Live Gear Backups. What Do You Use?

[Goatfork]

I'm really curious to hear everybody's thoughts on live backup gear. Most of us obviously can't bring full duplicate rigs in case something goes sideways, so what do you do?

Personally, here's what I do:

I bring two guitars to every show even though I only ever use one during the whole set. If anything happens to the first guitar that will take longer than 30 sec to fix, I'll swap guitars on the spot.

Additionally, I have a Pelican 1510 case where I have a backup of every type of cable I use (instrument, XLR, MIDI, extension cord, etc.), a bunch of various adapters, batteries, and an HX Stomp + SD Powerstage 170 in case my rack rig has some terrible problem. (It's a lot more nuanced than that, but that's the gist.)

So, what do you do? What are your thoughts?

 

[Goatfork]

I'm really curious to hear everybody's thoughts on live backup gear. Most of us obviously can't bring full duplicate rigs in case something goes sideways, so what do you do?

Personally, here's what I do:

I bring two guitars to every show even though I only ever use one during the whole set. If anything happens to the first guitar that will take longer than 30 sec to fix, I'll swap guitars on the spot.

Additionally, I have a Pelican 1510 case where I have a backup of every type of cable I use (instrument, XLR, MIDI, extension cord, etc.), a bunch of various adapters, batteries, and an HX Stomp + SD Powerstage 170 in case my rack rig has some terrible problem. (It's a lot more nuanced than that, but that's the gist.)

So, what do you do? What are your thoughts?

 

[dan the man]

I bring a second guitar in case of a string break, and have an AMT P2 pedal in case my amp blows up and I have to use someone else's.

Been thinking about this more as well. Might pick up a Mooer pedal or two in order to go straight into the PA, or maybe the SD powerstage or EH 44 Magnum as a backup poweramp.

Good call on backup cables, I don't do that (yet)

 

[sleewell]

2 guitars

can go direct with my helix if my 5153 fails.

can go straight into my 5153 if my helix fails.

i also bring a quilter tone block 200 and boss ds-1 as more backup options.

 

[budda]

When i toured:

Backup guitar, extra cables, some picks on the amp. I had a couple skip-the-pedalboard end of set moments, shit happens.

 

[SalsaWood]

Two amp heads, two guitars.

If anything else shits the bed I can easily barrow it from another band.

 

[CanserDYI]

2 guitars

can go direct with my helix if my 5153 fails.

can go straight into my 5153 if my helix fails.

one modeler, one amp. I'll be fine either way.

 

[Crungy]

I only ever gigged as a bassist so in some ways I think I had it easier than my guitarists did.

I always had at least two basses and 1-2 spare instrument cables. If my cab went down, I had the amp DI and typically one pedal with a DI. If the amp went down, switch to DI box or DI from pedal board and rely on monitors. I was prepared but never had to do that.

The worst gig problem I recall was a pickup screw coming out. It was a bass with two jazz pickups, so I planted my thumb on the loose pickup to hold it down and finish the song before switching basses.

The worst problem any of my guitarists had was either a pedal crapping out or a jack on a guitar crapping out. Nothing gig stopping, they either finished the song without playing or unplugged stuff on the fly to keep it moving.

 

[TedEH]

I've never carried multiple amps around, and I haven't played any shows since starting to use digital stuff, so backup stuff was usually just extra strings, batteries, etc. Usually, the band as a whole would bring a singular extra guitar rather than having anyone bring multiples. For bass, the backup was a DI box - worst case, FOH gets a clean DI and that's it. As long as I'm not playing years-old strings, I trust my bass enough to not bring a second one. Drum sticks, maybe an extra cymbal or two - doesn't hurt to have a second snare nearby.

 

[Choop]

As far as guitar, last time I toured it was just spare cables, strings, tubes, picks, etc, and we each had a couple guitars with us. Next time we will probably have a spare amp head, too. I'd almost like to grab a lunchbox amp specifically for backup.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

strings, cables, picks, batteries, leatherman, headlamp/flashlight, floss, chapstick, nail clippers, ricola, wet wipes

I play through a big dumb stereo rig so if half of it went down I'd just switch to mono.

When I was in a gigging band I did the two guitars thing. I don't even own two guitars now.

 

[Goatfork]

I'm really curious to hear everybody's thoughts on live backup gear. Most of us obviously can't bring full duplicate rigs in case something goes sideways, so what do you do?

Personally, here's what I do:

I bring two guitars to every show even though I only ever use one during the whole set. If anything happens to the first guitar that will take longer than 30 sec to fix, I'll swap guitars on the spot.

Additionally, I have a Pelican 1510 case where I have a backup of every type of cable I use (instrument, XLR, MIDI, extension cord, etc.), a bunch of various adapters, batteries, and an HX Stomp + SD Powerstage 170 in case my rack rig has some terrible problem. (It's a lot more nuanced than that, but that's the gist.)

So, what do you do? What are your thoughts?

 

[jonsick]

Pretty much the same. Spare guitar because if a string goes, I don't want to have to keep everyone waiting while I nuts around with it. My spare guitar is on a stand so it's a quick change.

I don't see the sense in bringing a whole extra amplifier head. So far, touch wood, I have not needed it. I think the only sanity test is I do is if there is a gig coming up, I'll make sure that the rehearsal beforehand everything is good and then change nothing. Just pack it in the hard cases and it should still be good by gig time.

 

[Mprinsje]

I bring 3 guitars (we have two tunings a# and B, but my guitar in B has a Floyd so I have an extra backup for that. If my guitar in A# would break a string I'll just get the B backup and retune). I have some spare cables and stuff but I'm not carrying a whole amp head around.

I do use a helix for just my effects though, if my amp were to crap out I would be able to just use the helix, I have some patches with amp modeling in them.

 

[Lozek]

My shows are fly dates, so I use a double guitar case and keep a floating spare between me and the other guitarist. We both fly Kempers and I'd been using a Mooer GE300 as a floorboard/back-up rig and had a pre-amp live too. I've run into some issues with the integration, so I may possibly switch over to one of their all in one pedals or a Helix Stomp, anything with a small form factor that will get me to the end of the show in the case of failure.

 

[budda]

Did he make two threads?

 

[STRHelvete]

Did he make two threads?

That's his backup thread.

 

[budda]

B

That's his backup thread.

lock it up, we’re done here.

 

[sleewell]

That's his backup thread.

i spit out some coffee just now, hahahahhaa.

 

[Emperoff]

That's his backup thread.