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[John Jackson]

This club has been notorious for having weird sound problems over the years. I did a NYE gig there last night and couldn't get any of my phantom-powered condenser mics to function. When I turned them up all the way, you could barely hear them and they start to feedback. The guitarist was getting electrical shocks when touching his guitar strings with his hands while place his mouth against the mic. I had to switch him to a wireless mic.

It was very difficult to get the system sounding consistently good, and there seemed to be a lot of instability with it the entire night. For example, I could hardly get any punch out of the subs, and when I turned them up they sounded muddy. I've never encountered these problems before with my new Yamaha mixer, and when I got home I plugged it in to test the condenser mics - and they worked just fine.

I am guessing the building has some ground fault issues in numerous outlets. I will probably just tap into the breaker box directly the next time I run sound there. I plan to drop by there soon and test some of their outlets for electrical faults.

Any ideas on what may be the culprit? Has anyone here experienced something like this before? If so, did you ever find out what the cause was?

Thanks for any input you may have.

[Mike Sokol]

Any ideas on what may be the culprit? Has anyone here experienced something like this before? If so, did you ever find out what the cause was?

I'm leaving shortly for a gig so I don't have time for an extended answer right now, but I have one hint for you to consider. Did you use the venue's existing audio snake? If so, if they lifted pin-1 on the channels (cutting the wire) then phantom power won't work on mics and active DI boxes, and it's possible for the musicians to feel a 48-vot DC shock when touching a mic and a grounded guitar. So that's the first thing to figure out, or even bring your own audio snake.

Secondly. DO NOT tap into the service panel unless you're a licensed electrician or can hire one to do it for you. And if you do need to tie into the panel, then you need proper distro equipment with circuit breakers in all the right places. If you don't do everything exactly right for power distro, the possibilities of personal injury and gear destruction are very real. 

I'm sure others will jump in here, but I'll check back in later tonight after I'm done.

Be safe out there...

[John Roberts {JR}]

Sound like multiple problems.

The shock from guitar to mic ground could be coming from bad outlet wiring at the FOH, bad outlet wiring at back-line, or guitar amp with excessive leakage.

As Mike mentioned the phantom power symptom indicates open pin 1, but if pin 1 is open you shouldn't get a shock to guitar strings??

Check the outlets with NCVT... all the outlets.

Good luck. (be careful)

JR

[Rob Spence]

How many outlets were you using?
What was plugged in where?


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