Whew! On the subject of making mistakes on the job, I submit this last Saturday at Anglia Uni. To be fair, it wasn't all of my own making, but anyway. How did it go wrong? Let me count the ways.

1) The house soundman didn't seem to want me there. He didn't actually get in the way, but he didn't warn me about some problems with the kit. Not my fault, but something to beware of.

2) Apparent duff channels on the snake, so DI boxes for guitars weren't playing ball initially. And one channel on the desk seemed to be knackered (not feeding the main output, even though I could solo it up on my headphones, and even though it was selected on the main out).

3) Echoey rooms. If the resonant frequency of the room coincides with the key your bassist is playing in, there ain't a whole lot you can do except damage limitation.

4) DI boxes. They're usually driven off phantom power (as are condensor mics if you have any), and if the guy using the desk before you has switched off the phantom power then you won't have any guitars. That's an even better trick if the phantom-power switch is on the back of the desk so it's not immediately obvious. And when you *do* switch on the phantom power (or turn on the battery for the DI box), make sure that channel is muted, not just turned down on the main fader, because there could be a pre-fader feed to the foldbacks which will do horrible things. Damn.

5) Outboard gear - compressors, speaker management, etc. Never seen those particular ones before, and didn't have enough time to check it out, so I couldn't really make any use of them.

The lesson for myself is "turn up early". If you've got an idea of how it's all been set up, you'll have a much better chance of getting it right - and if you've set it up yourself, you should be OK. But if you're presented with a rat's-nest of wiring, a rack of outboard stuff and an unfamiliar desk and told "go for it", you've just been given enough rope to hang yourself with.

On the other hand, for all that the other guy knew what he was doing with the gear, he fatally misjudged how loud it should be. So it was our band that attracted people and had them dancing, after he'd blasted all potential audience out of the room... :-P

Graham.