Gear Horror Stories

[WhoFan]

you just have to work at a repair shop for even a short time and someone will come in with a guitar case with a tire mark crushed down the center of it... one poor lady felt so bad for backing over her sons Epi she paid to get the guitar glued back together and bought the kid a strat

[Lazarus1140]

Not my story:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...ideoID=1201857

[brentrocks]

one night at practice, i was leaning over twards my amp to get a smoke....the headstock of my guitar knocked over my wireless reciever and bent the hell out of the antennas

i dont smoke anymore

[ES350]

A good friend of mine was a upright bassist in a pretty well known rockabilly band. He twirled his bass around in the middle of a tune and one of the keys caught him in the head and he needed 30-40 stitches to close it up. End of gig...

[Lazarus1140]

We were playing a gig in Beeville, Texas and after the first set our lead player sold his guitar. He didn't have a backup.

[ES350]

Here's another, maybe a little oblique: Back in the late 80's, a local luthier used to buy cheapo guitars over the counter for 10-20$ just so he could take them in the back room and we all took turns unloading a small caliber handgun into it. He moved his shop into a strip mall and was doing his routine one day when one of the rounds went through the wall into the sandwich shop next door...wounding a customer slightly.

[DLT]

Originally Posted by theboatcandream

I heard this one story about a kid who was given a 68 les paul. He thought the truss rod looked silly, so he yanked it out with pliers. The neck started to twist after that, so he threw out the guitar.

Originally Posted by Lazarus1140

We were playing a gig in Beeville, Texas and after the first set our lead player sold his guitar. He didn't have a backup.

Originally Posted by ES350

Here's another, maybe a little oblique: Back in the late 80's, a local luthier used to buy cheapo guitars over the counter for 10-20$ just so he could take them in the back room and we all took turns unloading a small caliber handgun into it. He moved his shop into a strip mall and was doing his routine one day when one of the rounds went through the wall into the sandwich shop next door...wounding a customer slightly.

I had one incident that scared the heck out of me.

I thought it would be cool to put the original Gibson strap buttons back on my 77 Les Paul. I was in church practicing, had both my hands off the guitar, when the strap slipped off one of the buttons. The axe fell straight down, hitting a homemade pine pedal board before it fell face down on the stage. No damage done, thanks to the soft pine cushion. Whew...that was close!
BTW...if you do not use strap locks, use Fender style strap buttons. Far superior over those crappy rounded Gibson type.

[guitfiddle]

Originally Posted by Lazarus1140

We were playing a gig in Beeville, Texas and after the first set our lead player sold his guitar. He didn't have a backup.

[Lazarus1140]

Originally Posted by guitfiddle

OK. I gues that should have been reserved for a "have you ever played with a brain fried space cadet" thread.

[guitfiddle]

Originally Posted by Lazarus1140

OK. I gues that should have been reserved for a "have you ever played with a brain fried space cadet" thread.

Nah! That's a horror story alright...it's perfect for this thread. I just couldn't imagine the guy selling the only guitar he brought...D'oh!

[darnright]

I thankfully don't have any myself. I do however have one....A good friend of mine played in a band with his brother for years. His main guitar was a '57 Les Paul, I was at a gig listening to them play and I commented later about what a cool guitar that was. He deadpanned me and said, "It's just a tool, nothing more. Just like the tools you use to fix trucks. Just a tool. I have no special attachment to any guitar.".......He continued to say this until the night his brother accidently knocked it over onstage and broke the headstock off. Then it was his little child.......his poor baby. I would have been upset too, but I'll tell you up front that every guitar I own is way more than just a tool...

-dave

[baritone]

Some crazy stories here.

In my first year of medical school, my roommate was a really nice guy with a cheap acoustic guitar. I think I played it more than he did. One day when he wasn't around, I was playing on it, and someone came to the door. I leaned it on the couch and went to answer the door. As I opened the door, the guitar slid and crashed to the floor, and the headstock snapped right off.

I don't know how I thought I could cover it up, but he never said anything; he just put some metal brackets and screws on it, and put it back together.

[Empty Pockets]

Originally Posted by Lazarus1140

Not my story:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...ideoID=1201857

His shirt says "Satan Sucks."

See what happens when you try to rock without giving props to Our Dark Lord?

Luckily me and the devil are really tight. The only gear horror story I have is this one:

My sister said "Yeah I'm just gonna draw those cool black and white ghosts on it, it'll look sick."

Do you guys see a ghost anywhere in that mess?

I've almost got the original white finish off of it...then it's getting a little tru-oil and several hours of consecutive play time.

[ImmortalSix]

I had a 1988 Martin Stinger Strat copy, black on black on black. It weighed only slightly more than a Volkswagen.

Sounded like whiskey flavored pudding dripping off of a zeppelin at high altitude.

I lent it to a bandmate, and he tells me he's "snapped the neck off."

Just how in the hell to you break the neck off of a bolt on Strat, especially one with a density approaching that of plutonium?

[ImmortalSix]

I had a "processor," one of those all-in-one floorboards in the late 90's (totally hip at that time) and I used it through a dead clean amp for all gigs.

Well it needed a wall wart, and one day at a band practice, our drummer stepped on the cord and pulled the cable right out of the black box plugged into the wall --- so now I'm down a power adapter, no big deal.

Well, he offered to replace the adpater, never did, and last I heard, several years ago, our saxophone player sold it (sans adapter of course) when he was hard up

[JOLLY]

Originally Posted by WhoFan

you just have to work at a repair shop for even a short time and someone will come in with a guitar case with a tire mark crushed down the center of it...

LOL...I've actually seen this happen in person. And I mean seeing a guitar getting backed over. Surprisingly enough, it didn't even harm the guitar.

[Rich_T]

A band I supported was wheeling a half stack up an icy ramp into the venue, the guy looses his footing, gets his hand run over by the cab and then the whole thing falls face first back onto the road, smashed tubes and all. Lesson: Don't put the head on the cab when gong up or down hill.

[Ascension]

On the way home from a gig in Selma we got caught in a BIG time thunderstorm. I'm talking high high winds blinding torrential rain and hail really BAD storm! Hit us just as we are coming into Clanton. Well there is a steep hill coming into down town and a red light at the bottom. The light turned red and the equiptment truck and our 6X12 trailer couldn't stop on the steep hill and skidded into the back of the band station wagon and totally destroyed the car!! I was in the back seat and in that DRIVING rainstorm was grabbing my guitars and pulling them over my head into the back seat out of the rain. It was one BAD night!!

[Hellion]

Interesting stuff on this thread. I don't know that this is a "horror story", but I think it's funny....

My first real band in college were all pre-somethings (premed, prelaw, etc) and all of us were geeks when it came to equipment. It was sometimes easier for us to build processing equipment than it was to actually go out and buy the piece we needed. Anyway, we had a sound system powered by a Peavey M-300 (monitor amp) on the mains, a Sunn monitor amp, and a powered mixer (nicknamed the Bastard for its ability to deliver electrical shocks on its own personal schedule). Our problem was that the line out signal for the mains was too hot for the M-300. We were unable to build (after several drunken Saturday night attempts, which is another story) a suitable buffer for the connection between the two and finally resolved the problem with an Ibanez parametric EQ stompbox. Now, we couldn't actually ACTIVATE the stompbox, we could only have it in the chain so that it wouldn't overload the input section of our main PA. But those effects only work if they have an 9V battery in them. So....our entire system depended upon the life of a 9V battery. You can't make this stuff up, folks! Jeez, those were great times!

[Frantic_Rock]

I used to go to my friend's house to jam. We would play over backing tracks for a long time - exchanging leads.

Once we decided to switch guitars. Little did I know the 80s Roland Jazz Chorus i was plugged in was not properly grounded. As I took off my guitar and he took off his, we went to exchange them. When we both grabbed the necks of the others guitar, the electricity started surging through both of our bodies. We were frozen staring at each other, as we were seized for what seemed like a loooong time, our hands stuck grasping the guitar necks. Then we both pushed off and fell on the floor. Our guitars went on the floor. We were both shaking for a while. No damage to the gear. But i never used that amp since. I think we were lucky that day. It wassn't just a short buzz. It was like WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM............. ........... !! bang... crash....