OK so for those that don't know, in addition to working as a KJ, I am also the Tour Manager and Monitor engineer for a band here in WI. I work with a sound engineer whose toured with national acts and has mixed locally for a large number of national, regional and local bands with his production company. I've learned a lot of useful practices from him. One of which is to always plug in a power tester before connecting equipment to any outlets (even ones we've used repeatedly at the same venue). Well this past weekend we had a great example of why this is so important.
We walked into a large club we hadn't played before, however I have KJ'ed at a number of times. The club manager had told us about a new 220V power run that he had his electrician put in for bands to use. So we brought our power tap (splits the 2 hot legs into seperate 110 banks with multiple 15 and 20 amp circuits). We plugged in our tap but before plugging in any equipment we plugged in the tester (the little three light kind). All three lights popped on!! Looking at the key on the tester, there was no description for all three lights being on. Ut Oh, this isn't good. So I grabbed the multi-tester and tested the 220 socket. First leg showed 115V, ok perfect, no worries. Checked the second leg, and it came back 230V!!! Oh No!!! After a lot of research, it turns out the club's licensed electrician had reversed the neutral and hot wires!!! Had we not checked and just plugged in our equipment the results would have been catastrophic.
I had previously always followed the advice of checking the power before connecting, however I can tell you I'll be even more diligent from now on. I'd recommend that you all invest in one of those cheap little testers. $8 now could save you thousands down the road.
