I’ve been fighting with a weird troubleshooting issue for a few days now, and today I finally had some time to really work on it – and I’m super confused as to what’s going on.
So here’s the situation: I’m working with an entirely rented rig, not passing through any house circuits or dimmers or anything – everything is from the shop. I have a pair of Mini-10 500w worklights on 3 different electrics that pass through the rack and down to a switch box on stage. The worklights run through mults to the racks, banana jump out of the rack and into a Worklight breakout, then pass through a second mult down to the stage where they break in into the switch box. The switch box itself has 6 switches spread across 2 circuits (1 thru 3 on one circuit, 4 thru 6 on the other), with two individual circuits powering the switch box running from two hot pockets in the touring rack.
We did about an hour of troubleshooting, testing every component in the lengthy signal chain, and worked our way back to the switch box. After screwing with the switch box for a while, we determined that:
Naturally, I'm led to believe that it's a problem with the second hot circuit. But I can't fathom any reason why a circuit would power some lights, but not others. We've swapped out every component (2 mult runs, 2 breakouts, 1 breakin, and the banana jumper) with known good components, and as far as I can tell, it must be something upstream of the Worklight breakin at the switch box. We've solved the problem by plugging WKLT-2 into the 6th switch, and vice versa, but now I'm dying to know how this could even be possible.
Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks!!
So here’s the situation: I’m working with an entirely rented rig, not passing through any house circuits or dimmers or anything – everything is from the shop. I have a pair of Mini-10 500w worklights on 3 different electrics that pass through the rack and down to a switch box on stage. The worklights run through mults to the racks, banana jump out of the rack and into a Worklight breakout, then pass through a second mult down to the stage where they break in into the switch box. The switch box itself has 6 switches spread across 2 circuits (1 thru 3 on one circuit, 4 thru 6 on the other), with two individual circuits powering the switch box running from two hot pockets in the touring rack.
We did about an hour of troubleshooting, testing every component in the lengthy signal chain, and worked our way back to the switch box. After screwing with the switch box for a while, we determined that:
- Using known hot power, each circuit on the Worklight breakin at the switch box works properly.
- Both of the circuits feeding the switch box are working.
- Using the 2E Worklight circuit, the lights came on when plugged into each of the 6 switches on the switch box.
- Using the 4E Worklight circuit, the lights came on when plugged into each of the 6 switches on the switch box (same result as with the 2E).
- Using the 6E Worklight circuit, the lights came on when plugged into switches 1 through 3, but did NOT work when plugged into switches 4 through 6.
- By plugging the 6E Worklight banana jumper into a different circuit on the Worklight mult, everything works fine - the problem only occurs when the 6E Worklights are running on WKLT-6.
Naturally, I'm led to believe that it's a problem with the second hot circuit. But I can't fathom any reason why a circuit would power some lights, but not others. We've swapped out every component (2 mult runs, 2 breakouts, 1 breakin, and the banana jumper) with known good components, and as far as I can tell, it must be something upstream of the Worklight breakin at the switch box. We've solved the problem by plugging WKLT-2 into the 6th switch, and vice versa, but now I'm dying to know how this could even be possible.
Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks!!