From daleassociates51@yahoo.ca Sun Nov 06 09:13:18 2011
Subject:Gigging and unreliable power

Last night I played in a small pub with my band. As many of you know I am an enthusiastic user and supporter of VB3. My rig consists of VB3 which is embedded in Garageband using an Edirol PCM-80 controller. The place was really small so it was my intention of using our drummers Mackie 15inch powered monitor which during the sound-check actually sounded good. Unfortunately the house PA sucked and we ended up using the Mackie as a monitor for our vocalist, and I was relegated to using some guys small Peavey bass amp good for the lows, not so wonderful for the higher registers. Another problem I encountered was I brought my own power bar, but it ended being attached to another power bar which had several plugs inserted into it. Shortly into our set there was either a power surge or power drop-off and my keyboard turned on and off quickly there-by screwing up VB3 on my Mac which was running off the internal battery. While the band continued to play I quickly switched over to my Roland RS5 which was nearby and I was forced to use that board for the rest of the set. Even that was a challenge as the power kept turning that key board on and off about every 30 seconds during the set and reverting the patch back to Rock Organ 1 which frankly sucks. Needless to say I was one unhappy guy last night, but I played through it and the crowd did not seem to notice and enjoyed our band in spite of my technical problems. I have not gigged that much over the past few years, last night reminded me about the both the frustrating side of live performance and the rewards of playing live in front of an enthusiastic audience. I was wondering if I had a power conditioner if I could have avoided all that grief last night. Remember there was only one outlet to draw power from on the small stage we performed on.
Let me know what I could have done to overcome that obstacle if any at all.

David Stein
The Soul Shakers
Ottawa, Canada