Nightmare engineer thread

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LP2006

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Post your nightmare "sound engineer" stories here! Or idiot musician stories!

For example:

Played at a bar last week. First thing I notice is a fairly big stage surrounded by several monitors and mains. There is some mood music playing through them. Every single monitor has a blown tweeter. A couple of cabinets are covered in glitter (yes, glitter).

Opener sets up. Genius engineer mics everything, including the 4x10 ampeg bass cab with a cheapo 57 knockoff. He starts the sound-check, and starts dictating to the guitar players where their level should be.

Sound guy: "No, no, no, You're still clipping my mixer!"
Band (already turned way way down): "Huh?"

I've noticed by watching the "engineer" that all the gain trim knobs on his mackie mixer are full blast.

Self: "try turning the gain down on the preamps."
Sound Guy: "What?"

First band plays, and as expected, the sound is mud-city. For our set, I tell the "engineer" to only mic the kick, the snare, and saxophone.

His Reply: "No, I mic everything on principle."
I think: "What the f*** is that supposed to mean?"
I say, speechless: "Uh....ok."

It gets better....

Next, our sound engineering hero walks up to the sax player and tells him to stick this busted up 57 knockoff as far don his bell as he can get it because: "it sounds the best down there."

Sax player looks at both me and the drummer (we all study audio engineering), and mouths: "We're F*****."

Played four tunes and ended the set.
It was a Wednesday night gig anyway.
 
Should have unplugged all those mics when he wasn't looking.:D What an idiot:rolleyes:
 
Ever feel like you'd be just as well do your own 'mic-up, little on stage mixer... and hand the sound guy one XLR line out..
:)
 
I was laying down some keyboard tracks at a studio... some dipshit in one of the other studios gets this idea in his head that since we're doing heavy music, and he's doing emo, we're making fun of him.. I didn't even know he was in there until his outburst... he busts into our studio in the middle of a take freaking out about everyone, and being just a typical obnoxious moron, making up for his own "small dick" issues or latent homosexuality, or something like that. He tried to play the typical "tough guy" card. "You think just because I play soft music that I can't fuck you up?" - "What the fuck are you talking about?!" I spent the next 20 minutes going up one side and down the other of this guy, he didn't come out of the studio he was renting the rest of the entire day, and he never showed up to the studio again. The studio was very embarrassed so they gave me some free downtime, so at least something good came of that fucked up take. ;)

I've got a few other silly stories floating around this place, more about live performance tho.
 
I once tracked a singer who was too embarrassed to sing in front of her own band! She insisted on me closing the curtains between control and live room. I thought if she can't sing in front of her own band, and one stranger, then how on earth is she gonna manage on stage?!

When she started singing I found out why she was so embarrassed, I would be too. The poor lass could not even hold a note, no amount of auto tune could help her out. It's the most awful thing I ever had to track.
 
My friend in another band talks us into opening for him at some dive bar. As a favor we agree to do it. A few days before the gig I go to the place while a band is playing to talk to the sound guy. I tell him I have a mixer on stage and decent compressor/limiters so he says it's cool for me to run a direct line into the amps which are on the side of the stage.

While I'm talking to him his assistant is soundchecking the next band. He can't seem to get any bass from the kick drum and is futzing with the mic and the board for like ten minutes. Finally the guy I'm talking to goes to the board and turns off the lo-cut on the kick channel then comes back to me shaking his head. I'm thinking what a moron this assistant is. Before I leave I take a good look at the setup. They have a beat-up Mackie and the rack contains 3 Behringer graphic EQs, an Alesis 3630 and an ancient Art reverb. I thank God I won't have to go through that junk.

So the day of the show I'm setting up my equipment and the moron assistant comes up asking me what I need. So I hand him the line outs from my mixer and tell go straight to the amp. He says I have to go through the board. I explain to him what his boss and I discussed and he informs me his boss won't be coming in tonight. He insists that I have to go through the board like everybody else and no exceptions. I'm thinking Jeez I might as well just load the stuff back in the van and go home. So now dude doesn't know where to connect my line level signals and starts scratching his head. So I ask him if he has direct boxes. He says he has to check and wanders off. He finally comes back with two Radial ProDI boxes. He asks if they'll work... :rolleyes:

Finally hooked up we start the soundcheck. He keeps signalling me to turn my board down. I had the main faders at -10 to start. So I turn them down to -20 and he still says his meters are red. So I ask him if he turned on the pad for the DI boxes. He says they don't have a pad and my signal is too hot. :confused: I offer him my headphones and show him the meter on my board which is only showing two green on the bottom of the meter at -20. He insists I have to turn it down even more. I realize that there's no hope for this idiot.
So I do it and now he's finally happy but now the level in the mains is so low I can hear my keys clicking as I play my synth.

I cut our set in half. It was too embarrassing to go on. I should have cut and run the minute I found out the boss guy wasn't there.
The next day I look up the specs on the DI boxes the moron used and they do have a pad switch. :eek:
 
Here's a performer one. I'm tracking a singer and his accompanist (pianist). i set them up in different rooms for isolation, but they could see each other through double glass doors. I could see the vocalist, but my view of the pianist was blocked (which I figured would be o.k.).

I had set up an aviom headphone system for them to use. i checked to make sure they each could make their own submix, then explained to them how to use it. i go back into the control room and start rolling.

The pianist plays, and soon the singer follows. 30 seconds into the take, the accompanist stops in the middle of a section and says:

pianist: "I really can't hear him(the singer) at all!"

keep in mind i can't see the pianist but the singer can.

singer: "Oh...I think you have to put the headphones on...."

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

That was unreal.
 
I don't have any of those...

...but if I had a pound for the amount of times I turned up for a gig and I was the only drummer who actually brought any hardware with me, I'd be a millionnaire.

Any other drummers experience that?

"Can I use your stands please mate?"
"Erm... *Sigh*... Fine... If you must"
"...and your snare?"
"*Sigh*... Fine..."
"...and your pedal?"
"Fuck off now"

:)
 
LP2006 said:
..pianist: "I really can't hear him(the singer) at all!"

keep in mind i can't see the pianist but the singer can.

singer: "Oh...I think you have to put the headphones on...."
Click to expand...
No nightmare, but our gal here was getting a bit tired I guess, "What's wrong?" "..the headphone's dead.."
Had it inside out.
 
i once played in a gig where they got the monitors and turned them towards the crowd to give them "surround sound" i thought it was hilarious so i just let them go on and didnt say anything even though none of us could hear anything. it was death metal so i can never hear anything anyway.
 
slow-thinking guitar player (me) meets creative experimental sound guy who decides to both mic and take a DI signal from my guitar amp (the one and only time that's been tapped in 22 years of having the amp). Sound guy runs the mic into my monitor, but runs the DI into the mains. During sound check, everything sounds fine to me through the monitor, and sound guy's keeps asking me over and over if the sound is what I want, and has a hard time believing me when I enthusiastically say yes. Bar fills up, music starts, bar clears out. It wasn't until I heard a recording later that I learned what was coming out of the mains sounded like a diamond-tipped drill bit cutting into fossilized horse poo at 50k rpm.

So, definitely a nightmare for the hapless folks in the bar, but it was a combination of factors that caused it.
 
I was doing sound for our band on a trip to Maine last summer and we set up everything at a roadhouse. I finally got the snake laid, everything hooked up to the desk, started the sound check when the bouncer, who had been hanging around all evening, comes over to me and says "You have to move this stuff over there." "Over there" was about ten feet from our mains on stage right near an exit door- thirty five feet from where I had set up. I almost killed him.


Once I was trying a new set of 603s at a gig. I had one set up in a shockmount to pick up acoustic instruments - guitar, mandolin and so forth. All the other mics up front were dynamics. The band is underway and spontaneously a harp player is invited up on the stand. OK - that's cool. He pulls the harmonica out and heads for the condenser mic. I'm waving my hands trying to get his attention - nope. He pulls the mic out of the shockmount by the cable and starts blowing his harp into it. By this time I'm running up to the stage, yelling "Use the other mic!" He looks up, gets it, and slings the mic and its cable over the tightening lever on the mic boom, reaching for a different mic. The thing swings like a pendulum and *thwack* hits the boom. Deader than last week's roadkill. Never did hear that mic and never used condensers at a gig thereafter, other than for backline amps.
 
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bennychico11 said:
for some reason this just doesn't sound right



are you sure he was the latent homosexual?

:eek::p;):D
Click to expand...

you must not be familiar with that figure of speech. It means, I was verbally ripping him a new one. I was reading him the riot act. You dig?
 
I was engineering a show earlier this year in an artsy gallery type of venue. Really cool place with decent lighting and house system. During the first act the Mains amp quits on me. Overheated. Thinking quickly, I turned the sucker off, set up a box fan in front of it, and we're off to the races. It was a band-aid fix..but it kept the amp running cool.

Everything is going great, up until the last band. The idiot Lighting Designer decides the box fan is "ugly," and removes it AFTER I told him why it was there.

PA quits again within two minutes....moron.
 
Some live show weirdness...since there's a lot of that being talked about.


One show of a band that I had. The guy booking it died right before the show, we didn't actually find out until we showed up. It was an outdoor show, and there was a church right next to the park where we were doing the show... we show up to play, and ask for Pete...Oh... ummm...*sob*... Pete had a heart attack and died the other day... oh shit that fucking sucks.... well, we decided to have his funeral at the church next door while the show is going on, so that he can "look down on the show, happening, and smile" WHAAAAT?! hahaha So..we play this show, and we can see them bringing the coffin of the guy who booked us to play the show out into the limo in the middle of our set... that was a really weird one.

Then, there was this one time, where we had a show booked at a club that sold themselves to the city and didn't tell anyone. We had confirmed this show and followed up several times with the guy who booked it. We show up to the club...it's all boarded up and the sign is taken off of the front (just that discoloured outline where the sign used to be) we phone the dude who was booking it right away and he tries to play REALLY dumb... what are you talking about guys? I never confirmed with you. then even saying, I don't even remember who you guys are (we had played about a dozen shows booked by that guy over the previous year...so.... haha)

Of course, there's being in bands where the members don't get along. Getting in fist fights outside of gigs. I threw a drum stick at the bassists head in one band I was in.

Then there's the treat of showing up to a venue, that we usually play at, and to find out it's a third party that booked the show this time, and they're not aloud to use the house PA...so... no monitors and two small mains, and no micing anything except for vocals (they only had 2 mics) considering we were doing some improvisational noise stuff throughout the set, and I was running my entire setup via a laptop, with no stage volume, it took forever of we're playing...we're not playing...we're playing...we're not playing... until we were able to at least track down an amp I could use for on stage volume.
 
TerraMortim said:
It means, I was...ripping him a new one.
Click to expand...
Ummmmm.....It's all yours, Benny..... :p

Sorry, Terra, nothing personal. But if you keep launching "those high hard ones" people are going to keep "swinging that way". :D

G.
 
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