Your worst technical nightmare....

[Tim Farrant]

Hey people - got any stories to tell ?

Let us know about the "worst technical nightmare" you have experienced !!

Cheers
Tim.

[Dave Martin]

I assume that you're asking from the position of a tech...

But my worst nightmares were (A) when a torado came through my neighborhood and landed a tree on my house. I had several things to finish on a really tight time line, and without power (for 10 days), I couldn't even get the DA-88 tapes out of the machines to go somewhere else and finish the project. (B) was probably when the power supply to my console with musicians ready to track (the reason that everyone should have a spare).

My most recent nightmare is when techs don't return phone calls and then do crappy work. (Ask me who my organ tech is NOW...)

[smoothmoniker]

I don't do much tech work anymore, but every once in a while I get a call to come in as a Logic consultant.

There's a film score guy here in LA who wanted his whole home studio to work in sync, and since Logic was one of the pieces, I got the call.

Crappy old reel to reel tascam 8 track tape with tons of wow and flutter needed to be the master (why? he understood the transport on it), driving a G4 with Pro Tools hardware, but Logic software as the user interface (a rough go anyway, near impossible to external sync sources), spitting out code to a mackie D8B for automated mixdown (he didn't like the feel of the Pro Control. Huh?), an ADAT and a DA88 for importing other tracks, and a timecode DAT for final mixes.

Push start on the tape, everything needs to start.

6 days later, finally everything was spinning. I had to set the system to skip up to 20 frames of SMPTE before stopping, because the tape dropouts were so severe.

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally posted by Dave Martin
I couldn't even get the DA-88 tapes out of the machines to go somewhere else and finish the project.

Can't you pop the cover off the machine and spin the thing on the side like you can with an Adat or regular VCR? I had an Adat PS blow up on me back in the day and I had a tape that was being held hostage. Never fun.

I think my worst tech nightmare was doing FOH for a well know rock/jam bands acoustic show in a club of about 300. Two acoustic guitars, a bass a couple vocals and a SM57 for whatever the drummer wanted to play on a given song. Man, what a freaking nightmare. One guy had his own DI which was making extreamly loud popping sounds at random, tons of bad cables, etc. The soundcheck took just over an hour and they had to keep the doors closed longer just so I could finish. So, at showtime what happens? About half the problems that were solved during the soundcheck came back during the first song. I had those guys telling jokes for about 10 minutes while I'm running around swapping cables, DI's and inputs on the snakes. And of course everyone in the club is watching me run around.

Man, that gig sucked.

[Dave Martin]

Originally posted by Jay Kahrs
Can't you pop the cover off the machine and spin the thing on the side like you can with an Adat or regular VCR? I had an Adat PS blow up on me back in the day and I had a tape that was being held hostage. Never fun.

Theoretically I could have, but it would have meant holding a flashlight in my mouth while I unracked 6 DA-88's and took them apart. And there WAS a tree on my house...

I was working in a residential studio in rural Wales, UK. It was a stressfull session anyway, but then I felt that something was up with my brain, every time I looked at a light colored surface, I saw it 'flicker' - pulsing between normal and a tiny shade darker.. Then I started to feel tired & very sick, like I was struk with ME or something.

I went to a local doctor, He gave me a list of things that might contribute to migrane.

Odd hours
Chockolate
Loud noise
Stress
Flashing lights

Etc etc,

I had the LOT!

Apparantly I had "migrane without the headache" ???

Anyhow when I told the studio owner about my flickering vision, he looked at the wall next to his desk, chuckled and said, "Oh yeah! I can see it too!"

THE F**KING power to the whole valley was screwed up!

Half the band said they could see it too (once pointed out) which made me feel a WHOLE lot better!

I thought I was going mad & SERIOUSLY falling appart! I got through the session by wearing shades......Jules Spector

That WAS my worst technical nightmare! It made for a very heavy 2 weeks!

[littledog]

nothing real dramatic, but more of a general PITA....

it's incredibly frustrating when a piece of gear acts up consistently in the studio, EXCEPT when you are trying to reproduce the problem for the tech guy!!!

[Bernd G]

...hearing from any software tech support guy the words: "we never have had this problem before...

[Konovaliv]

Once had a 20piece big band waiting in the studio as I tried to get phantom power working on a Euphonx console...After the session was embarassingly canceled, 4 of 8 capacators in the power supply let go filling our machine room with the "factory smoke." Of course euphonix was on top of things and got us a new power supply the next day...That was an interesting afternoon...

Nothing quite like cooking something that costs LOTS of money!

K.

[Bernd G]

hey chris,
good to see you. How is the old Euphonix?

Cheers
B

[Konovaliv]

Bernd,

Things are going well, the euphonix has been testy lately (fried some bridge rectifiers and a bunch of other components in a blaze of glory last monday) but other then that, it has been rock solid. Last weeks problems only took a day to fix. In some wierd way it is always good to have a little refresher on taking apart and putting back together the console...Oh yeah, the students start classes today so...gotta go...

[e-cue]

man.... not a singal "coffee in the console" story yet...

[Nutmeg II.]

Originally posted by e-cue
man.... not a singal "coffee in the console" story yet...

Friend did a gig in Gana (waybackwhen) first surprize the PA was one he sold some years befor.
The second surprize schowend up when they start playing. Poweramp went down on the left sub.
Next thing he saw was smoke coming out of the rack, some crackling and a guy with a soldering iron was coming up behind the rack.
220V? How cares!

He did get used to it in the fallowing days and to some other strange things and habbits too.

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally posted by e-cue
man.... not a singal "coffee in the console" story yet...

Has anyone ever actually spilled coffee into a console? Or better yet, ever seen it done? Sometimes I think that story is like Bigfoot...

[Steve Smith]

Ok, not coffee, but...

Working at a studio in Toronto a few years back and we come into the session on day 3 and there is water everywhere in the CR. turns out the AC unit was on the roof, DIRECTLY over the console and froze and broke somehow overnight. The owener was FREAKED! after a few minites the guitarist ( from Nashville )
says, "dont worry, once I was at a session and the assistant spilled water into the desk, and it took about an hour for it to dry and all was fine.." at which point the german drummer says " ha,ha, I was a t a session last month where the engineer spilled a coke into the desk, it took about an hour on the phone with his banker to get the money to get another console...."

very funny at the time for all uf us but the owner grudge

[e-cue]

Originally posted by Jay Kahrs
Has anyone ever actually spilled coffee into a console? Or better yet, ever seen it done? Sometimes I think that story is like Bigfoot...

Twice.

I know of a Neve Capricorn that has still never really recovered. The analog consoles can ingest the caffeine better I guess.

[stealthbalance]

i once say a full can of coke ( yikes ! ) get slapped and spill into about 16 fader of an ssl. i flew across the room and grabbed the bottle of denatured alcohol and poured it into the faders to deuche it thru. im not sure if it helped much but it sure was fun pouring liquid into the ssl as well - how aften in your life do you have opportunity to do something like that ??

[toledo3]

Originally posted by stealthbalance
i once say a full can of coke ( yikes ! ) get slapped and spill into about 16 fader of an ssl. i flew across the room and grabbed the bottle of denatured alcohol and poured it into the faders to deuche it thru. im not sure if it helped much but it sure was fun pouring liquid into the ssl as well - how aften in your life do you have opportunity to do something like that ??

Ouch! The alchohol could probably do more harm than the coke!

[jason]

I haven't poored coke into as SSL yet but.....

when I was 17, a high school student, life was all about the live sound thing. It comes time for the school's big end of year production and I'm the tech guy for it. We have a deal with the local Rental place so they give us a pile of gear for a great rate. I'm drooling because they had just upgraded their gear that year to compete with some of the bigger rental places in the nearby city.

I'm in charge of getting the gear I think we need for the show, setting it all up, and running it or teaching people to run it. So of course I'm not gonna take a bunch Peavey speakers when I can get the full $150k EAW rig.

So I get the EAW rig, tons of the fancy Martin computerized lighting, a big Allen and Heath 40 input, 8 bus, with matrix ,....,etc.

We have the bigtime gear, now we need bigtime power. The rental place supplied a panel, to tie into the main 100A supply coming into the building. The shop teacher's got his electrician's papers so he does the install for us.


As a quick side note- I've recently done a rough calculation and I figure we had about $300k. I guess I seem like a trusting person because the rental place just dropped it off and really didn't care what I did with it.

As I'm setting stuff up, I find I'm getting little shocks off of things. I fired up some of the outboard audio gear and it felt like I was getting little shocks off the cases of things. Must be my imagination. Then I'm up on 45 feet of scaffolding attaching a black light to the celing. I plug it in and get a nasty shock off of its case. I'm fine, a little shooken up but figure that somehing's shorted inside the enclosure, but it wasn't enough to trip the breaker.

So now I'm itching to hear the new speakers.....Turn on the power, fire them up. All is well. They sounded great in a gymnasium with cinder block walls!

Work continues for two more hours, more and more of the lighting is brought online, just about everything is operational....

On May 9th, at 10.56pm- BAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG sound as loud as you could imagine rips through the PA. I can't describe the sound because it distorted my eardrums.

Initial thought = Many drivers in speakers possibly fried..... Bad news, very bad news.


I look over to the console thinking some unfortunate grade 9 has plugged something into a hot input on the console.

Unfortunately, that's not what I saw. I saw a console, that was worth about $30k, smoking.


Anyways, I run for the main AC. Power everything down, went home. Barely through the front door and Mom picks up that I smell like funny smoke. I'm forced to explain that weed smoke does have a funny smell but so do electrical fires.

Next day my father, the electrical engineer, accompanied me to school early that morning so we could try to figure out what the hell had happened and do a damage assessment. At this point I had a strong incling that the AC was the problem but I could not possibly imagine what it was. We fired up the 100A panel which had been installed, and with a multimeter in hand my father diagnosed the problem in about 1.7 seconds.

Voltage from ground to hot =120V - good
Voltage from neutral to ground =120V - big problem
Voltage from hot to neutral = 208V Yikes.

(our wall voltage is 120V in Canada)

To make a long story short, the electrician had wired it wrong. He wired neutral to a second phase of the 3 phase power coming into the building....

Speakers were fine,
lighting was fine,
3 aux sends, and 2 busses in the console were fried, everything else in the console was fine. The insulation on some of the cable on the snake which had been plugged into the console had burned off.

I am still alive.

Electrician is a family friend of my parents! I avoid him like the plague.

Sorry its so long,
Keep the stories comin!
jason

[EveAnna Manley]

One time over ten years ago when I was a bench tech I was performing final QC on about 30 units of stereo 90 watt tube amps for a big order. It was nearly midnight and I needed to get all these things done so they could all get packed and put on pallets for an overseas shipment the next day. They were all lined up on the burn-in bench sitting on their sides, bottom covers off, with the PC Boards facing me looking down the right of the bench.

I had just a few amps left on the left side to re-check voltages and listen to. All of a sudden there was a huge bang from the amp in front of me. One of four of the main B+ rail 1000uF 350V CG caps, one in series with almost 300V living on its outer can (600V living on its positive terminal), shorted to chassis as a result of being forced into its clamp which was misaligned with the sharp sheet metal chassis which had tore through the insulating plastic.

The release plug on this capacitor indeed did release blowing electrolyte all over the 26 or so amplifiers to the right side. It looked like a steam engine blowing its stack, only it smelled much, much worse, this icky goo now covering these 26 amplifiers' printed circuit boards to the right. It blew for about 30 seconds. I stood there and watched in horror at this angry display of destruction.

I shut everything off and went home frustrated but grateful that that cap didn't blow that shiite in my face.

Needless to say, that shipment was delayed by a few weeks.

[triez]

I had this lady bring in an old Korg synthesiser for repair, and it smelled awful. It turned out that her cat has peed in the keys. I put the gloves on and cleaned it out, hovever as the smell was there now kitty just kept on doing it again. After the third time I just told her no more.


As a side note to the stories of Coke or coffee being poured into consoles, the best way to deal with this kind of contamination is to immediately remove the channels / cards and to flush them thoroughly with distilled water. This will remove the sugar ( which alcohol will not disolve) and then flush the card with isopropyl alcohol which will remove the water. Obviously none of this can be done on live equipment.

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally posted by EveAnna Manley
The release plug on this capacitor indeed did release blowing electrolyte all over the 26 or so amplifiers to the right side. It looked like a steam engine blowing its stack, only it smelled much, much worse, this icky goo now covering these 26 amplifiers' printed circuit boards to the right. It blew for about 30 seconds. I stood there and watched in horror at this angry display of destruction.

I shut everything off and went home frustrated but grateful that that cap didn't blow that shiite in my face.

Suckage. What happened with those 26 amps? Did you manage to clean them up? That goo sucks to clean and I've only blown tiny caps like 22uF's.

[Richie Monroe]

God, the worst I've ever seen was "Wilderness Entertainment" in Binghamton, NY. It was one of Hot Tuna's first gigs. The producer was Artie Slackman, the lead singer of a defunct N.Y. band called "The Group Image". My brother was brought in as an electrical tech 10 days before the performance, I was a grunt.
The performance was in a warehouse that had been reconditioned, but Artie hadn't taken into acount that there wasn't a circuit in the building that could handle more than 15 amps, which wouldn't have even powered their lighting, let alone their PA! After 5 days of depression and finger pointing, my brother leaped up and said, "Artie, give me the keys to the car!"
Three hours later, he came back with the blueprints, and a book on 19th century mining! This isn't a good sign, I thought. It seems the major feed for the entire city of Binghamton (150,000 or so at the time) ran underground 34 feet from the building!!! Oh noooo, Mr. Bill! And we started digging, using the mining book as a guide to shore up the tunnel. It was like "The Great Escape".
Four hours before the show, my brother was risking his life cutting through the conduit and mega-insulation of a cable carrying something comparable to a continuous lightning bolt!
They took up a collection among the staff (money was pretty much gone, that's why a high end generator wasn't even considered) and supplemented it by raiding the concession stands
to buy some MCM copper cable heavy enough to make the final connections. I don't know where they got the transformers, but they may have actually been stolen from a power station.
The final connection was made as the lead-on band was tuning up, and the show went without a hitch. The cable was closed, and the tunnel filled in. I have permanent damage to my right rotator cuff from that ****ing tunnel. Artie ran off with all the money (big surprise). You wanted a nightmare- there's mine.-Richie

[slickrick]

I worked at a Cap City broadcaster, and one of the panel ops was a real ditz.

She was paneling for a National broadcast, and spilt a can of coke down the back of a Ward Beck. Techs were not happy. Had to (obviously) switch studios, and strip the console down overnight.

Two weeks later, same girl, same National broadcast, only this time it was a full cup of coffee!

Next day I saw her in the lift, and, trying not to make her feel bad, asked her about the second event, to which she replied, "Well, I'm not stupid. I didn't put sugar in my coffee. Apparently that can be really bad..."

Yikes. She was fired later.

Rick

[Peter Simonsen]

My worst nighmare was a couble of years back, when I was working as a freelancer. I was called to a studio..they wanted to hire me to go through the mixingboard, and make sure it worked..´course they had a big client comming in..booked for a 3 month session. They gave me a week. After I worked on the console 1 day. I called the manger in, and told him, that the console was in such a bad shape, that either they started to look for a new one, or they hired 2 more to work on the "thing", so we could work in 3 shifts 24 hours a day.

The studio manager replyed...noo..nooo..!!! just get the damm thing up, and running the best you can...the client likes the studio so much that they´ll stay, and I´ll talk to them..;-)..noo need to worry. I was amazed, and had a very hard time beliving this, but hey..I was a freelancer, and He was the boss..right..!!!

There was not one switch, ribbon cable, that didn´t need to be changed..not to speak of many of the solder points that needed to be checked, and/or resoldered..!!! one of the powersupply´s needed to be fixed as well, and on top of that..the manager needed to have the 24 channel console extended to 32 channels..!!!, and I had 4 days left to get this done...!!!
Needless to say...!!! and to make a very, very long story short..This was never gonna happen.. !!! I got the powersupply´s workin´, ribbon cables changed, ect, but still didn´t managed to change all the damm switches..and then there was the situation with the extra channels..!!

The Client liked the studio allright, but only agreed to stay if they had a fulltime ass. and a fulltime repair engineer. quess who got the job...!!! I worked nearly 18-20 hoursevery day..seven days a week during the first 1½ month..assistent during the day time, and repairing/fixing the console, guitars, guitar amps, basses, doing special custom wirering, and other "gadges" that came up ..during the night time..

I stayed all 3 month the client was in the studio, and had a lot of fun, but thinking back...!!! The first 1½ month was as near living hell as I wanna be...

Kind regards

Peter

[Tim Farrant]

Great stories people...

I must tell you about this very important live show I did that went horribly wrong. The show was called LAGO (Live Ambient Graphic Opera). It was to be performed only once at an Arts Festival here in ole Wellington. The show was based on classic opera pieces and included a surround sound PA system (nice Turbosound gear), graphics and images projected onto a large screen, a live string section as well a a band with piano, drums, guitars, percussion etc etc, dancers and a female lead opera singer.

I was the sound designer and live mix engineer. We spent months leading up to the show preparing the backing tracks (played off DA88) which were timecode locked to the images. The band and conductor worked off click tracks ex the DA88. The show was continuous for 1.5 hrs.

The preproduction was a nightmare as when I came onto the scene, the composers had not thought about how to lock the video to audio, so I had the task of re-laying the sound effect tracks in sync with the picture. I spent many a late (read very late) night working on this as they could not afford to pay daytime studio rates. We did not get a completey working set of video/audio tapes until 30 mins before the show started !! But - that was nothing.

Dress rehearsals in the theatre were delayed due to problems flying this massive umbrella (which actually opened and closed) over the stage - but it did look absolutelty stunning when it was up. Finally we got into it and completed 4 or 5 run thrus before the performance that same night. I had about 60 inputs at the FOH console to deal with as well as the 6 DA88 surround tracks. Everyone at the sound checks thought it was sounding surberb.

I had a small Countryman bug mic in the hair of the lead singer which worked well for most of the show but at the finale when the band and strings were playing full noise, the bleed was unacceptable. At the last minute, I decided to change the mic to something that wrapped around the face to get more direct sound. I quickly hopped across town and hired a Audio Technica radio mic for the job. I got the lead singer to come onto stage and do a sound check with the mic, sounded fine and I new it would be better...

Alas... the show started, and when the singer hit her full voice this mic burst into rampant distortion - (my heart was later found on the other side of the auditorium). It sounded just dreadful. Anyway, I was so pre-occupied with getting it fixed and the horrid sound, I missed a lot of cues in the mix that night. Finally when she was off stage at one point the crew attempted to remedy the problem with new batteries and reducing the gain of the transmitter, but to no avail - so I carried on with this distorting mic for the entire show, doing my best to hide it by pulling back her fader when she hit the high stuff.

Suprisingly, the show had an immediate standing ovation at the finale, but I just got up and walked out and burst into tears - I don't think I've ever felt so bad about anything I had done in my life before and to this day.

I certainly learnt a few lessons !!

1] Don't change anything in the last hour.

2] Always have a backup.

Cheers
Tim.

[Robotnik]

While renting a house in the Hollywood hills to track, the band thought it would be funny to see the pooltable in the swimming pool. Not a good idea. Food fights were also not a good idea either. Total damages: $32k.

I can't mention names, but a very well known engineer completely blew the control room m