Smoke's effect on hardware

[Zaphod B]

Smoke gets into the gear and gunks up the switches and pots. Don't think that because the gear has a metal case that the smoke isn't getting inside--it is.

This is true, and crap gets inside the gear even in the absence of cigarette smoke.

Part of normal preventive maintenance for a band that gigs a lot is (or should be) to periodically break the gear open and clean all the switches and pots with contact cleaner.

 

[generalchaos316]

A little late, but thanks for all the insights and about what I was thinking

 

[Fishmed]

When I was a noob and in college, I bought used gear often, and I could tell what was used in the bars and what wasn't. The worse part of bar gear was the smell in my "smoke free" home.

The piece of gear to smell the worse are snakes that go from the stage to the sound board area. Being on the floor, they pick up the nastiest funk smell. I AWALYS left it in its case when it was not being used.

If you do lots of "bar/club" recording, you might want to invest in some gear that is dedicated for that purpose and keep you nice studio gear in the studio.