Don't piss off a slightly psychotic cat!

[buzzsmith]

I posted a thread recently...
http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =1&t=39168
in regards to how many DP users were mixerless.

The reason for the post was:

My 93 year old Aunt died last Monday. It was not unexpected. She went into a sudden 2 week decline and was increasingly incoherent. After her passing and an informal family gathering, it was determined that I and my family were the best candidates to take and care for her Collie. Very pleasant and friendly dog.

The only issue that I expressed was that we have 2 cats, and I wasn't sure how the cats were going to react to a new occupant.

Well, one is very friendly and was mainly just curious, and if she could talk I think she would have said "C'est la vie"..."no big deal".
However the other cat (Siamese) was adopted many years ago as a kitten by my wife and daughter from a shelter and we think that she might have been abused prior to us becoming her owner.

She's never been very friendly and I'm the only family member that can even pet her, and even then I'm watching my fingers in case she suddenly decides to be aggressive!

Anyway, Sunday night I had a small project to attend to, and I removed the towel that I always placed on top of the board (mainly for dust control) and discovered that it had the distinctive cat urine smell. Didn't think much about it until I realized that the cat didn't pee on the towel but on the board itself! "Concentrated" around channels 21-24...probably happened a day or so earlier, when I forgot to cover it after a long day...I don't remember. I guess (hell, I know!) this was her way of telling me that she did not appreciate the intruder Collie!

When I turned the board on, it was crackling and spitting and I noticed that it was also locked in solo mode, rendering it unusable (obviously the noises emanating from it also made it unusable).

I tried compressed air, and gently cleaned the surface of the board with a mildly damp towel and left the board on overnight thinking that the internal circuitry might just dry out.

Monday afternoon, it seemed that the board was actually getting better...the noises had stopped and I could occasionally get it out of solo mode. When I called Mackie, (after the tech stopped laughing for about a minute...fortunately I was in a better mood), he said definitely turn it off or further damage might occur due to the uric acid.

So, now it's at a Mackie authorized Service Center here in Houston for diagnosis and prognosis. Awaiting the estimate phone call.

So that's the story...

What a "pisser"!

Buzzy

[Phil O]

Probably has to do more with the salts in urine than the acid. Urine is therefore conductive. At one point in my life (back in the old days) I worked in a hospital's electronic repair facility. Believe it or not, saline spills were quite common (not to mention blood and other disgusting stuff). The problem with liquids that contain salts is that after the water evaporates, the salt stays behind. The salt itself doesn't usually cause a problem (unless on switch and pot contacts), but on humid days there IS a problem as the salt absorbs enough water to become conductive again.

But fear not! There's a solution, err lack of solution. Rinse everything several times in clean water and then a final time in distilled water. Yep, that's right. Take that piece of equipment you paid thousands of dollars for and give it a thorough soaking. Just don't plug it in until everything dries out. A hair dryer can come in handy here. Pots and faders will need to be re-lubricated if they are not sealed. Caig makes a product for this. I kid you not, we used to do this with $20,000 monitors all the time. It's the only way to save them. If you don't get rid of the salt, it will NEVER work correctly again.

BTW. If you know exactly what areas got hit, you may be able to remove those assemblies and just clean them.

Phil

[buzzsmith]

Probably has to do more with the salts in urine than the acid. Urine is therefore conductive. At one point in my life (back in the old days) I worked in a hospital's electronic repair facility. Believe it or not, saline spills were quite common. The problem with liquids that contain salts is that after the water evaporates, the salt stays behind. The salt itself doesn't usually cause a problem (unless on switch and pot contacts), but on humid days there IS a problem as the salt absorbs enough water to become conductive again.

But fear not! There's a solution, err lack of solution. Rinse everything several times in clean water and then a final time in distilled water. Yep, that's right. Take that piece of equipment you paid thousands of dollars for and give it a thorough soaking. Just don't plug it in until everything dries out. A hair dryer can come in handy here. Pots and faders will need to be re-lubricated if they are not sealed. Caig makes a product for this. I kid you not, we used to do this with $20,000 monitors all the time. It's the only way to save them. If you don't get rid of the salt, it will NEVER work correctly again.

BTW. If you know exactly what areas got hit, you may be able to remove those assemblies and just clean them.

Phil

Man...that sounds so radical!

Anyway, it's at the shop, so hopefully they'll know what they are doing.

I do recall one of the techs saying something about "crystallization"...probably referring to the salts.

Thanks...

Buzzy

[Phil O]

Yeah, it sounds pretty scary. But when you consider the alternative...
"Yes, Dr. Smith, this defibrillator should be just fine, as long as you don't use it on a rainy day."

Our protocols for testing equipment before returning it to service were quite extensive. Believe me, the damage done by leaving that cat urine in there will far exceed any damage you can do with plain water. You just need to use your head. If there's something in there that water can damage, just cover it with plastic. If it got hit by the urine, it's already damaged and will need to be replaced anyway. There's actually very little in a piece of electronic equipment that can't handle the water, as long as it's dried up quickly.

I doubt your repair facility is familiar with this problem, unless someone there has worked somewhere where saline spills were common (or cats).

Phil

[buzzsmith]

Thanks, Phil.

I'm going to forward your posts to the tech guys at LD Systems (Houston).

I want it back as reliable as before, whether I keep it or sell it or donate to a deserving charity.

Buzzy

[magicd]

Psychotic cat or dumb drummer?

My drummer buddy leaned over to see what I was doing and poured an entire pint of beer into my brand new Powerbook.

Screen went blank and the computer went "DING!" and I looked over to see the last bit of beer disappearing into the keyboard.

Yanked all cables and battery.

Drained the beer.

Poured a glass of water through the keyboard.

Drained that.

Sprayed an entire bottle of contact cleaner (alcohol) into the keyboard.

Left over night.

Zap P-Ram.

Worked like a charm!

I think I'd prefer the slight aroma of beer to cat pee.

Dave

[buzzsmith]

Glad you had a successful outcome! Mine is yet to be determined.

Along the lines of maybe becoming mixerless, when you have a second, would you mind checking out this thread?
http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =1&t=39208

This is a determining factor in going strictly DP ITB.

Thanks a lot!

Buzzy

[twistedtom]

From what I know of Siamese cats they are all a bit crazy and are one-person cats. I know from experience that even female cats will mark their territory with piss when they feel an intrusion of their space. I thought it was bad that my cat walked on my board and changed some of the settings, bummer man.

[buzzsmith]

From what I know of Siamese cats they are all a bit crazy and are one-person cats. I know from experience that even female cats will mark their territory with piss when they feel an intrusion of their space. I thought it was bad that my cat walked on my board and changed some of the settings, bummer man.

Yeah, I agree...up until the recent incident, I would deal with buttons being pushed in, etc. especially when I had the 2 Mackies.

With Thanksgiving, and the heavy load at the repair facility, I don't expect even an estimate until early next week.

I did copy and paste Phil O's comments in an email to the tech guys just in case they weren't aware of his suggestion regarding a mixer "bath"!

Buzzy

[Pappy725]

My daughter brought a kitten into the house that decided to sharpen it's claws on the corner of my monitor. It peed on my desk, but missed my laptop. It was an outside cat after that.

Pappy

[kassonica]

I had a cat once that got annoyed with my ex girlfriend and poo'd in her best shoes

[Shooshie]

The picture says it all, really, at least as far as the cat was concerned. These 5 Yamaha Disklaviers were taking up all the space in his living room. They made incredibly loud sounds when they were all playing together. The cat was fed up.

As you can see, each piano has its own big cable, plus at least two mic cables. The Disklaviers had little "wagons" that attached to them with cables, and thus were connected to at least one MIDI cable each, plus a power cord. That's minimum of 5 cables per piano, one of which was 1" in diameter, times 5 pianos = 25 cables + storage under the pianos, including lots of cable storage.

Well, the cat decided that cables presented the biggest assault to his free-range living room, and thus were the most desirable targets. We didn't know that he was getting even perpetually, day by day, night by night, until we got under the pianos to move some microphones into better positions and adjust their cables to fit.

I think my friend Ariel and I both stuck our hands in it at the same time. On our knees, reaching for a big coil of cable, we found it soaking in a sticky, yellow, semi-crystalized fluid. It reeked like a junior-high-school restroom. Worse. The cat had been systematically targeting every cable under those pianos. It was such an incredible mess that we had to disconnect everything, haul the cables outside, tape up the ends and hose down the cables in the back yard. It took forever.

The cat? Ariel moved it outside. Set it up with a big "igloo" home for his bedding and food, and left it out there from that day forward. He had a yard closed in concrete block walls, so the coyotes couldn't get in (Las Vegas), and the cat lived in relative comfort. But what a mess!


Shooshie

[bongo_x]

... I thought it was bad that my cat walked on my board and changed some of the settings...

At my house we call that "remixing".

bb

[twistedtom]

That is a crazy set up Shoo! I have a friend with 3 grands and I thought he had a problem.

[buzzsmith]

I had a cat once that got annoyed with my ex girlfriend and poo'd in her best shoes

Is that why she's an "ex"!?