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[Adam Ellsworth]

My NYE show was of course going very well - a Martini-bar-like venue I've never worked before surprised me with some of the best acoustics in town, and the band requested much more lighting than I usually bring to a club show. It looked and sounded great!

So of course a member of the tux-clad crowd spilled almost a full glass of champagne on my LS9-32 and walked away while I stared in shock - never saw who. The faders were messed up and in retrospect I should have immediately unplugged it, but I tried to keep the show going by parking the console on an empty layer and mixing via Tablet (http://www.airfader.com) for about 5 minutes before all audio quietly dropped out. (There was only 15 minutes left in the show... I patched the PA to the monitor board and the band finished the last two songs.)

I took it home, took it apart while still wet, and cleaned everything I could with distilled water and swabs... the faders are all shot (The board's over 4 years old, so I already had two that wouldn't calibrate... now I have 27) but I fear a couple of the input boards are ruined by small but poorly-placed champagne drops. Champagne clearly corrodes the crap out of connectors.

Believe it or not, this is the only real incident I've had in 8+ years of weekly gigging. I have equipment insurance... do I try to get it fixed somewhere and then submit a claim and see what happens? Should I just pay to fix it and not risk getting my insurance cancelled? This probably happens to most people at some point, what do you guys do?

[Bob Leonard]

I don't know why you think your insurance will be cancelled, but the sooner you make the claim the better off you'll be. Take what they give you, buy a new board, and sell this one for parts / as is.

[John Roberts {JR}]

That sucks... you can dress them up like penguins but they sill act like silly monkeys.
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Since you ran it till it crapped itself, the odds are it may need more than a thorough cleaning. Champagne doesn't strike me as very corrosive, more like sticky/gummy. 

If you have insurance, why not use it...  Isn't stuff like this what you pay insurance for?

JR

PS: It might be worth seeing what the repair estimate is. Do they total consoles? 

[dick rees]

In my ideal world, you'd simply box up the remains and send them to the promoter with the bill for a replacement.

[Adam Ellsworth]

I don't know why you think your insurance will be cancelled, but the sooner you make the claim the better off you'll be.

Somewhere along the way, a long time ago, I read something someone had posted that basically suggested equipment insurance was basically good for "catastrophic" losses (like, losing your whole rig due to theft, vehicle accident, etc) because if you filed a claim or two for minor losses, they wouldn't offer to renew it, and it's hard to find equipment insurance at a decent rate. For whatever reason, that stuck.

...but that may not have been sound advice. Hence, I asked, and glad I did. I could probably replace all the faders myself and maybe take a stab at the board I think is bad, but perhaps my best course of action is to just get a quote for repair from an authorized center, submit that to insurance, and see what happens.

(I could use this opportunity to move up to a CL1, but my niche and needs don't really support that.)

[Adam Ellsworth]

In my ideal world, you'd simply box up the remains and send them to the promoter with the bill for a replacement.

In my case, it might not be great PR (or karma) to take "Make A Wish Foundation" to court over a champagne spill. ;-)

[Bob Leonard]

Call them and make a wish for a replacement board. At least feel them out in a polite way.

[Mike Christy]

In my case, it might not be great PR (or karma) to take "Make A Wish Foundation" to court over a champagne spill. ;-)

They may be able to afford it.

[Samuel Rees]

Did you have a contract with them that said anything about damages to your gear?

[frank kayser]

I don't know why you think your insurance will be cancelled, but the sooner you make the claim the better off you'll be. Take what they give you, buy a new board, and sell this one for parts / as is.

IMO, Bob has hit the nail on the head.  An 8+ year old console, with problems already, and a spill like that, personally I'd never fully trust the console again.