busted rack

Hello and welcome to Swordfight Dot Font oops I mean Swordfight Dot Org.

If you’ve seen A/V perform live, then you’ve seen this white rack that I use as a keyboard stand. It used to be a candy rack and once had a sign on it that said “Fun Gum And Candy Center.” I found it years ago in the trash at the Cornwallis Street jam spot.

This rack is really what makes A/V possible. If one of my synths died, it would suck, but I could get another keyboard or work around it somehow. But without the rack I’m not sure what I’d do. I’d have to spread my science all over a couple of tables, all of which I’d have to be able to reach at any given moment. It would be a mess. With the rack, I’ve always got everything right in front of me.

Top Row: Alesis sequencer, Behringer mixer, Boss drum machine, Ampeg analog delay pedal
Second Row: Yamaha synth, Big Muff distortion, Boss noise gate
Third Row: Roland analog synth
Bottom Row: the power bar that all this shit plugs into

And in front of this I have my Juno synth parked on a regular old keyboard stand. The whole setup works great.

One thing that’s always been a pain in the ass is moving this rack around. It’s big. It will come apart in a few pieces, but even folded up it’s too large to fit in the trunk of most cars. I’ve had some problems in the past with transportation. These days I slide it into the back seat of my car but it’s still kind of a nuisance to travel with.

This afternoon I was looking over the rack and trying to think of ways I could make it a little more portable. I realized that the cross pieces are mainly what holds it all together. I could probably remove a piece of the back with no great loss of stability, and yet it would fold down a size smaller and nestle quite nicely in the trunk of my Corolla.

So I fetched me a hacksaw and did a little hacking. Fifteen minutes and three crucial cuts later, I prepared to reassemble the rack. Putting it together was a little trickier than usual with the back piece missing, but I managed to get the cross pieces on without too much trouble.

I was curious to see if there’d be any noticeable wobbliness or whatever. I put on the last crosspiece and stood back to have a look.

And the entire rack lurched sideways and collapsed to the floor like a pile of broken bones.

Ahh… I see. One of the metal pieces I sawed off actually had the function of holding the rack upright. What do you know. I’m an idiot.

One of the drawbacks of living alone is that you don’t have someone around to talk you out of following foolish impulses. An equivalent to what I just did would be, “Hey I know! My guitar would sound way better if I were to saw right through the neck.”

I found myself sorting through the pieces of my ex-keyboard stand. Trying to hold the pieces together to see what I could salvage was like trying to solve a giant 3-D jigsaw puzzle. Not a one-person job.

Finally I went and dug it out: the roll of duct tape.

What was once a solid metal rod is now two pieces of metal rod joined by duct tape. On this duct tape I will be staking my new wave future tomorrow evening at the Seahorse.

If it all falls apart onstage, then thank you and good night.

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