A Shocking Gig...

[robstudio]

Hey All,
Been a while since I've been 'round... I hope everyone is well
My band played on the weekend. Everything was fine, powerwise during soundcheck and Set 1. We're ready to begin set 2 and oh-oh... bass player's amp has no power. Try different outlet.. dead.. no inline fuse... ok, we'll run 'em direct and let 'em honk through my stage moniter after getting the bass setup direct we start playing, I get a wicked zap off my mic, while touching my guitar. Now we're not talking ground loop type zap, that annoying tingle you get if you plug your guitar amp into a different circuit than your board... all my stuff is on the same circuit. This was like 120 volts...pow, right on the kisser. Anyway, I was able to carry on, was really disorienting for a second... ok.. took off the metal windscreen and put on the bass player's nice foamy windscreen. Ummm it was better than 120.. lol.. That helped...until ... I thought we were at the end of a song, that I don't play guitar in, so I turn grab my guitar, realize the songs not over, run to mic, grab it full on, while gripping the guitar entire hand across all strings (REALLY GOOD GROUND)... I actually jerked from the shock... holy... I finished the tune, but had a little sit down beside the drums after. Ok, so we get through the friggin set... I have to fix this, or no set 3... I ask the bar if they have ground problems... no ... what the... all my stuff is high end... soundcraft board, qsc amps, ... Turns out the bass amp was left plugged in... something shorted in it and passed voltage to ground on either my guitar amp or console and thus foh mics... how is that even possible though in properly grounded gear? It should be blowing the breaker with 120 on ground, no???? It has to be an issue caused by the bass amp, as it went away when it was unplugged, but I'm still very concerned that my gear passed along that much of a voltage difference, between guitar and mic. I've never taken a hit like that in 15 years of playing, and 20+ years of playing with electronics and electrical. Any advise on what to test... or what went wrong???
We won't get shocked again.....
Regards, Thanks for reading

[robstudio]

Well we have part of the answer.... I think I'll change the thread title to ... how working with idiots almost killed me. Turns out the bass player wired himself a new plug on the end of his bass amp. "Black was always ground on my car stereo" ....OMFG.... yes, you guessed it, black to ground, white to silver, green to brass... hello 120 volts on the ground. Kinda funny in a way... sums up how playing with these guys has been.
Still bugs me that my gear passed along the current he sent to ground... why did a breaker not pop? Why did it work 1st set???? Why did his amp work at all, wired like that? Weird...

[James Steele]

Yipes! Glad you're alive to tell the tale!

[Shooshie]

Only thing I can think of is that the house ground wasn't connected to a real ground, which is very common in old buildings where it seems common and ground served the same purpose. So, he had his hot wire on the ground circuit, common was ok, and the ground was the back door for the hot wire, which as long as it wasn't really grounded, could be powering the whole system that way. No? Am I thinking wrong? If I'm right, then that place is one short from burning to the ground. (as in, dirt) Sounds like you were almost the missing link. Glad you're able to tell us the tale.


Shooshie

[twistedtom]

Shoo is most likly right the house could be old and not actualy have grounds or it may be wired wrong. It may be that the bass amp has no actual ground and it is actualy just a 2 wire set up I am thinking this could be the deal as his amp did not blow before you went to the gig. Does his power chord have 3 wires in it? I have seen way to much bad wiring from people that do not know what they are doing. You can get a power checker from fry's or the shack and plug it in before jobs to check the power in the house. VERY GOOD IDEA!

[robstudio]

Yeah.. glad I'm around to complain about it.... This was a newer pub in a strip mall type building. The amp has worked elsewhere... For sure was a three wire connection out of the amp. Something must be wrong with that bass amp's ground to not be blowing breakers. Hey the power checker is a great idea... considering a have one in my tool box... I'll move it to my gig box before next show and check from now on.
Thanks guys!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Something must be wrong with that bass amp's ground to not be blowing breakers.

The breaker should certainly have tripped. I'm guessing the club used a bigger breaker since the appropriate one was tipping. Just a guess. Of course it doesn't help that the bass player was playing with his plug. Next time, just give him an empty bottle, sit him in the corner and ask him if he can figure out how they got all the air in there. Once he figures that out, then ask how he got all the air in his brfain. BTW, canned air is great when it comes time to change the air in his head...

[robstudio]

lol... change the air in his head, no doubt. There will be no next time... Not with this band anyway. Too much stress and friction. As I said about this summing up the way it's been playing with these guys... The bass player does something stupid, and it ends up affecting me / the rest of the band. Too many cancelled rehearsals at the last minute... lack of effort booking shows... lack of effort selling tickets... lack of effort learning new material... and finally, attempting to electrocute me. Funny, I was wondering if I made the right decision to leave... nothing like a little 'karmic' reinforcement that I've made the right choice. Amazing players... but jumpin bejeebers, all the other nonsense that came with it....

[jeff sanders]

foghorn leghorn i say i say foghorn leghorn rules

[robstudio]

boy.. I was slow on this one...


...


In reference to above mentioned bassist...


....

That boy, I say that boy's about as sharp as a bowlin' baawwwl....

tee hee...

apologies to foggy for blowing the quote on the first attempt

[jeff sanders]

boy.. I was slow on this one...


...


In reference to above mentioned bassist...


....

That boy, I say that boy's about as sharp as a bowlin' baawwwl....

tee hee...

apologies to foggy for blowing the quote on the first attempt

yessss foghorns my fave especially talking about the old hen

thanks for the quote im an ez laugh.

[Shooshie]

Shoo is most likly right the house could be old and not actualy have grounds or it may be wired wrong. It may be that the bass amp has no actual ground and it is actualy just a 2 wire set up I am thinking this could be the deal as his amp did not blow before you went to the gig. Does his power chord have 3 wires in it? I have seen way to much bad wiring from people that do not know what they are doing. You can get a power checker from fry's or the shack and plug it in before jobs to check the power in the house. VERY GOOD IDEA!

I always use meters and/or test lights to tell me if my wiring is correct in the many desks and studio benches I've built, but a funny thing happens when I get them installed in the house where I live. Those three green lights that told me it was all right out in the shop, suddenly turn to reds showing that the ground is not connected. So, I ground it to a copper pipe. Another plug in the house says "hot and ground reversed!" This house's wiring was done in the 1930's by the guy who built it, whose IQ apparently was lower than [politically referenced individual mentally deleted before I even thought the name, in keeping with forum policies]. I'd get a pro out here to rewire it, but I'm afraid he'd call the city and condemn the place as ransom for some outlandish fees. Meanwhile, I've done my best to keep it safe by anticipating problems before they happen, and by doing some major rewiring in the fuse box. Crazy, what they used to get by with. I'm no electrical engineer, but I've had to learn some things over the years to be competent at wiring up electronic/audio gear, and the facilities which house them. I've been amazed and appalled that so many stages have substandard (or outright dangerous) wiring and often poor power supply to boot.

Shoosh

[James Steele]

Hehehe... I lived in a house where someone had done some "amateur" wiring. Fortunately a friend knew an excellent electrician who came out and as he was looking at the wiring inside on of the wall switches or something (it was some 3 pole situation where 3 different switches work the same lights-- above my pay grade) he said something very funny that I loved.... he said... "This wiring looks like it was done by a really excellent...(pause for effect)... SHOEMAKER!" The way he said it busted me up. Geez... years ago my ex-wife and I passed on buying a house where some "do-it-yourselfer" did some wiring. One room, I kid you not had about a foot of the receptacle end of your average orange Home Depot extension cord coming out of the drywall. Needless to say, even if we fixed that, there was no telling what this guy had done that we *couldn't* see that wasn't up to code, and some day dying of smoke inhalation in our sleep wasn't how either of us wanted to slip our mortal coils.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Across the street from my place there is an apartment building that I looked at when I first moved to LA. Yep, orange extension cord plugged into one wall, stapled into the dry wall and terminating in an outlet box screwed to the wall.

In my 2nd house in Santa Barbara the wires were from about 1920. They ran not in conduits, but about 9" apart in single parallel wires not unlike the way power lines are on poles. And similar in that there were insulators running thru the attic with metal connectors that were not covered. Touch two and you're zapped. The attic was also lined with fiberglass insulation. I had skin problems for YEARS after trying to wire a few speakers. The glass got into my skin and stayed there. It took about 2 years after I left the place to get rid of the dermatographism.

Just like this:


or this:

[mhschmieder]

I find grounded circuits to be an extreme rarity, and always test an outlet for true ground. Maybe because most of my life I've lived in areas that built up before the 1970's?

I think Shooshie hit the nail on the head with his synopsis. I doubt that place will be around much longer.

Good thing you lived through it, hair intact. I hope you fired the bass player. We're usually the most tech-savvie in the band.