Back-up for mobiles

[paul_de_dj]

Hi guys,

I know this is gonna sound really silly but it never crossed my mind until the weekend..................I've got no back-up. If something happened my mixer i'd be fucked............. not too bad on the cd player side as i've got minidisc players also but what happens if something happened the speakers????????????????
just wondering what you other mobiles bring with ye if the worst happens........ do ye have backups for everything.......would ye have extra spreakers, decks, leads etc.....

what can i not be without in case of that emergency? (besides a fast car)

[Turiel]

Extra speakers? What are you driving, an artic. truck? :P

Someone once said "You can't have everything you want... where would you put it?". So while it may be nice to have a full extra rig, its not really feasible. Obviously, there's also the costs to consider.

A reasonable approach is to get extra leads; when things fail, its often the fault of a dodgy connector or a otherwise damaged cable. It's also handy to have a discman in your car somewhere - if one of the CD players fail you can substitute that and more than likely nobody will even notice. If the entire CD unit fails, well... you can always use it to put on a mix cd.

Think about investing in a multi-channel mixer as opposed to dual-channel (if you havent already, obviously). If a channel goes on the mixer you can just switch to a 3rd or 4th channel. I've seen small little minimixers for about €60 in peats or maplin or something, maybe you might consider that as a backup.

Anything beyond that is overkill really I think. Myself, I just bring the extra leads. You can put them in a small bag in the car and just leave them there.

Check your equipment before you do your gig, preferably during the day, so in case something is wrong, you have time to sort it out.

I generally have my decks in my car most of the time anyway, and there have been occasion when I've done disco bar/club gigs and the CD players or mixer have f*cked up, so I'd just throw in mine. Oh, not forgetting to charge them for it :)

[Macers]

Doing a local gig when all 8 portable lights blew - a disco in darkness

It was a dodgy plug which done it

[Pulse 95-99]

mental note to self......... look out for turiels car for new set of cd players...... hmm!! :) :) :)

[Turiel]

Feck shouldn't have mentioned that :P

[Peadar]

if your amps, fx units etc. are mounted in a rack (which they should be!) then why not use one of the unused rack spaces for one of those 1-rack-space mixer units (usually about 2-3 mic channels with ducking and about 2-3 stereo channels). Given that they're not all that expensive, add a discman player or a minidisc and you've got a complete backup system. :)

[max power]

i use the pioneer 5000 cd players with auto mix and output , which means if you don't use a mic you can get away without a mixer, there is a master put on the back of the cd players and there is a headphone input on them too, aslo using powered speakers helps too i find, the chance of two powered speakers giving up at the same time is remote ( except if there DAS ) . as was said above just bring spare leads, bulbs and a small tool kit and you should be ok


PS a good working understanding of how equipment always helps, if your lights give if its pointless looking at them for the first time if you've had them for over a year.

[Mr-X]

To back up your Decks check out the new Pioneer DMP-555 its 2 decks in one and has a mixer built in nice small unit wit loads of features a little biger than cdj100 a bit costly tho.
Take a look www.pioneerprodj.com

[max power]

the price in ireland would be about 1200 euro each, it could be got in the uk by someone with a vat number for about 850/900, nice machine