When something is going to fail with your equipment, it will never happen at home or in the practice studio. It will happen while the drummer is going "a-one-two-three-four" in front of a half drunk crowd of long hair.
Within the first three gigs I done with spytfyre, exactly that happened not once but twice.
The trick is to be ready for it and to expect it.
Within the first three gigs I done with spytfyre, exactly that happened not once but twice.
The trick is to be ready for it and to expect it.
My second gig with spytfyre at the railway is a classic example.
I set my rig up, tested it all and done sound check.
When it was our turn to go on stage, I made sure I had sound by given the distortion channel a quick stab. The dirty channel was to stay on for the first two songs.
All was well until a clean section in my arch nemesis 'one night in april'
I have less then a second to turn off my tubescreamer and effects loop, kick in the clean channel and fret a Em chord. All went well until I hit the first note and realised I was still distorted.
Thinking on my feet, I rolled off the volume pot which acts more like a gain control and came in 4 bars late. Lucky for us our drummer Chris is always on the ball and it went unnoticed by the audience.
When it was our turn to go on stage, I made sure I had sound by given the distortion channel a quick stab. The dirty channel was to stay on for the first two songs.
All was well until a clean section in my arch nemesis 'one night in april'
I have less then a second to turn off my tubescreamer and effects loop, kick in the clean channel and fret a Em chord. All went well until I hit the first note and realised I was still distorted.
Thinking on my feet, I rolled off the volume pot which acts more like a gain control and came in 4 bars late. Lucky for us our drummer Chris is always on the ball and it went unnoticed by the audience.
I spend every spare second over the next 3 songs trying to work out why my amp won't switch over, for some reason the effects loop switched and that's on the same pedal, the stage was stupidly dark with 4 bands worth of equipment and wires everywhere. I spend the time between songs with my head down the back of my amp.
I made it through the next few tracks by manually changing the channel on the face of my amp with my hand.
Just as Chris was counting in our last song I noticed the extension wire that plugs into the pedal was very slightly pulled out. It turns out the guitarist from the band before us must have stepped on it in the dark and it wasn't connected properly.
Adding to this, when I did select the clean channel, it had no power and sounded very thin and weak.
I later found out one of my preamp tubes gave out as well that night!
This sort of thing is the norm of gigging not a freaky one off thing.
The following gig was at the joiners and we were going on first on a bill with four bands.
We had our sound check last, had a few minutes for more beer then on stage to start off our set with pentacle.
Right from the start I couldn't hear Paul the other guitarist, so I signalled to the sound guy for more of Paul in my monitor . He pushed it all up but it was not much better. Its pretty typical when so many bands are on the bill that you can't hear much on stage so I got on with it best I could.
When looking down the stage to Paul he was frantically signalling to the engineer too. So much so I had to check we were not playing 'YMCA'
We had our sound check last, had a few minutes for more beer then on stage to start off our set with pentacle.
Right from the start I couldn't hear Paul the other guitarist, so I signalled to the sound guy for more of Paul in my monitor . He pushed it all up but it was not much better. Its pretty typical when so many bands are on the bill that you can't hear much on stage so I got on with it best I could.
When looking down the stage to Paul he was frantically signalling to the engineer too. So much so I had to check we were not playing 'YMCA'
After the first song the engineer approached the stage and fiddled with wires. Paul had a terrible sound that didn't cut through the mix and no one could work out why. It was fine a few minutes ago in sound check.
We made it through the gig, with Paul constantly pulling wires and knobs but it didn't improve.
After we finished Paul noticed the speaker cab was set to the wrong ohms instead of a matching 16 ohms it was on 8.
We have no idea how this got to be like this. Someone must have knocked it by accident or it just sounded worse after his tubes warmed up.
But when things go wrong, it Will happen live.
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