First Major Guitar Tech Job

Well it's not a tour or anything but I guitar teched for my friends
band last night! It wasn't the first time but it was the first time I
actually was teching onstage at a big show.

The bill was :

Pepper from Hawaii www.pepperlive.com
Ill Scarlett www.illscarlett.com/
Speedbore (The band I was teching for) www.myspace.com/speedbore

And the venue was the Opera House in Toronto :

http://www.theoperahousetoronto.com/

My buddy plays a Peavey Wolfgang through a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier
and I brought my Les Paul Studio for a backup.

My friend is pretty disorganized hence me guitar teching for him!

Right off the bat I had to go to a hardware store to buy Allen keys for
the locking tremolo on the Wolfgang as he had lost his! I assumed he
was still playing with 10s and was wrong as he now plays 9's. (Which
of course I didn't have) The Wolfgang is one of those locking guitars
where you string the strings backwards and first song the low E pulled
out of where it's locked at the bridge. Quick change to Les Paul mid
song and into the back to fix it. Get it fixed and tuned and back to
my buddy after the song but it turns out that when you lock the string
back in it acts like a new string and goes out of tune in no time.
Switch back to Les Paul and try stretching the thing til it will stay
in tune. By that point they got the signal to wrap it up so he stuck
with the Les Paul.

Great show! People were into it and grooving and there was lots of
beer backstage.

The funny thing was I was crouching on the floor at the rear of the
stage trying to get some light on my little Seiko tuner so I could see
it and right beside me was the bass tech for Pepper with the pro setup
table with lights and all that working on the basses.

Hey I guess they all started somewhere!

Good time and I learned some good lessons like:

Ask what guage strings the guitarist uses
Bring Allen Keys
Bring a tuner with a backlight

I didn't get paid but it's my buddies and I was going anyway and was
glad to help out.

Chris

.

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