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Topic: Most electrifying experience

Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 09-27-2001 12:51 PM

Ace Frehley, the lead guitarist for the rock group Kiss got the shock of his life back in 1976 when the band was on tour to support there album Rock N Roll Over......They were still using guitars with the cords going to the amps.....there stage setup featured stairways going down next to the drum riser....during the opening number he would walk down the stairs.....apparently a bad ground had developed and when his hand touched the stairway rail ZAP!!!!!the show stopped and they rushed him back stage after 20 mins. he came back out and the show resumed numb hands and all....this happened in Lakeland, Fl.

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Bruce McGee
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1776
From: Asheville, NC USA... Nowhere in Particular.
Registered: Aug 1999

posted 09-27-2001 01:14 PM

Paul:

I can see the diabolical look in your eyes...

WHY am I standing by the POS?

For now, it's all I have for a pic. Brad apparently ERASED the good one.

Besides, I am so drunk from FG that I was trying to run 35 on the dastardly Eiki. You can't see it, but, in the pic, I'm not wearing pants.

If it helps, that Eiki is gone with the wind.... I'm a-selling off the 16mm hardware FAST!

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Rick Long
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 759
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 09-28-2001 08:09 PM

Wasn't it Les Harvey of "Stone The Crows" that was electrocuted on-stage by a live mike in '72?

A master electrician I often have the pleasure of working with, spent a good part of his life working with high-voltage stuff, yet he reports that the most serious shock he got was from 110vac.

He was at the home of a lady he knew (seems he spent a good part of his life at various homes of young ladies too).

Anyways, he was helping out by doing the laundry in the basement. As he switched on the light, it immediately blew out. He got a replacement bulb and, in stocking feet on a short aluminum ladder, and a slightly damp basement floor, proceeded to change the bulb.

An amature had wired the bulb such that the screw-in part of the socket was live (instead of neutral as it should have been).

He says that the shock "clamped" his hand, and it was only the fact that he passed out that saved his life. He woke up confused and damp on the basement floor.

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Will Kutler
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1506
From: Tucson, AZ, USA
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 10-03-2001 08:06 PM

The practical joke I always liked was the toilet "shock treatment"!

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Michael Pace
Film Handler

Posts: 64
From: Dalby, Queensland, Australia
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 10-06-2001 08:52 PM

The older I get the worse they seem to get. I was working on a CFS console installing a time clock modification to the exhaust delay circuit but had turned the circuit breaker off at the main sub-board.

It was a shock to get a shock as I was under the impression that there was no power. I had to sit down for quite a while to recover as it had grabbed hard. Thinking that I must have turned off the wrong breaker was the first thing that came to mind but that was soon ruled out. It turned out that there was a seperate 240volt supply to the console for the Fire Emergency shutdown to control the main contactor in the console.

The fuse for this is an open style fuseholder using a glass 3AG type fuse. Something that I did know but because I was working on a different section of the console it did not click in the memory bank.

Regards to all,

Michael.

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Anthony Reid
Film Handler

Posts: 7
From: Milton Keynes, Bucks, United Kingdom
Registered: Oct 2001

posted 10-11-2001 05:00 PM

I was once rephasing a Vic-5 and had the power on!

The allen key is was using came in contact with some "live" components.

I wont do that again.

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Josh Jones
Redhat

Posts: 1207
From: Plano, TX
Registered: Apr 2000

posted 12-04-2001 05:27 PM

15,000 volts

Neon sign transformers bit me when I bushed across one of the output terminals. *tingle*

luckily it was limited to 60ma

Josh

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-04-2001 06:25 PM

I was working on a CFS colsole a short time ago, replacing the mother board in the automation. I kept getting shocked, two or three times... "Damn!", I would shout and people thought I was nuts. I KNEW I had all the power shut off. I went back to the breaker panel to shut off ALL of the circuits and I found that somebody rewired the console to make it so the blowers ran full-time instead of on the timer. Instead of just bypassing the timer, they just put in another circuit. When they did that they left a few other things in there powered up that would have been dead but for this phantom power feed.

Like I said before, it was enough to make me swear but not enough to make you forget how to swear!

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System Notices
Forum Watchdog / Soup Nazi

Posts: 215

Registered: Apr 2004

posted 11-07-2004 09:34 PM

It has been 1069 days since the last post.

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Jeffrey Korns
Film Handler

Posts: 22
From: marion, ia, usa
Registered: Oct 2004

posted 11-07-2004 09:34 PM

Junior high school in the early 1980s. It had a state of the art 1929 light board, complete with knife switches that sparked every time you turned anything on. Flip it on and stand back fast, once the circuits were on you were ok (of course every control on the 6' tall board was metal).

Same Jr High, I decide to check out some of the pars and elipses we had by plugging them in, while holding the metal fixture in one hand and the plug in the other, of course the circuit was live at the time... (really tingly feeling when every muscle tenses up!)

Local community theatre group here takes over a 1928 movie theatre and during the renovation decides to eliminate the in stage foot lights. The electrician pulls every fuse in the light board, operates the controls to be sure the circuit is dead, then gets his bolt cutters to cut the cables. Too bad somebody had rewired the footlights to a breaker box in the lobby... ZAP! he survived, but his bolt cutters flew from the stage to the back of the auditorium (accompanied by some creative profanity).

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-07-2004 10:34 PM

quote: Jeffrey Korns

...while holding the metal fixture in one hand and the plug in the other, of course the circuit was live at the time...

Sounds more like some bad wiring somewhere than it does you doing something wrong. All metal parts of the fixture should be grounded. Unless you made direct contact with the "hot" blade/pin of the plug while you were plugging it in that shouldn't have happened.

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Jeffrey Korns
Film Handler

Posts: 22
From: marion, ia, usa
Registered: Oct 2004

posted 11-07-2004 11:13 PM

The fixture had been modified by someone else and was one of several that had not been used in years. I as I recall (24 years later)there was a metal shield around the plug, I was standing on the ground holding the fixture harness in one hand (it had not been placed on bar yet)and was just plugging it in to to see if it worked. After briefly being zapped (I recall being frozen in place and every muscle tensing)I got the plug out and dropped it in a hurry. In retrospect, it was a real playground for a nut like me (or a real death trap for kids!)
The kiddies that go to the school now don't have to contend with the old light board or lighting fixtures. Most of the stuff got tossed out when they remodled the school in the late 80s, now it just has a couple of basic RWB light bars above the stage. The junior high had been a high school from 1928- 1955 and had a lot of stuff most junior highs today would not normally have. There was a plethora of the blade sockets at different locations in the stage floor and a large light board , a rather large booth at the back of the 900 seat auditorium (the only thing still left in the booth was a mobile spot light).

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Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-08-2004 12:05 AM

Sounds to me like either the hot lead was shorted out agaist the metal housing of the plug or there was a reversed hot/neutral somewhere.

That's why I hate metal plug housings. I also favor 2-P&G "Stage Pin" plugs with the clear plastic covers on them.

1) They are non-metallic.
2) You can quickly look to see if there are any loose, broken or miswired connectins.
3) The ground pin is just a hair bit longer than the rest to that it "makes" before the other two and it "breaks" after.

The only way you can get shocked by one of those connectors is if you touched the metal pins with your fingers as you were mating/unmating the connectors on a circuit that is live. Of course, only an idiot would do that.

(But, alas, there are plenty of idiots running around on stages, aren't there?! [Roll Eyes]

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Stephen Furley
Film God

Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002

posted 11-08-2004 03:06 AM

At one time I had a very old brass light switch, probably just after WWI when the house first got wired up. Both the switch toggle and the brass 'dome' cover were live. The switch wasn't faulty, it was just designed that way! No problem as long as you wern't earthed when you turned the lights on or off.

I've also seen a couple of plugs of similar vintage, which consisted of just a small block of wood (nicely french polished) with two holes drilled through it. Two brass pins were fitted through these holes, with screws into the sides to secure them. The back ends of the pins were cross-drilled to take the wires. That was it; no cover, the live pins would have been exposed. I never actually used these plugs.

I also read about an early toy electric train set, I think it was made in Germany, where the rails were live at mains Voltage.

I wonder what the Health and Safety people would make of this sort of thing today.

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