Broken Equipment

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:15 am

I told myself I was going to write a proper report, but I'm too busy at work so here's the jist.

Both PA Speakers are not working at all. The PA mixer works because we tested it to other places, we tried putting guitars and MP3 players through the speakers to no avail. Not a sound out of them.

The bass amp is completely broken, no sound at all out of it, either from a bass or from the PA mixer.

The Peavey amp's "Low gain input" cuts in and out at high frequency, although the high gain input does work. PA mixer and guitars both work through it.

The Line6 amp is unresponsive and no sound at all from PA mixer or guitar.

So in short the workign equipment you have in the room is as such:

- Drum Kit (possibly cymbals, not sure as our drummer uses his own)
- 1 guitar amp

That's all. Can you do everyone a favour and send out a mass email saying that bands have to bring their own PA and amps if they want to use the practice room? This should help members to avoid turning up and finding that a practice is impossible, and wasting 2 hours of a night trying to get it to work.

We've not had a practice in 6 months where we could have our instruments going through amps and not the PA, and we're only a 4 piece of 2 guitars, bass and drums.

As this is the 3rd time we've not been able to practice due to too much broken equipment, we won't be using the room anymore and the 3 of us who are members will not renew for next year unless we can be guaranteed that we can practice every slot we book, which currently cannot be done.

Yes, it's cheap to join UTT and use the room and that's the crux of the problem. I reckon we've practiced for about 40-50 hours in the room for just £20 (1 non-student and 2 student memberships). We should be paying £100 for that.

I know I'm not a committee member or anything, but there are 2 options I can see for UTT to get new (and decent, Marshall, Fender etc., none of this Peavey or Line 6 shite) equipment via membership.

1. Charge the room out at £2.50 an hour.

2. When people sign up for £5 at the start of year, give them 2 free practices, then say if they want further use of the practice room, then they need to pay a fee for access for the rest of the year.

£25 = 1 slot a week for the year
£50 = 2 slots a week for the year

I would happily pay for either and I know many others would too. I hope you take these concerns seriously.

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 12:28 pm

Hey Mark, thanks for raising your concerns with us. I agree 100% that the equipment needs to be sorted, and we're considering changing this upcoming charity gig into a equipment fundraiser, so we can get some of the problems sorted. We're also planning on applying for EUSA funding for next year.

We'll be having an AGM in a few weeks, where we probably vote on this issue there. Obviously it's a large change to the society to start charging for the practice room, so I'd much prefer if it was with the full backing of our members, hence the AGM vote.

Posted: Tue Mar 09, 2010 2:27 pm

That is a one big list of broken equipment. I with the ideas that Steve has pointed out, and encourage you all to get to the AGM when it is announced so that you can have a say about what equipment the society needs, and how you think things should be working.

Events Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Posts: 382

Mark, I appreciate your concern over the equipment, however it seems that we are constantly burning money replacing and repairing it. When speakers are in essentially constant use their lifetime is fairly short, especially when stored in a tiny cupboard and removed x times a day. While we have applied for a grant this year, our main problem is that the university has made booking a room intrinsically unreliable. Obviously we are both receptive and accountable to the needs of our members, but a huge amount of work goes on in running the society and over the two years in which I've been in the society the effort has been tremendous on the part of everyone in the committee and many of our non-committee members as well. Charging for the room would solve neither the problem of equipment nor the problem of unreliability as the univeristy has basically refused to give us a dedicated room and furthermore the equipment lifespan will not improve unless we have said dedicated room. The free practice room is a major part of the society and I for one would vote in the strongest possible terms against charging for its use.

Joined: 20 Feb 2004 Posts: 759 Location: Edinburgh

Maybe it'd be possible for you guys to cut a reasonable deal with one of the practice spaces in town - I know Great Junction Street Studios hire out whole rooms and they might be receptive to the idea of leasing it out to you at a discounted rate rather than have a room sitting empty with no income. It would definitely mean upping the membership cost though but would take out your problem of gear. (I know the GRV also used to do something like this when it was the Leftbank - or maybe the practice rooms at the ARK)

Since Mark and i have both previously run the practice room we can totally appreciate how much of a pain in the tits it is with a) trying to wrangle a room out of the university, which everyone's been trying to do for years! b) the constant moving of the gear shagging it up and c) people not knowing how to use the gear properly. So I have complete sympathy - it's a problem without a simple solution really.

Maybe a thorough practice room induction for every new member before they are allowed to use the room would help - and having some degree of accountability for damage may help too (though I know this would be incredibly difficult to police).

While the great thing about utt in the past has been the availability of the practice room for what is essentially free perhaps a small charge for the use of the room would encourage members to be more responsible for the equipment. Perhaps, you could also consider someway of enforcing that all users of the room have to be members - not just 1 or 2 in the band. That's a lot of lost income there and, again, would encourage more responsible use of the room. Plus, lets face it, those bands are saving A LOT of money.

Perhaps another alternative would be to take a deposit from everybody using the practice room at the begining of each term and take the costs of repairs/replacement out of that pool. Or something.

Also, I agree with Mark that is would be nice to have good gear but given the volume of people using it I would be inclined to choose function, sturdiness and ease of repair over aesthetic.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents.... or maybe a whole dollar!

Joined: 21 Sep 2009 Posts: 17

i agree the equipment is not brilliant but my band hasnt had any significant problems when using the room, yes we have to bring one guitar amp but over the course of this semester we've been able to get a good practice each time (on a weekly basis)
to get the bass amp working you need to have something resting on the volume pot, not ideal but we manage to work around it. PA's have been fine when we've used it, were you using your own leads or ones from the bag because most of the bag leads are no good.

like ben i disagree with the idea of charging for use of the practice room, that might be ok for more established bands like yourself who are willing to invest but i doubt we would have many new bands forming if they had to pay for each use. i joined this society because i thought one of its aims was to get new bands started up, charging for a practice room would go against this ideology imo.

/2 cents

Joined: 20 Feb 2004 Posts: 759 Location: Edinburgh

I agree, that the practice room is the central point of the society but I think members generally under-estimate the cost and effort involved in its maintenance. I don't think that charging, for example, £2 per practice session would be a huge deal or particularly put people off. That's really reasonable, and especially when split between bands you'd be talking about 50p each. Over the year it would cover the bulk of the maintenance cost and do a lot to discourage people from not turning up to their slots etc.

back in ye olden days we considered charging for the practice room and decided against it, so I get the conflict of interest. On reflection, if we had done that it would have left the society in a much better position and given it sustainability so that what nearly happened a year or so ago would never have occured. I'm sure a lot of you guys don't know that the society was almost shut down largely because of the financial burden of the practice room and that would be a fate far worse!

Anyways, since i don't use the practice room it doesn't really concern me. But it's all politics really, sometimes you have to make unpopular decisions that will be beneficial in the long run.

Joined: 20 Feb 2004 Posts: 759 Location: Edinburgh

ps. It occurs to me that UTT may be eligible for either Scottish Arts Council funding or PRS Foundation funding. Might be worth looking into though the application forms are total bitches.

Events Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Posts: 382

The problem is that charging for the practice room won't improve its availability nor its reliability and if we're going to go to established practice rooms such as Forest Cafe we might as well just direct our members there and close up shop on our own practice room as these places tend to have more than enough people using them already and don't need our custom enough to give us a discount. Also, if we were to hire out a function room every day for six months then I don't think we could charge enough on membership to cover it. The equipment situation isn't as bad as it may seem - as of last Wednesday we had most of the equipment in working, if a little scuffed order, so we haven't had time to replace it or repair it due to the collossal amount of work which went into the gig on Friday. If we need money for equipment we can get more than enough from grants and fundraisers. How would we even collect the money of a pay per use system? KB House are unlikely to want to do it for us, and it would mean having a kitty down there which they were responsible for. I wouldn't be averse to upping the membership slightly, say to £10 for practice room use, and we already have a policy that all band members must be paid up members of the society to use the room, however I don't think that we can justify charging any more than a base membership fee for a practice room which 5% of the time we get kicked out of by other societies. The only way which this will change is if we can get the university to capitulate and give us a decent room, which we are currently working on. Bands at uni are pretty fluid, and the practice room is as much for a band who has two practices and splits up without gigging as it is for a band like Le Salon who gig all the time. Having a major outlay at the start of the year for members would discourage the formation of these loose jams which may or may not turn into something giggable which would be a massive shame. Obviously the free setup means that established bands will suffer a little inconvenience, but the practice room isn't just for them, it's as much for the people who only use it once or twice a year. We haven't had a proper grant for the last two years in any case and we should be getting one this year, so I would vote that we keep the practice room free and have the grant and the fundraiser every year to raise money for repairs.

Events Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Posts: 382

Funding would be a majorly good thing Sticking out Tongue

we'll have a nosey into it.

Treasurer Joined: 18 Sep 2007 Posts: 67

Quote:

Maybe a thorough practice room induction for every new member before they are allowed to use the room would help - and having some degree of accountability for damage may help too (though I know this would be incredibly difficult to police).

this is a very good idea. we could organise a few "group inductions" at the beginning of each semester and some later on.

Quote:

ps. It occurs to me that UTT may be eligible for either Scottish Arts Council funding or PRS Foundation funding. Might be worth looking into though the application forms are total bitches.

i'll most certainly look into this.

Events Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Posts: 382

I certainly agree with the inductions.

Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:04 pm

I think I'm against everything here... Laugh

I'm against inductions because it's just a waste of time, the second you turn your back things will nto be done correctly.

Reggie, note you've brought your own amp there, we don't, mainly because it's so much hassle.

Also, I wouldn't bother wasting time on funding. EUSA will not give you anything, ever, and neither will PRS unless you somehow "sign" bands to the society, I've never had any experience with the Arts Council though.

The Society should (and should be aiming to), make a profit every year without external funding so that new equipment can be afforded every so often. UTT should run more gigs 1 every 2-3 months or so, put 4 of it's own bands (all playing for free), and charge a few quid on the door. I know this is my fault initially, as I always thought BOTB was free, but BOTB shouldn't be free either.

My views are pretty clear on this I guess. All I want is a practice room where I and my band can practice, without bringing any amps or PA, and actually be able to practice. I would pay for that because the room is in such a convienient location.

Events Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Posts: 382

Firstly, we should have no problem getting a bit of cash from EUSA for equipment, we've applied and our application is processing. We do run gigs at a rate of around two to three per term, which, believe me, is about as much as we can. We don't want to overcommit on gigs because we will lose money. The soc isn't about profit all the money which we need comes in, we've been absolutely fine the last couple of years. Battle of the Bands should be free, always. We only have two expenses as a society: gigs and equipment. We keep the Freshers week gig and the Battle of the Bands free because that ensures a massive crowd and we make money on the other one or two gigs in the semester - we are organising a fundraiser for later this semester as we speak. All the money in the world does us shit all good if the room is naff, this is my personal main priority for change. A better room will extend the lifespan of the equipment and any necessary repairs can be more than accounted for by uni funding, which as a uni society we damn well are entitled to now that we have two years of clean books on record, which is required to apply for funding. All societies get funding, none are expected to be self-sufficient.

Currently in the practice room, according to a check done this week by our man Reggie (please correct me on this if I'm wrong, Reg):

The PA speakers and mixer work, at least one of the leads for the speakers does not though.
The Peavey works, though sporadically, and we are getting it replaced or fixed.
The Line Six is broken, and we are getting it replaced.
The bass amp works if you keep the volume knob depressed into it with tape (not ideal of course)
The drums are fine with the exception of a couple of broken cymbals.

The AGM is soon, and I think we should have an open, moderated debate about this issue there.

Also, if you assume that people will ignore inductions and break stuff, why allow anyone use of the practice room at all?

My personal opinion is that the room, battle of the bands and freshers' week gig should remain free, with practice room membership perhaps raised to £10 or £15 at a push to raise some initial cash at the start of the year. I would then suggest that we run a fundraising gig for the practice room in semester one followed by a charity gig in semester two.

The problem with gigs is that after venue hire, you don't actually make that much money and if you try to do too many gigs then you end up with noone attending and an events man who has a nervous breakdown every five minutes. The effort involved in promoting and organising a gig that does more than just break even is massive and I think that overcommitting the society on gigs is a bad idea: we can and do provide our members with alternatives to Untapped gigs, for example other societies can and frequently do ask us for bands for their fundraisers (such as the Le Salon/Voltairs recent Jazz bar gig).

Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 9:32 pm

Neither PA Speaker worked on Thursday, tested with multiple leads and multiple inputs.

IIRC, Jon was the one that found the "hold the pot" solution. Bass amp was completely devoid of life when we were down.

It's just incredibly frustrating though and you don't seem to appreciate that! From my end, it looks like you're trying to patronise me. You may seem to forget I was the president, events man, practice room guy and publicity/sponsorship guy simultaneously for a reasonably long time, including running gigs every month (and breaking even/making a profit on nearly all of them), and getting multiple sponsors for BOTB. All that whilst doing a degree and working part-time to pay my rent. I know what it's like to be in the committee, and whereas I don't know what bugs you about me, you have knack of not taking my concerns into account, and instead focus on trying to prove me wrong!

I will not lie to you about broken equipment! The Peavey amp, aside from not being loud enough to be heard over the drums, is fine if you use the high gain connection. Yes, it flatlines any distortion you use because it's not loud enough to project but that's not a major issue, the major issue is that the 4 of us in my band should be able to go to the room, without any means of amplification (obviously we bring guitars, pedals, cymbals, kick pedals etc.) and be able to practice every single time, and when we do flag up broken equipment, it's taken care of and it doesn't go into a black hole. That's how it feels just now!