Thoughts On The 8/7 Dudley Manlove Quartet Performance
On Saturday 8/7 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at a wedding reception in the Seattle area. It was a lovely event at a beautiful house overlooking the water. The organizer had planned ahead in case of inclement weather, which was a very good idea since it did rain on and off the whole evening. Undaunted, the band and guests had a great night of music and dancing.
Our final song of the evening was “Don’t Stop Believing”, which is always a crowd pleaser. Right after the intro I started to experience intermittent output from my guitar, with the signal dropping out and coming back at random. I did everything I could think of… wigging the cords and flipping switches on my guitar, giving the amp a bonk with my fist (we all know that’s the best way to troubleshoot electronics, right?) and otherwise performing any ritual I could think of. As we approached the solo section, I was really concerned about whether I’d be able to make any sound, but fortunately I did get past that section before my signal dropped out again. Once the song was over I tried to diagnose the issues but didn’t have time or the proper setting to really delve into it. I loaded out and drove home in a bit of a snit, trying to imagine what had gone wrong. Getting my guitar or my amp into the shop for service would be difficult with my work schedule, and I really didn’t have enough time to work on this myself.
It wasn’t until the next afternoon that I finally had a chance to go through my signal path to see what might be going on. It appears the culprit was a bad cable between the guitar and pedalboard (whew!). It’s especially a difficult thing to nail down with certainty because it seems to be an intermittent connect, and the cable doesn’t appear worn or broken. Usually cables fail at the solder joints to the plugs, but I decided to just throw this out since it seemed to have a flaky connection somewhere in the middle of the cable. I always come to gigs prepared for field-triage… I carry spare cables, plugs, batteries, tools, and usually a spare guitar. This one was a pretty random failure, but if I had needed to, I could resolved it with a quick swap.
Other than the minor hiccup during our final song, the gig went really well. I think we played a great show and the music is getting better every time we get together. Our upcoming gigs will include the Plan 9 horns. Come on down to see us at the Tractor this Saturday 8/14. We’re going to have a great show!