On 08/07/2014 12:05, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 7/7/2014 10:37 PM, wrote:
Are you saying you carry a spare internal power supply and swap it
out in the field?
I could if that seemed to be the best alternative. But if this was a
mission critical job and the mixer was small, I might take a whole spare
mixer. If it was a large mixer, I'd look for one with a redundant power
supply. You don't have to own this stuff, you can rent it, but you need
to figure out what makes the most sense on a job-to-job basis.
Understand that I come from an time when these things weren't cheap as
dirt. It was important to be able to fix things when they break, even in
the field. At a festival in El Paso about 25 years ago, we were setting
up for a broadcast feed when we discovered that the Soundcraft 200 mixer
was dead. The problem was with the power supply. This one had an
external power supply (and, no, we didn't have a spare with us) so
opening it up to see what was wrong - it could have been as simple as an
internal fuse - didn't require removing as many screws as, say, a
Mackie. I didn't have a schematic, and this was pre-Internet so I
couldn't just download one, but I did have a multimeter, a soldering
iron, and some hand tools. I was able to repair it right there on the
edge of the stage at Chamizal Memorial Park and had it up and running in
time for the show.
Nice work.
You may ask "what if it went out during the show?" or "Supposed you
couldn't fix it?" Well, that's probably when we would have figured out
how we could make do with a different mixer and borrow it from one of
the daytime PA systems. You don't stand there with a beer in your hand
saying you'll never buy another piece of gear from this company again.
Because there are *lots* of people ready to lynch you... ;-)
I don't plan that there will be failures, though, because I don't start
off with (or keep) equipment with questionable reliability or something
that I can't fix.
My experience with wall wart supplies is that nine times out of ten,
it's failed where the wire goes into the plug or comes out of the wart.
This happens rather more often than a kettle or figure of eight
connector fails when the gear has an internal power supply. At least the
wall warts are small enough to carry a spare at all times.
--
Tciao for Now!
John.