I was on the backline crew for the ELO 1978 Flying Saucer tour that supported the Out of the Blue album. ELO rarely sound checked, so the band crew arrived at the gigs around 2 p.m. This did not endear us with the lighting crew, who had already been at the venue for five hours when we arrived. "Country clubbers!" they would call down from the lighting truss as we took the stage each day. This friction continued until one Sunday close to the Fourth of July, when the British lighting console's power supply failed during the afternoon focus. No hope of getting a replacement on short notice on a Sunday–not in 1978 anyway! The lighting crew toiled for the next few hours, desperately trying to get the board to work. When all efforts were exhausted, they finally came to the band crew and asked for our help. With an air of satisfaction, I agreed to look at it. Yep, dead power supply. By this time, the doors were open and the audience was rapidly filling the venue. Because it was close to the Fourth of July, they were well-armed with a fine assortment of fireworks. Sensing that something was amiss, some idiots began throwing firecrackers down on the mix position from the upper tiers of the arena. Nothing is scarier than a firecracker going off while you are poking around a piece of gear with a voltmeter!
By 7 p.m., the specter of canceling the show and facing an audience armed with enough fireworks to repel a small army was becoming reality. Make a new power supply in 30 minutes or die! Having just finished training under the legendary British tech Bill Hough, I got a spark of inspiration and ran back to my workbench to grab a pair of 9V batteries, and I soldered them to two quarter-inch phone jacks. Then, I pulled a Crown DC300 out of one of the P.A. racks and carried it out to the lighting board, plugged the 9V batteries into the line inputs of the amp and wound the volume controls up until I had ± 15V on the speaker terminals. I soldered the speaker wires on to the console power rails and hit the power button. Lights!
The poor DC300 ran so hot we thought it would melt, so a 20-inch window fan was called into service. The opening act did not perform and the chase section of the console didn't work, but the show went on. Thank goodness we were carrying DC-coupled power amps. You could not do this today as all amps have DC protection!
P.S. The lighting guys were nice to us for the rest of the tour.
Ed Simeone
Electronics technician, ELO 1978
