The Gig: A famous DJ hosts a family-type party at one of Orlando's big theme parks every year. The party always has one big name artist who we will just refer to here as "LL."
Sound check goes great, but the stage is as loud as the seven bells of hell. Unknown to us, a fire somewhere on the property is causing power fluctuations and low voltage issues. My H3000 power supply is beeping, but am clueless as to what this means (a very bad thing, as it turns out).
LL hits the stage at max SPL and, all of a sudden, feedback from the very bowels of hell erupts on stage, mowing down the first 50 feet of audience. LL stood up there like a soldier with every output screaming full bore. LL throws the RF mic (never to be seen again) and splits the venue.
Trying to find the problem, we believe 20 channels of RF and some bad math caused some intermod feedback, so we kill all the RF and wire up a 58 and eventually talk LL back to the venue. With wired 58 in hand, LL returns to stage, only for it to erupt again in what can only be described as Black Death from a speaker.
He looks over to monitor beach with a look that still haunts me today. His engineer completely freaking out, LL drops the 58 and waves goodbye to a crowd on their knees and both hands covering their ears. Famous DJ comes out on stage and totally trashes the sound company. "Good night and good riddance." It was the only complete show-stopper this guy has ever been a party to.
Turns out when voltage goes low enough, the PS on an H3K beeps. Keep pushing it, and the outputs open up all the way. The rest is misery. Voltage was barely 90 volts, according to the Furmans. When the volume dropped, so did the voltage spike, and the feedback stopped.
The park did admit full responsibility… later.
Submitted by Mark Thompson
