One last hurrah for the 650s

The last weekend on the KF650s had some extra drama.  Only fitting, I guess.

For some reason I didn’t turn on the PA when I first arrived to prep for Saturday afternoon rehearsal.  Normally I set up iTunes with some music while we work, but this day silence seemed like a better idea.  Once the stage was set, I turned on the PA but we still didn’t put music through.  Sitting at FOH programming the console for the day, I heard a strange pop come from the stage.  It seemed like it might be from the PA but everything was still muted and I’d never heard a sound like this before.  A few minutes later, it happened again but this time I was looking at the signal meters of the desk and didn’t see a blip.  This time I became concerned that there might be a problem downstream of the desk and we went into troubleshooting mode.

Some iTunes music through the system revealed that the mid and low channels of the right side our tri-amp’d KF650s were not functioning.  A visual inspection of the Macrotech 5002 amps showed that both the mid and low channel signal lights were remaining on, in IOC mode, but obviously not passing signal.  After power cycling a time or two, we realized each amp would pass signal for 5 seconds or so and then set into the IOC mode.

At this point, we were less than 45 minutes away from the band arriving and trying to figure out how to salvage the weekend.  Thankfully, God provided exactly what we needed.  Kensington has an old Turbosound rig that we call our “Yellow Truck” system because it used to be the primary portable rig for off-site ministry events.  Thankfully, the amp rack for that rig, which just so happens to include 2 Macrotech 3600 amps, was on site and 30 minutes later was patched in place of the 5002s having trouble.  Catastrophe averted.

I’m not sure what lessons there are to learn from this.  It is a total fluke that I didn’t run music earlier in the day as I normally would.  If I had, we would have had twice as much time to come up with a solution.  It seems the biggest reminder is to make sure backup plans are in place for as many components of your system as possible.  What would you do if drivers were to blow during rehearsal/service, amplifiers don’t function, wireless microphones fail, etc?  Anything can happen and the most important thing is to be prepared to adjust and keep the “show’ going.

I guess our good ol’ KF650s didn’t want to go out without a bang!