Our bassist has come up with an idea to reduce the setup time for gigs by creating two 'umbilicals' - one for power and the other for signals. i.e. a single long power cable with 4-way sockets spliced in at the appropriate places for the various members, and the signal one would be basically all the leads cable-tied into a bundle, kind of like a stage to mixer snake, with the relevant inputs exiting at the correct places (we all retain the same relative positions). We could then keep the signal leads permanently connected to the mixer and just unroll the umbilicals and plug in.
My question is this.... even though the total current draw is nowhere near the limit of a single 13A plug, is there any risk in having a single cable with, say, 5 x 4-way power strips spliced in at various points along its length ? Our drummer seems to think this is a fire hazard, but I disagree. I say it's no different from a single 20-way power strip and, as long as the current draw is less than 13A, there's no safety issue.
Could any electrickery types comment please ? Ta.
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Extension cables are easily damaged too. If this causes earth leakage and the sockets are RCD protected (as they should be) what would you do when the RCD keeps tripping because your dodgy cable has developed a fault?
If you're really determined to do this run it off 2 plugs. That way you get 26A total(assuming the socket circuit is a 32A ring) and some discrimination between things. Maybe run it as:
Cable 1 - essentials/sound: PA,Guitar and bass amps.
Cable 2 - Lights, fans, Monitors if active,
That way if something like the sweaty drummer's fan fails and blows the fuse then you still get through the set.
What do you mean by spliced? Remember, if you have your gear PAT tested a McGuyvered solution to joining cables is extremely unlikely to get a pass.
Even if this is done well it would still be vulnerable to damage.
If you find set up is taking too much time then maybe you should look at your band's routine and see if everyone is actually pulling their weight here. Or maybe you have more gear than you really need?
I'm sold on @Hoof 's argument about single point of failure so it's probably not going to happen now, but I'm very intrigued by the technical explanation of why it would be more dangerous.
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
Yes to audio multicores. No to power, remember power and audio are best crossed at right angles not run alongside to absolutely avoid ' noise'.
The idea of splicing theses trailing sockets onto a mains cables sounds very suspect: would you be using crimps or terminal strips (chocolate block connectors)?
That said...Ive never found the need for such an invention.
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That said, the whole thing is just an embarassing failure waiting to happen. Just make each band member individually responsible for their own power requirements and a specific part of the PA/lighting rig. My own rig is a head/cab/pedalboard/2x guitars set up and without rushing it takes me 10 minutes to set up, including tuning guitars. I don't touch that until the PA and lights are set up and operational. In my band if someone started fannying about with their own kit before the communal stuff is sorted they would be pulled up about it pretty quick.
Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
EDIT: I've just remembered what drove this. The singer was fond of bringing the lights in at certain times for dramatic impact. I was playing guitar synth at the time, and the sudden current draw from the PAR bulbs would cause a brown-out, making my guitar synth reset to patch A01; thus my carefully crafted faux-sax part would suddenly turn into a shonky piano riff.
It's better to branch several multi-ways from one rather than daisy-chaining them, and keep the number of stages in the daisy-chain to a minimum, as each plug-to-socket connection will lose you some voltage and is another potential failure point. Also go for chunkier conductor cores, usually evidenced by chunkier overall cable diameter.
For another band, I did once make up a loom of all the mic cables, monitor line feeds, and speaker cables, bound together with cable ties. That worked and saved some setup time.
The reason for this is because - assuming all your extension cables are properly checked - it makes it impossible for the earth connection on one piece of equipment to become live relative to the earth connection of another, which is the most dangerous of all situations - if a person contacts both at the same time, most often a guitar to a microphone, the live leak will take the available path to earth... through the person.
But as Keefy says, the ideal arrangement is not a daisy-chain - it's a tree-branch system. You need to have one four-way extension plugged into the wall, four more 'subgroups' plugged into that, and so on until you have enough available outlets. That ensures only one earth connection and individual fusing for each sub-group. Even better, if you know each subgroup has to handle much less than 13A, you can fuse each one at 5A, so if something goes wrong it probably won't blow the fuse at the wall, which makes finding the problem simpler.
I would try to keep lights on a completely separate circuit if at all possible though, or at the very least a dedicated subgroup, given their high current draw.
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A lot of stage lights now use LEDs, which consume much less power.
The only real dangers are that you can put a 13A fuse in an extension with lower-rated cable, and that poor connections can introduce enough resistance to be a fire risk before the fuse blows. But it's still safer than any other system.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein