What an interesting day. (Now that’s a loaded statement when talking about a worship gathering.) As mentioned previously here on the blog, we are slowly recovering from a lightning strike which took out our sound and lighting. Last week, I received and installed an Allen & Heath GL2400-32 sound desk to our system, leaving the only major part of the system to be replaced to be the house speakers.
So, I’m installing the board Wednesday, and after some creative re-wiring I get it working. While connecting some instrument and mic cables, the whole system starts squealing like a banshee, and the only way to make it stop is to kill the whole system. Obviously, I’m not dealing with a feedback issue.
We make it through Wednesday evening choir rehearsal without a hitch, and the sound does not return even on Sunday morning during sound checks. I hung out in the auditorium during Sunday School to see if I could force the system into making the sound, but nothing.
As we’re doing final check and playing pre-service music off of the mp3 computer, the squeal raises it’s ugly head, but at not even half the volume of the previous Wednesday. We kill the system, and within less than 10 minutes it happens again. With no time to try and figure anything out and no Plan B, we dive into the service.
While Elmer is welcoming the visitors, the squeal happens again. My sound techs kill the system, and bring it back up in time for the first song. Wow! Everything sounded great, and we made it through the first two song without any problems. Elmer comes out to do a baptism, and there it goes again. They kill it, and we plod on.
The next two songs are very familiar hymns, so my techs decide to leave the system cold until the last song and we essentially went unplugged for a bit. When they brought the system back up, they couldn’t get my mic working, but that wasn’t too big a deal since one of the others singers was actually the lead on the song, and you could still here the praise team and choir very well.
On top of it all, I turn around at the end of the last song to see that I had not un-muted my guitar after baptism, so I wasn’t heard past the first row for the last three songs!
I’m going to work with an Allen & Heath tech over the phone this morning, so I’ll let you know how it all goes. All in all, we still had a great time of fellowship and singing. Our congregation is very understanding of the difficulties we’ve undergone. I just hope we can get it all resolved soon.
Here’s yesterday’s set list:
- My Redeemer Lives // Hillsongs
- Shout to the Lord // Hillsongs
- Since I Have Been Redeemed // Excell (traditional hymn)
- I Will Sing of My Redeemer // Bliss (traditional hymn)
- What the Lord Had Done in Me // Hillsongs
- Just as I Am // Elliot & Bradbury (traditional hymn)
By the way, REMEDY IS HERE! 
Literally, in my mail box. Whoohoo!
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