Hey Light!! .....

[Lt. Bob]

Gotta question for ya'.

Since I've moved to Florida .... an awful lot of my gigs are on the beach. Wonderful in the sense of being beautiful and all .... but rough on the equipment. After only 3 months I'm noticing green corrosion on the input jacks of my Mackie plus I sweat all over my ax. And, of course, I'm going thru strings although I use DR Extra Life and the coating seems to help a lot.

Now, I don't take my good gear to those gigs usually. I have a Squire Tele that plays really nice and it's my beater so I don't care a lot what happens to it and that's what I mainly use.

However, I would like to keep it up as well as possible plus there are some gigs that are more important so I want to use my better axes on them even though I'll sweat all over them.

So my question is for products that will protect them from the sweat in the first place and make it easier to get them cleaned up. But mainly to give some sort of protection in the first place. I'm gigging 5 to 7 gigs a week and, to be honest, it's pretty unlikely that I'll clean the gits after each gig ..... so I need something that'll protect them some from salt air ... sun ... and the occassional sudden downpour. Plus my two nice gits have gold hardware which goes to crap pretty easily anyway and these are Epis ..... nice ones (Zak Wilde Paul) but still ..... lesser quality gold hardware. Anyway to protect that?

And a related question ..... the Squire has a maple neck and it gets sticky on gigs to where I'll be sliding down the neck and get brought up short.
While you're at it ..... anything to help protect my electronics?

 

[Light]

Well, I'm not an expert on high humidy equipment maintence. The problems up here are usually on the oposite end of the spectrum. What I CAN suggest is to wipe down all of your gear when you are done playing, and probably when ever you take a break. That is, I would guess, not enough though. The best advice I can give you is to find a good local tech and ask them what they suggest. This seems to me to be one of those situations where equipment maintence is a region specific issue. I don't know who is good at repairs down there, but I have a friend who has a store down there who might be able to suggest someone. His website is My Favorite Guitars. Ask him who is good at that stuff down there, and he should be able to help you out. His a good guy too.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[Lt. Bob]

Cool ........ thanks. I'll give him a call.

ummmmm ..... do I tell him Light said to call?
You can PM me your name or who I should use as a reference.

 

[Light]

Cool ........ thanks. I'll give him a call.

ummmmm ..... do I tell him Light said to call?
You can PM me your name or who I should use as a reference.

Just tell him you got his name from an internet friend whose name you don't know.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[Thurgood]

Hey Lt Bob, Light's got good advice. I did work for a sound Co. based in Florida for a number of years and my only advice is to clean, clean, clean. On input jacks (metal), a light coat of mild oil wipe down before and after the gig will help on those type of parts. As to brass, dunno. Gt's, clean, clean clean. Sorry not more help. We had regular probs with salt air but our method was clean and replace when necessary. Expensive, but we were a commercial outfit and it all came out in the wash. (read client's pockets). Enjoy the sunshine state.

 

[Lt. Bob]

well ...... after reading these replies ( Basically clean clean clean after every gig ), the translation I'm getting is "buy new hardware every 5 or 6 years."

There's just no chance that I'm gonna do my beach gig on Wed. ...... drive 30 miles back home .....change and drive back and do my evening gig .... then drive back home yet again and clean anything. I just will wipe my butt by that point! LOL

Thanks for the replies ...... I'm gonna call that guy and see what he has to say but I'm thinking I'm gonna end up with the "Use cheap stuff and replace it when needed" method.