The Gorilla Was in the Studio

[Bob Womack]

I came back to the studio where I work from being out for surgery and recovery to find an interesting discovery. Well first, the good news: I had scheduled some maintenance on our mixing console while I was out. The electronic LED scribble strips above the faders had suddenly burned out and gone dark. The engineers did a fine job and I am back in business!

Now the bad: I had a voice overdub session first thing. Once the singer got comfortable and I went to adjust the height of the big old Atlas studio mic stand, I couldn't. A colleague had borrowed my studio for a vocal session and that guy really works out! Apparently he didn't know that the stand clutches are designed to hold with finger pressure (a lightly-built lady can set them) so he torqued down with his entire being. When I tried to unclutch, it was a no-go. Now, I'm not a spring chicken and have lost some weight and muscle mass, but this thing was frozen. I'm still on activity restriction from surgery but don't like to look like a wimp, so I leaned into the task with both hands. It didn't budge but it did cheese-grate my palms. I grabbed a jacket and wound it around the knurled handle to gain a grip and a little diameter for more torque and NOTHING. Finally minding my restriction, I decided to take the better part of valor and get a younger guy to try. Zip. He saw stars. We exchanged efforts over a minute and finally freed it up.

Some hard-learned lessons over my career:
1. Don't tighten mic stands down too hard. The clutch consists of a split metal ring seated inside the lower shaft that is threaded and has cuts through the threaded portion. The knurled knob has a slightly coned thread section that tapers toward the top. As you screw it down, it pinches the sliced portion of the lower shaft's threads which in turn pinch the split ring and seize upon the upper shaft to prevent it from dropping. It can be done with two fingers and thumb. Once over-tightened, it is tougher to loosen than it was to tighten. In fact, too much over-tightening can distort the split ring and then it will not work properly. At that point you have to buy a rebuild kit (above) and replace the ring and possibly the clutch handle.

2. Do not... Do not put a wrench on the knurled handle to free it up. No matter how hard you try, you will end up nicking and sharpening the splines of the knurled handle and from then on even light operation will begin cheese-grating your hands. If you have time you can do the pliers thing with cardboard or some such or with a pair of pliers with plastic teeth to protect the handle, but with clients standing around and the clock spinning, running to the tool kit takes too long.

3. Pay attention to your surgeon when he puts you on restriction. Mine was quite placid: "Don't do strenuous things. If you do something and it makes you bleed, back off." Uh-huh. I got exactly that feedback from the surgery site after my little escapade, so apparently I'm not back to 100% yet.

Oh, and a day later, my palms are still cheese-grated.

Bob

[jim1960]

I did that to my Atlas stand once. Just took that one time (and a large pair of channel locks) to learn that lesson.