Destroying the Church?

[Tyler]

I work at our church as a lighting/stage tech. We use the one auditorium for the youth at night and the children in the morning. We have 2 different crews and I work at night for the youth, but it seems that everytime we go in, something is broken. Technically this is our [youth] building and our main tech director works for the youth, so the equipment is ours - we design and buy everything.

A couple weeks ago we came in and one of our very expensize wireless mics were obviously dropped several times and the top half was chipped off, and you couldnt use the battery holder very easily. All of our EQs on the sound board are constantly being changed and that really screws up our sound for at night, where the kids dont need all of that so someone is messing with it.

I couple weeks ago I went in and our lighting controller was acting up. The dmx box was obviously dropped and the usb port on it was not really working. Tonight made it worse. The usb connection to the controller would disconnect and turn all of our lights to sound activation which looked horrible for the minute or 2 it took to fix it. This happened over 5 times during the session tonight, some while the band was playing and other times when the speaker was talking. very annoying and it looked bad.

Ive run out of ideas. I went one week and watched them to see how the other crew runs things. they were dropping expensive mics on the ground and not treating anything with respect. Im tired of it. we decided to buy our own mic and give them the crap one, but everytime I go in, something else is broken or changed.

yeah thats it for now

[Hughesie]

do what you do with children, if they break it don't buy them a new one or fix it

if you can buy new stuff then buy a lockable chest or rack to keep everything in
how children's is this junior crew?
what is your setup like (can you lock your rack if so check what kind of heat is generated with the rack door closed and if it is an ok level stick a timer on the power for the eq's and when they come in the eq's will work and that won't be able to touch them after they are finished they will turn off

or put in a security system
depends on the money your willing to spend on this

[Chris15]

The other option you have is rack security covers - they screw over rack mount equipment to stop people fiddling with the settings.

[soundlight]

For the EQ's...put lockable rack panel covers over everything, so that only you can access the controls. For the wireless mics, lock them up in a safe that is bolted to the floor. For the lighting stuff, if the lighting box has a Kensington lock slot on it (which some do), use that and lock it down tight to the table. If not, just use zip ties to attach it through the top of the console table, or attach it to a board in the same manner and screw that to the table.

Just some thoughts. The safe bolted to the floor idea is a suggestion from the student resource officer at our school, because I consulted him when we were buying new wireless gear because we didn't want to have any of it stolen.

[Chris15]

A safe might be a bit of an overkill. I think in this case, a locked cupboard might do the same job.

[soundlight]

I don't mean safe like bank safe or gun safe, just a large lockable box that can be bolted down. They like to "walk" otherwise.

[Eboy87]

Why is it that anything electronic likes to grow legs and walk away? Anyway, that's a compleatly seperate topic. Definitly get a locking chest that won't move to keep the sensative gear in. Back in high school, we built matching chests to keep our tools in, the other to keep mics and such. These suckers were too heavy to move, and were kept in the locked booth, and locked scene shop. I know of a few places where I've done shows, the installs had cover plates screwed on over the EQs and compressors. As a guest engineer, I hate that, but in your case, should do the trick, unless someone comes in with a screw driver.

I liked the idea of the Kensington lock for the lighting gear, but I don't have much experience in that department anymore.

Good luck with it. Hope you find a solution, there's nothing worse than finding the piece of gear you need is broken, especially finding out 5 mins. before curtain.

As a random note, I just noticed cupboard was cup board, a place to keep cups. Pardon, it's been one of those kind of days so far.

[Van]

Maybe a stearn lecture on the Ten Commandments and a lesson in the Golden Rule ?

[Tyler]

Alright well we're working on buying some new stuff for us and giving them the old stuff, and making sure our supplies are locked up or put away.

I didn't really specify it, but the children's crew is all adults. They work for the children's events, but are adults and the youth is teens and adults. So there aren't kids working.

[mcgart]

I agree with what others have said above. We have similar things happen at the school where I work. The room where we keep all the stuff is supposed to be locked at all times but someone always needs to get in and use the equipment. Mics and cords go missing, equalisers have always been touched and it seems each time i go in there something is broken - not good when we only have a limited budget and we end up having to spend that replacing stuff we already had. So we took some of that money and bought a really sturdy lockable cupboard...anything that isn't needed is locked away in there. We only leave out some of the old mics and the bare basics needed to do anything. Has worked a treat since - nothing gone or broken.