Luckily I decided to check out the venue I will be at on NYE as my son who has gigged their before said that their was a distinct lack of plug sockets.

As it is in a large school hall with a massive stage ..... Great I thought take all my lights and a nice LOUD 4Kw sound rig.

Nice school hall ....nice big stage........ with 1 mains socket with a sign on it saying all visitors disco's etc must use this socket .....and something about council regulations maximum 3 amp.


Ha ha ha ha....... so after searching for half an hour I managed to find 4 more sockets in a classroom 100 metres away !!!


Can anyone run their rig off 1 3amp socket

Their were 2 others in the hall only 20 metres away .......... BUT all the caravans in the grounds were taking their mains supply from them


Happy New Year !!!

isn't 3 Amps roughly 720 Watts?

I would imagine that your lighting alone will probably consume more than that. So i think that you will perhaps be in for an interesting evening. I would hope that you have already stated in your booking arrangement any minimum power requirements that your roadshow would need?. I am sure that everything will be okay as usually the caretakers of such venues have a contact number for an authorised electrician who, if available will charge the going rate for a call out.

Some of these venues may cause problems when using an rcd but it might be prudent to see how everything runs seperately / one at a time instead of switching everything on at once and wishing you had bicycle clips.

i would question the reason that a 13 amp socket has been restricted to 3 amps as it suggests that it may be remotely controlled by a seperate device such as a decibel sound limiter which if correct, would somewhat negate the need for a 4kw sound system in the first place .

Other issues may arise from attempting to source power elsewhere which you should factor into consideration in the event of a dispute or Health and Safety issue should it arise. However if you have already included minimum power arrangements within your booking details then at least if you are only able to continue with limited sound and lighting or provide a seriously cut down roadshow to what you were planning to provide then at least you have legitimate grounds and reason for doing so, example:- restricted power availability.

I'd ask the venue directly.

The socket could be a socket that is controlled by a noise limiter, or simply that the large stage has plenty of power sockets but all the big, round pin 15amp plugs, for which, I suspect, the venue may have their own supply of 15amp round pin to 13amp rectangular pin (normal plug) adaptors.

Alternatively, if they've got a well equiped stage etc, they may well only want you to run your CD decks, mixer etc, off of the 3amp socket (not a problem), and then want you to feed them your mixer out signal, for them to run that signal into their sound system... (as an encore, at the end of the night, pick up all you gear in both hands, click your heels together three times, and recite; "There's no place like home...there's no place..."




...but, I'd ask.

yes,
yes,
yes
yes,

and no...... their were no round pin sockets .... in fact the one 3 amp was the only socket on the whole stage, apprently their used to be loads even a 3 phase supply............. but about 2 years ago it all went bang.... big time. Instead of getting it fixed they just ripped it all out so now their is no power at all.

Not really a problem I have some very long extension leads........ just need to buy a couple more. as I want to use at least 6 13A sockets. I am going to have fun with the lights.

to be honest I wasn't really expecting a reply as it was just a bit of a whinge........... That's the great thing about this forum you can come here and have a good old moan and people actually listen ...wifey just switches off when I talk disco.

Quote "run that signal into their sound system"..... the only thing that resembled a sound system was a 20 year old record player in a cardboard box under the stage. ( The valves didnt look too clever ) so that may not be an option

Sounds ridiculous - when you say 3 amp, I'm taking it that you meant 3, and not a typoed 13?

I need two 13 amp sockets for my outfit, and it isn't exactly excessive as regards sound or light, so I can't imagine what kind of entertainment they have there usually.

I place in my contract a clause about the requirement for a minimum of 2 13 amp sockets, but that doesn't help much if you turn up to find they just aren't there...

Can run off one 13amp socket if absolutely necessary. That's 2.2K of sound and 4 250 watt lighting effects. Sometimes the only option. Amps are Switch mode though so don't use as much power i believe. Used to be a bit worried about doing this but have had to do it many times now and had no problems, nothing getting warm or anything. If given the choice it's one plug for lighting, one for sound though.

One 13 amp socket for me would do if need be.

However, I use one socket for lighting and another seperate one for sound.

3 amps sounds stupid!

Just out of interest..."watts" in terms of amplifiers and sound DONT equal the "watts" from a wall socket.

EG: A 4000watt sound system will quite happily run from a 3120 watt (or wattever it is :-)) 13amp power socket on a wall. I dont know what the equation or calculation is, and I suspect that it varies from genre to genre of amp eg: efficiency, switch mode or not, ohms driven, etc,etc...

Lighting wattage is (more or less) a direct comparison of watts from a wall socket though...

Are the kitchens near? They usually have three phase available, run leads from there if appropriate.

I agree it sounds like the one socket available may be via a limiter. I would not use that anyway.

Tough call...

Gary:
<know-all>
If an amplifier is outputting a full 4Kw, you can be darn sure it's going to draw rather more than that from the mains, as the laws of physics are still in place at the moment.....
However, you can get away with it simply because the average output is likely to be an awful lot less than it's maximum, and chances are you wouln't be running at full whack.
</know-all>

Back to running off one 13 amp socket:
I reckon this is a bad move, as a typical disco is likely to be drawing fairly close to the full load, especially if running loud and using a lot of lighting effects, and there is a likelihood of the 13 amp fuse blowing - not necessarily due to overload, but due to thermal fatigue, so if possible distribute your power requirements between a couple of fuses, although I do understand this isn't always possible.....

the socket in question (if its only rated at 3 amps) will be fed via either a fused spur (fused at 3 amps) or a sound limiter with an internal 3 amp fuse.

A double socket should by regulation be on a 30/32 amp ring main (unless via a fused spur as mentioned) which should give you 2 x 13 amp supplies. This is ample for most rigs

ie amps/cd player/mixer/ bla bla should only be approx 5amps max for all units (if that to be honest) beware though...powered subs take a good starting current on switch on! My mackie swa1502 draws 6 amps on its own.....doubles on start up just for split second

Lights......calculate the bulb wattage totals and apply ohms law......

ie 4 lights @ 250watts each = 1000 watts = 4.3 amps

(1000w divide by 230v) dont forget to add a little on for the steppa motors etc (not much though usually)

Yes - good point about surge currents:
If you have quite a few projectors, avoid switching them all on at the same time - leave half a second between them. Those torroidal transformers can draw quite a bit as they magnetise on the first cycle.....

Same goes for most amps, too.

Actually, that's what I thought until I was corrected a few years back. Apparently audio output watts are different from power consumption watts, and...most usefully for mobile DJs, the ratio, whilst not set in stone, is the right way around. It takes less "Mains watts" to create more audio watts.

For example: The Behringer EP2500 amplifer, puts out a juicy (and not bad sounding) 2 x 1,200 Watts into 2 Ohms or 2,400 Watts into 4 Ohms bridged mono, and yet happily runs with a 5amp fuse in the mains plug on the 220/240volt model. 5 amps being around 1100watts at 230volts (avg.220/240). So, two similar amps could be plugged into a single 13amp mains socket, and offer 4 x 1,200 watts into 2 Ohms, or 2 x 2,400 watts into 4 Ohms bridged mono....and, since each amplifer is fused at 5 amps (10amps total), then we could still pull at least 3 amps (about 700 watts) off of the same socket. That 700 watts is obviously of little use for lighting, but with CD-decks, mixers etc all drawing between 20 and 80watts each, a very reasonable (for most medium gigs) audio system could run entirely from one single 13amp socket.

As far as the thread goes though...3 amps - thats still too low for a disco. Any news on that socket by the way?

SNAP

This is where I have a compleatly different view from the B&G Snow thread... A venue should know what is required for entertainment perposes and I would be most unhappy with a venue that provides 3 amps for my equipment...

Nik

It also depends on how new and efficient the amplifier is. Don't forget that in a lot of older amplifiers a huge amount of input power at normal running levels was lost as heat!.

I noticed that Dukesy has an old Yamaha Amplifier which is rated at 320W RMS x 2 however on the rating plate it states power input as 220 - 240V AC 1600W

Suffice to say that modern amplifiers will not draw close to the output rating, and more so if you are only running them into 8 ohm loads and not 4 or 2

When finding out what power your entire roadshow draws from the mains and whether you can safely run from one 13A socket, or to find out how much current your amplifier or any other appliance draws, then This Little Gadget can be useful!

I'd get out my laptop, a pair of active PC speakers and say its the best I can do

In the end it wasn't a probelm.

Just took 4 100 metre extension leads and run them from a classroom.......strangely enough it was the music room !!.......... used a lot of Gaffa tape tho

So ended up with 2 sockets for the amps and 2 for the lights.

Regarding that little gadget for measuring current and suchlike - I used to have a hot wire ammeter, originally used for measuring antenna current in an.. um.... antenna, and this worked a treat. It was rated with a FSD of 10 amps and I was surprised how high some of the peaks were as a result of my light panels!

It was stepped on by the kids a few years back, so sadly is no more.

was that 4 extentions plugged into one another with a 400 mtr run??

The volt drop on that would be massive! suprised you got juice on the end of it haha

I won't bother to reply to that one

Hi

Nice gadget from maplin their, Im gonna buy one.
Looks like just the thing I need to work out how many sockets I actually need.

Curently my prefference for number of sockets is 4 to be on the safe side.
I can reduce that to 2 if I need too.
And its now on my contract form that a minumum of 2 13amp sockets must be provided close to the area where the disco rig is to be set up.

Nick