I need into the house and give it all a day in less humid surroundings before I power it up. the alto power amp that has powered my dj monitors for the last 15yrs without missing a beat has lost a channel.not a problem, I can happily hang both speakers of one channel. more worrying, most of my mics are now dead, leaving me with an sm58 and a c414, along with a couple of really cheap and nasty dynamics that are pretty much unusable anyway.

3. The mic stands cant be got in time for rehearsals. as a bonus the chap who promised me the loan also has a pair of sm58s he can loan me for the show

rehearsals are carried out with some hastilly improvised wooden mic stands with mics taped to them. I have only 3 mics (one of which is just awful) to work with to cover the entire 7x5m stage, all of which is in use. all 3 mics are panned hard left and run through one channel of compression and one feedback destroyer , all backing tracks are panned hard right. the two channels are then combined in my digisynthetic ds226 speaker management thingy which was meant be used as a distribution amp and delay for the now non existant rear speakers.

4. the day before the play while Im out xmas shopping I get a panicked phone call. the school has forgotten to tell me that there is a music show in about 45 mins.

I madly drive back to the school and hurrah, the mics and stands I was loaned have arrived. I now have 3 dynamic mics to mic, a choir, soloists and assorted instrumentation. the accompanying keyboard player has to be convinced that letting me amplify her keyboard is a good idea. she is of the belief that the 5 inch or whatever inbuilt speakers will be enough to be heard over 200 odd people. all is going better than expected (ie not completely disasterous) when

5. one of the mics goes silent. turns out the desk channel has died. irksome but there are plenty of spare channels. make it to end, back to xmas shopping

evening of 1st play. all is fairly well, obviously none of the kids sing or speak from where they are supposed to and most end up being miked from a distance of about 3 metres. sound is inevitably somewhat reverberant and teetering on the edge of feedback. however, its all kinda acceptable until

6. during the heads speech. silence. the speaker management has died.

luckily its not doing anything critical in this setup, just acting as a summing amplifier for the processed mics and unprocessed backing tracks. I physically bypass it and am thankful for the parallel mono switch on the amp. normal service resumed in less than 2 minutes. 

the rest of this show and the following days pass with no further event. my kids friends think Im dead cool, obviously not because I did the sound, but because I let them pick the music while they cleaned up the hall. the head and school commitee manger take me out for a drink afterwards and, much to my bemusement, congratulate me on the best sound theyve ever had there.

so yeah, 8 sets of shows over 3 days, 300+ kids, 600 odd punters and a pile of equipment that has served me well for over a decade all dies in rapid succession - no doubt due to damp ingress - even though it was given plenty of time to acclimatise before power up and in some cases had been powered up for 24 hours+ before dying.

so yeah, sorry to be song long winded and Im sure that you really wanted to read all the exciting details of a very mundane job but the moral of this story is make sure youve got some redundancy and a plan b

and its lucky that I was badgered into doing this or I probably wouldnt have discovered it was leaking until the new year

this is kind of the reason I agreed to do this. the school were paying people to hire them awful tat which they then had to set up themselves. speakers on the floor deafening the front row and inaudible everywhere else with the constant screech of feedback the only thing cutting through

not to mention the halloween disco where I literally couldnt stay in the room it sounded so bad. why do people think that in a boomy reverbarant hall the answer is to crank it, along with all bass and treble contols set to full. at least the dj had the sense to stay well behind it

4d, thanks for the linky, I think Ill be hiring a dehumidifier first though. quick investigation looks as if the roof is all ok but the water level has risen up behind the rear wall over the top of the dampcourse and been seeping through. much digging, concrete and bituminous paint to follow I suspect.