The technical challenge, and nuggets of advice to other music pros out there

The down-sides to running our little operation (www.mainlineaffair.com) are (1) when we don't get engagements, and (2) dealing with our sound system.

The latter is ironic. I love the rig! It's my hobby within a hobby. I (regrettably) like buying and swapping the PA gear. Most musicians love their instruments. I seem to like buying mixers, cables, speakers and stuff which is maybe less interesting to other people. I don't know why.

Why, ok, I have a guess. My keyboard is an 88-key Korg Triton LE88. It's a magical piece. With the sole exception of being heavy (at that, half the weight of the Yamaha Clavinova I used to use), I can't complain about anything. The reason it never gets old is because it's so complicated, that I think I only understand about 10% of how to use it. It sounds great, and it feels great, and so far I need nothing else. Because it is heavy, and because I'm sort of tough on things, it has destroyed an average of one case per year for the four years I've had it.

Enough nice things. Enemy #1 is the Carvin company in California. They shipped me speakers, one of which was dead on arrival. Hey Sally and Tom (fake bride and groom name), I had to run out to the store and buy new speakers in a rush on your wedding day because Carvin shipped me junk. Oh, they needn't have worried. I'd have hired Justin Bieber's sound tech if it was necessary, and I can always borrow stuff in emergency from my pro contacts. Anyway, naturally I wanted to return BOTH speakers. Carvin, even though they shipped me a dead one, shorted me $60 on the return. THEY penalized ME! Well, it's between us and the San Diego Better Business Bureau now.

The antithesis of Carvin (which is a store and a manufacturer) is Cintioli's Music in Oxford Circle in Philadelphia. Benny has everything, new and used, and he's the best sport about taking gear in trade. I go in, and I offer him a reasonable trade, and he gets me the stuff I need.

Musicians Friend, which is perhaps the largest instrumental retailer in the world, is a good resource too (www.musiciansfriend.com) and they are very cool about refunds/exchanges. Their phone staff are helpful and they price-match.

Mackie is a manufacturer which positions itself as a pro supplier. Well, kudos to Don Draper for helping them cultivate that image. Their stuff is over-priced crap, to our experience. We blew out a powered cabinet (vr450?) tweeter. A sound man saw me replacing it in our rig and he told me that he has had a bunch of problems with them. We also had a Mackie powered mixer (1016?) and one day half the channels stopped working. One of the two sub buses was already distorting terribly. Samson costs half of Mackie stuff and we've had much better luck with Samson.

We had EV non-powered speakers for a while. They took up too much room in the car, but they were old and still sounded awesome with the Samson unit pushing them.

My next try is a Soundcraft mixer. Gosh I'd love for a relationship with a mixer to last! Luckily my Yamaha emergency mixer is in good working order (albeit with limited features). Pro jobs need backups and redundant systems!

The morals are:
1. get a Korg Triton
2. get stuff from Cintioli's
3. don't deal with Carvin
4. don't buy Mackie stuff unless you're getting it (1) used, (2) at a much lower price, (3) low miles, and (4) to use in a small room.

I'll try to return to a more universally appealing topic next time!