Church Sound: Taking Care Of Business

Preempting Equipment Failure

Lets look at the 5 things that should have been done before the sweat and fest.

1. Basic maintenance
On a regular basis check all your cords. See my previous article on this.

Also, organize cables in a logical manner. My approach is to I hang them on a peg board sorted by length. This way if we encounter a bad cable, we know exactly where to go to grab a replacement.

It goes without saying that you should have at least two spare cables for each variety of cable you are using. For example, there to be an extra 1/4-inch to 1/4-inch, XLR male to female, 1/8-inch to RCA—whatever cables and adaptors you use should have spares, and know where they are!

2. Organization
Make sure that you know exactly how many inputs and what type of inputs that you will have from the band on Sunday morning and have them set up and tested ahead of time.

3. Communication
Ask the worship leader (and ask often) if there’s anything else you need to know. Even for those of us who prepare ahead of time, surprises can happen. On a recent Sunday, I had all 6 of our vocal handheld microphones in use, and 10 minutes before the service I noticed on the worship order that a missions report was also scheduled.