Equipment faliure at a gig!

Here is an interesting thing that happened to me;

We had a pretty big gig. It was more of a try out to get into a local club on a regular basis.
I recently picked up my dream amp (at the time)(Marshall JVM) so I was feeling good and felt no need for a back up.

Well about half was through the set my amp "went". No sound , nothing.

I was fortunate as a friend , who is also in a band was there and just happened to have his amp in the car.
Well that was a life saver.

And needless to say I do not travel without a backup anymore!

Sounds like one of the tubes went...

I don't know if this counts as equipment faliure at a gig but a few years ago i was playing with one of the punk bands i played guitar for and one of my SG guitars got knocked over and the headstock got snapped clean off :( i was not happy, i had that guitar for 9 years.... but hey punk gigs can get a bit lively sometimes lol

Originally Posted by: Slipin LizardSounds like one of the tubes went...

It was a fuse. I had it repaired under warranty . And the same thing happened a few months later, this time I was just practicing by myself.

Originally Posted by: fuzzb0xI don't know if this counts as equipment faliure at a gig but a few years ago i was playing with one of the punk bands i played guitar for and one of my SG guitars got knocked over and the headstock got snapped clean off :( i was not happy, i had that guitar for 9 years.... but hey punk gigs can get a bit lively sometimes lol

I would count that as equipment failure ! And another good reason to always gave a backup guitar also.

Originally Posted by: fuzzb0xI don't know if this counts as equipment faliure at a gig but a few years ago i was playing with one of the punk bands i played guitar for and one of my SG guitars got knocked over and the headstock got snapped clean off :( i was not happy, i had that guitar for 9 years.... but hey punk gigs can get a bit lively sometimes lol

Man that sucks. I've never had a guitar destroyed but if I had a $buck for every " mic stand ding " I've put on a neck/headstock I'd .... I don't know...have a LOTTA $bucks?!

Originally Posted by: fretsmithMan that sucks. I've never had a guitar destroyed but if I had a $buck for every " mic stand ding " I've put on a neck/headstock I'd .... I don't know...have a LOTTA $bucks?!

Do an image search for "The Edge" from U2, until you see him with his famous Gibson Explorer. Happened to that guy... guitar got knocked over, and the headstock snapped clean off. He got it fixed, and eventually they "retired" the guitar from touring duties. That guitar is on tons of their songs.

we were playing in a large bar one night a roadhouse kind of like one on tv with swazey . a fight broke out and my new les paul got knocked over and snapped the head right off the neck .well after the fight settled down i went to the tour bus grabbed some small strips of wood and glue and clamps fit it back as good as i could . i was lucky it fit in good didnt even look like it was broke .it stayed in tune perfect i played in my working band for another ten years ..we always had 5 or 6 guitars and 2 or 3 spare amps monitors lights etc ya never know what can happened . alot of things happened in the 20 years i had a working band . most cases the old stuff outlasted the new .

I'm not stalking you buddy but that's a great story. 20 years in a full-time band?! I know for sure you have a TON of stories ... I hope your inclined to share some more.

Having a backup of everything seems like the simple solution, but not everyone can afford to buy multiple guitars or amps frequently. If you have a multi effect unit, use the amp modellers on it and plug straight into the PA, or if you have a separate modeller (line6 pod etc) bring it to the gig as backup.

equipment failure is always a pain in the ass. i usually have two amps and two guitars, cuz u never know. have a regular service BEFORE amp breaks down is really good as well. Dont wait till something goes wrong. form time to time i open up my amp to the max and play it for some time just to see if everything is still ok. I once read that van hallen use to lave his guitar next to full open amp in feed back for few days. if he came up and the amp was still working, it worked :) haha

I had a gig where my high E broke.

Not a big story? Replace you say?

Now you're probably thinking that I did something like not bring a spare. Not true. I had one. The saddle on the Floyd Rose got a groove. Luckily, it was a block from a friends house (it was very local) and I could borrow his guitar.

Funny, I didn't realize I just needed to turn the saddle block around and it woulda been fixed.....

Dumb................

I was playing a cover set and had two keyboards.
In the middle of a show while doing a Santana song the sound card in one of my keyboard got fried ( 2 out 4 sound banks went) and few minutes later the pre-amp for my mic mixer just stopped working.
That night someone from the audience brought me a regular plug and play mic and that's how I was able to finish the show,still with just one keyboard working on half of its sound banks.