Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cold storage of Audio Equipment.

This is topic Cold storage of Audio Equipment. in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 01-04-2011, 07:37 PM:

I play in a band and own a trailer full of equipment - speakers, amp racks, effects rack, mixers and lights. We play mostly big outdoor gigs in the summer, but have a few bar gigs in the winter. Here in North Dakota it gets very cold, so I'm looking for opinions on the best way to store the equipment. We drove two hours to play a New Years gig with the temperature at -20 F. Needless to say, the equipment really sweated when we brought it into the venue. I waited till the last minute to fire things up, and it was all dried out by then.

So here is my question: Should I unload the trailer and put all the equipment in my heated shop after each gig, or is that just another freeze-thaw cycle that should be avoided by leaving the stuff in the trailer? Any advice or opinion is appreciated. I'm afraid heating a 30 ft enclosed trailer might be out of the question!

Steve

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-04-2011, 09:33 PM:

Whatever you can do to lessen or completely eliminate the freeze/thaw cycles would be best. Freezing and resulting water condensation in thawing is BAD for electronics. P-A system gear is built more robust than home stereo gear for the living room. But it won't put it with repeated freeze/thaw cycles for too awful long without problems developing. You need some sort of storage space that has at least some sort of climate control.

This situation reminds me of the difficulties with using cameras in cold weather environments. If you're taking pictures in a very frigid environment and then bring the camera into a warm home interior humidity may condense inside the camera lens. Then you'll have a pretty expensive lens repair bill.

It's not difficult to put a camera/lens combo into a plastic zip-lock bag, then bring it indoors to allow it to gradually warm up to room temperature and avoid a water condensation disaster. It's not so practical to do that with a mixing board or British style guitar tube amp head.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-04-2011, 10:58 PM:

Can you park the trailer in the shop or put it in a garage that's not so cold?

Posted by John Hegel (Member # 628) on 01-05-2011, 08:01 PM:

Even if it is in a heated shop it will still get down to ambient temp by the time you reach your destination. I would suggest leaving the lids on the consoles as long as possible so that the moist room air can’t get to it to condense.

I have heard that a thin layer of Teflon on the speaker cones will help you with both summer rains and winter condensation.

Most importantly is to get the lid off of the snake trunk as soon as you can during load-in in order to get it warming up so that you don’t crack it handling it cold.

Posted by Steven J Hart (Member # 2340) on 01-05-2011, 09:16 PM:

Yeah, I noticed the snake was still really stiff when we laid it out. The problem I have with storing the equipment in a heated building after it has completely frozen out on the road is that I'm exposing everything to another freeze thaw cycle each time I bring the stuff in out of the trailer. Plus its a lot of equipment to unload! I carry the console inside the cab of the truck with me and store it inside because I really don't want to take any chances with it.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 01-16-2011, 04:06 PM:

"Freeze-thaw" is meaningless unless something actually freezes. Even a drastic temperature change shouldn't be a problem if it's within the rated storage and operating environment. Whether or not non-water material passes through the freezing temperature of water is irrelevant.
The problem is with water condensation on cold things when they come into a warm humid space. This is going to be an issue at gigs, a bar will have people breathing humidity into the air and maybe a wet floor from snow tracked in. I don't think even this is very serious. The water will dry out quickly once the equipment warms up and is inherently fairly clean (it's "distilled").