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Joined:
March 2003
Posts: 127
Location: Corvallis, OR | HI
Last night, I tripped over a mic cord and almost fell on my new Ovation. As I was picking myself up and apologizing to the 6774, I remembered a study done at the aero-space company I worked for in about 1980.
It was along time ago, but the results should be interesting and useful to all guitar players. The study tried to find out what was causing so much maintenance and repair to state of the art electronic test equipment in the labs.
A typical state of the art piece of equipment, say a spectrum analyzer, could cost at least 5000 thousand dollars, and the compnay was spending too much money on repair.
We all assumed that the study would reveal that equipment was in the shop because of poor training, accidental overload, or maybe even deliberate abuse. But the results , after weeks of studying maintenance reports, surprised everyone.
The major cause of damge in most cases, centered around CORDS. Typically, on a tech's bench, several pieces of equipment are inter connected with cables and leads and wires, and the typical accident was one of the following;
1-- a tech tried to move something that still had one of many cords still connected, and pulled something off the bench onto the floor
2-- a tech tried to move something that still had a connected cord , and the cord jerked the equipment out of his hands onto the floor.
3-- as the tech carried the equipment to another bench, a cord dragging along the floor caught on something and jerked the equpimnet out of the tech's hands.
4-- a cord dragging along behind the tech got tangled around his feet and both tech and equpment were damaged.
I suspect that the lesson here applies to anyone with a home studio, or a pro working on a stage set up by someone else - BEWARE OF CORDS !
There is a good setup for a pun here, but I will let it go and stick to point :-)
Felix
Ovation 6774 and 1624 |
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Joined:
January 2002
Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | Ebdim9+5sus2, you know the one where your third finger goes behind the nut?
Go wireless, it's safer! |
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August 2002
Posts: 623
Location: Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey | Funny...you mention cord problems...
JUST yesterday I was recalling a gig of mine, back in 19 (gulp!) 87. We were doing one of the few songs that I sang lead vocals on (and the lead singer played guitar instead). Anyway, I was having fun with the freedom of no instrument, and took flight around the stage. In a single, fleeting moment I accidentally stepped on the bass player's cord while standing too close too him. Usually no problem, but he had the cord wrapped several times around the bass body's strap button...and the force of the tug made the button come flying out of his guitar, and it vanished on the dark stage floor! Thankfully, the bass didn't hit the floor too. I felt soooo bad. His family made of 7 of the 12 audience members who actually waited til 1am to hear us go on (probably the bar maids and owner made up the other 5 people), and thanks to me and my dumbass stage stunts, he had to play with one foot on the monitor to hold his bass up on his knee. I spent the rest of the song looking for the strap button, and he spent the rest of the set pissed at me (...and probably into the following week).
Come to think of it, I was kicked out of that band shortly there after.
Yeah....beware of cords.
Johnny |
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Joined:
June 2004
Posts: 580
Location: NW NJ | I agree - wireless is a lot safer and saves a bunch of things, among which would be damage to guitar players from falls, damage to peripheral equipment from falls, and most importantly, damage to guitars from falls and being fallen upon! |
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Joined:
March 2003
Posts: 127
Location: Corvallis, OR | Oops - I meant 5 thousand, not 5000 thousand dollars for some equipment. Oh well, the point is the same...
Felix |
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January 2004
Posts: 627
Location: Cherry Hill, NJ | All this talk seems to strike a chord or is it cord............... |
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January 2004
Posts: 648
Location: Florida | Spending way too much on repair, and the main reason was all this stuff hitting the floor... and they needed to do a study on that?
Let me repeat this... stuff hitting the floor... and they needed to do a study.
This just does not sound like rocket science to me. |
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May 2004
Posts: 2850
Location: Midland, MI | Say, doesn't Kaman own an aero-space company or six? Coinkydink?
:p |
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July 2004
Posts: 338
Location: Omaha | This post is well-timed: we're having a four hour worship band practice this afternoon, and as I was setting up this morning (moving monitors around, getting our mic stands in a circle, etc.) my biggest concern was that someone is going to walk in and trip on one of those too short cords that is suspended in mid-air at various locations...
...time to go move some things around, or find some longer cords...
;) |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 15682
Location: SoCal | My worst cord story was from the safe confines of my home office. I was playing my Viper Deluxe, which had just been assembled, and was sitting in my office chair. When I was done playing, I stood up, not realizing that I had put my foot on the cable, and tore out the jack from the pickguard, destroying the pickguard. Damned near cried. |
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Joined:
January 2003
Posts: 1498
Location: San Bernardino, California | Maybe we can get MWoody to make us both a Viper pickguard. Not a bad idea considering what they go for on eBay.
Regarding cords: I normally have a few small pieces of carpet that I lay down on top of the cords (at least as many as I can manage), it really helps with the tripping and cord damage. Makes for a lumpy carpet though. |
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dangerous cords