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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => LAB: The Classic Live Audio Board => Topic started by: Jeff cech on March 31, 2014, 02:53:36 PM

Title: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: Jeff cech on March 31, 2014, 02:53:36 PM
We like to keep our gear looking spiffy. What do you do when your snakes start looking like these? Tape has pulled off the paint and rust has set in.  We've sanded and repainted a sample with a shaker can  --looks OK--but I don't see this paint job holding up for long. Also-- thinking about renumbering options--p-touch, lamacoid, etc.?  Thanks for looking.
Title: Re: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: James A. Griffin on March 31, 2014, 05:01:11 PM
We like to keep our gear looking spiffy. What do you do when your snakes start looking like these? Tape has pulled off the paint and rust has set in.

Not trying to be snarky, but the real answer is to begin taking care of your gear long before it starts looking like that.

Any self-fix at this point will be labor intensive and look cheesy.   Buy a new box, pre-punched and painted, and change the box out.  It will take a pretty good amount of your time, but will give you a snake that looks like new.

http://www.markertek.com/Patchbays-Wallplates/Breakout-Boxes/Rapco/S6BPPR.xhtml
Title: Re: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: Jordan Wolf on March 31, 2014, 06:05:28 PM
Well, if you remove all of the connectors and strain relief, you can send them out to get 'blasted (sand, glass bead, baking soda, walnut shell, etc.) and then powder-coated.

I agree with James - it's a bit late for that.  With all that rust on the stagebox, I wouldn't trust the XLR connections much either.
Title: Re: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: John Halliburton on April 01, 2014, 08:18:51 AM
Quote from: Jeff cech ...but I don't see this paint job holding up for long. Also-- thinking about renumbering options--p-touch, lamacoid, etc.?  Thanks for looking.
[/quote

Jeff,

I agree with the others, I doubt it's going to be cost effective, but I know a powder coater in Rockford that can blast those boxes as well, and at least get them looking new again-plus with some of the powders available, it will be a strong coating.

P Touch labeling, even tho I suspect it'll need replacing from time to time, at least seems an economical approach, and they do have some heavy duty tapes you can use.

I suspect it'll still be cheaper to just buy replacement boxes and have the intern swap out the parts.

Best regards,

John
Title: Re: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: Jim McKeveny on April 01, 2014, 09:29:11 AM
We like to keep our gear looking spiffy.

Ditto on the regrettable snarkiness, but your opening sentence does not jibe with the photo. Decades-old snakes of mine do not present like this.

Anything is renewable, but the cost of those processes is unlikely to be worth it. Get new boxes (from CBI, Whirlwind, Rapco, etc.) and commit to always using low residue board tape for incidental channel markings. Your current boxes take up a lot of real estate onstage/intrunk for their channel count anyway.

Care to post a photo of the current fanout?
Title: Re: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: Bob Cap on April 01, 2014, 10:08:39 AM
Looks like they were attacked with duct tape.... :)

I had a few that were out on a rental that came back with the paint ripped off, not out in the rain to get rusty yet.

I took them apart and sand blasted and repainted the boxes. I then printed new covers on vinyl and reassembled the boxes.

Now the boxes have an area to write with a dry erase pen for inputs and the boxes are color coded...

A lot of work, but worth it. Why don't they come this way?

Bob Cap
Advanced Audio Inc.
Gilbert, MN
Title: Re: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: Cailen Waddell on April 01, 2014, 10:42:11 AM
I use these or something similar to label.
http://www.officeworld.com/Worlds-Biggest-Selection/BVCFM2518/14Q1/?gclid=CNbS6JjCv70CFTMV7AodkRIAUw

Sand blast and powder coat.... 
Title: Re: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: Riley Casey on April 01, 2014, 11:16:20 AM
This is what drop snake boxes should look like :
http://whirlwindusa.com/catalog/snakes-splitters-and-multiwiring-systems/snakes/mini-6

Side mount allows two strips of tape for marking when needed, keeps the numbers and tape strips separate from the connector surface, keeps the connectors perpendicular to spilled liquids and dirt.  The Whirlwind units are steel and thus heavy and come with the less than stellar Whirlwind XLRs.  Ramtech makes an aluminum version with Switchcraft ( my preference ) or Neutrick connectors.  One nice touch on the Ramtech is that the connector metal can be anodized multiple colors while the outer shell can be black so that you can have several drop box colors on stage instead of the electrical tape around the strain relief thing.  Each of our stage cable cases has three 12 channel drop boxes each in a different color and the fan outs have matching sleeves of shrink tube that gather the fan out channels in groups of four so it's easy to match the fan to the box by color.  Ours are the heavy steel Whirlwind boxes ( with D3F connectors ) which we disassembled and painted in the style of the Ramtech  but when I order more it will be he aluminum boxes.
Title: Re: subsnake refurbishment
Post by: Jeff cech on April 02, 2014, 06:11:51 PM
Appreciate all the comments. I should have prefaced the post by saying these units had been quarantined some time ago. We have dozens of  subsnakes in active inventory that we attend to with TLC and semi-annual inspections. Not sure why entropy was so unfair to these.  Interestingly, we opened these up to test and inspect the connections--rock solid. The fan-out ends are in great shape as well.  A challenge we face is that we have one inventory that services both  our production side and   the dry-hire rental side of our business. One one hand, we have staff engineers that treat the gear like it's their own. On the other hand, occasionally stuff comes back from a rental looking like it was rode hard and put up wet.  We have no problem charging clients for obvious damage. The tough call isinsidious decay--"normal wear and tear" and latent damage. Thanks for all advice. Jeff