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how much stuff have you had stolen?


LJ

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I think the most nicked thing we have ever experienced is the styluses (styli??) from decks. DJs suck. I've even caught them in the act, and they seem to think it's a perk of the job

 

Styli, lots of them.

Closely followed by phono to XLR leads. DJ's houses must be full of them.

 

Cheers,

Peter

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Our structures guy has just build a concrete bunker.... yes a real bunker!!!

This is because one of our sister companies is the regions largest TV and film studios... right next door.

 

One night we were ram raided... they didnt touch anything in our warehouse... macs.. pearls.. plasmas... the lot.. all left untouched..

 

They lifted the ENTIRE stock of broadcast and film cameras......

The security guard heard and saw nothing.... which I dont quite understand........

 

SO guess where the insurance replacements now all live..........

 

we are however missing an SM58 but pretty sure they didnt take it................

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It seems the rule is - if somebody finishes up with your kit they're thieving toe-rags, if you finish up with somebody else's kit that's fair game!
There is a difference between "kit creep" and thieving. You do a gig, and at the end you have two extra DMX leads, but damned if you can find the 13A 4way that you know you took with you. Someone else is in exactly the opposite position. That's life. Thieving toe-rags having off with all your mics is quite another.

 

We have had 'walk in' gits nicking handbags (code lock on stage door now), and 3 walkie-talkie sets, with chargers, taken from the control room. We know which git had those...

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Styli, lots of them.

Closely followed by phono to XLR leads. DJ's houses must be full of them.

 

Mini-jack -> Phono/XLRs tend to disappear a lot as well...I guess people are taking them for their home systems and their ipods...

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Story for you...

A club night had just finished and the DJ had left a laptop next to the decks. The moment he turned, it was swiped from the table. 2 guys had managed to pass the bouncers up until the DJ shouted that it was gone.

One bouncer and another DJ went running after the 2 guys for half a mile before they jumped into a taxi. The bouncer managed to get the number plate of the taxi so he first phoned the police and gave them the taxi's number plate and firm company . Then the police phoned the taxi company. Thankfully they were travelling quite a distance. Then the taxi company got onto the radio of the taxi driver who had the two guys and the laptop and as they were coming up to their destination, the taxi driver locked the doors and parked right opposite a police station :unsure:

 

The laptop was back in the hands of the DJ the next day.

 

 

I will add that what I've noticed that goes missing alot from the back of our sound desk is phono to jack adaptors, and it isn't the punters who take them...

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And to add to my thoughts of last night.

 

Try my current situation

Our very very new building has been populated with builders since we opened.

211 peices of 3m truss were delivered, a day later we had 210.

We have a serious lack of secure storage, and are constantly fighting builders out of and away from our rooms full of pricey kit.

Trolleys, dollies and boxes are a nightmare. A pallet truck disappeared within a day and was found with our marks doctored to become a major contractor's marks. When we took it back they had the nerve to complain we nicked their truck.

We won.

Builders are really bad for 'borrowing' other peoples stuff, I know, I used to be one.

Compounded with my famously scally location, calm down and all that.....

 

(Now running for the hills before my locally sourced partner reads this)

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I believe the best steal I have heard so far was two guys waking into the Swansea Grand theatre during the interval of their panto, telling the ushers that the sound desk was broken (a midas I think or something equally very large!) so the ushers then helped them out with the desk and into a van.

 

Needless to say the sound number 1 came back to find his desk had gone........

 

Simply brilliant

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They lifted the ENTIRE stock of broadcast and film cameras......

The security guard heard and saw nothing.... which I dont quite understand........

Now that might be an "inside" job or at least the security being bribed! :unsure:

 

One of my favourites was a punter who nicked a radio mic off a rap artist as he leaned forward into the audience. The mic was quickly muted and I looked at the chap desperately shouting into it with no avail. Without really thinking I jumped down from the stage and ran up to him and shouted "It's not much ******* good to you now, is it?", he sheepishly looked at the mic, realisation dawning on his face and handed it back to me. Result!

 

Also, another gig that ended in a terrifying full-scale riot. As all the crew hid behind anything solid from the hail of missiles, watching helplessly as sound desk, lighting desk, outboard racks etc. was getting trashed; I was heartened to see a bloke trying to run off with a Martin LE400. Not quite realising how difficult it is to run with such an object, he tripped and twisted his ankle and lay there screaming "Help me!". He was, by the Old Bill who handcuffed him and dragged him off to the old meat wagon. :)

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We once lost a data projector.

 

Nothing unusual in that, I hear you say....

 

However, this one was bolted into a Unicol mount, in the middle of a large auditorium, about 30 feet in the air...

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:) oh my...

 

 

we picked up some kit as for a contractor this weekend who was rushed off his feet on other jobs. They came to get it yesterday, then we got the call late on to say 6 grand of PA & lights was missing. "What PA and lights?" we said, as there was none there to collect. A few phonecalls later and apparently a shifty security guard had "put it away in a store room for safe keeping". Yeah right. translated: I thought I'd stealthily have it away and see if anyone noticed...:unsure:

 

 

It seems the rule is - if somebody finishes up with your kit they're thieving toe-rags, if you finish up with somebody else's kit that's fair game! ;)

 

;) well... no. I agree with Andrew C. There is a difference between the tidal nature of "kit creep" and outright robbing. I quite often find that I've got stuff back that isn't ours but am missing bits of our kit. When you have been up for several days your judgement is not always entirely focussed. I know I've got a 63A cable that isn't ours, but we did have one when we started the gig, so someone else has ours. that's just the natural flow somehow.

 

I do miss our pallet truck though. I'm getting too old to hump staging piece by piece :(

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It seems the rule is - if somebody finishes up with your kit they're thieving toe-rags, if you finish up with somebody else's kit that's fair game!
There is a difference between "kit creep" and thieving. You do a gig, and at the end you have two extra DMX leads, but damned if you can find the 13A 4way that you know you took with you. Someone else is in exactly the opposite position. That's life. Thieving toe-rags having off with all your mics is quite another.

I accept there's a difference between 'natural' swaps and outright theft. I was just struck by the comments along the lines of "we did a gig and gained X kit, result!" and "we did a gig and lost X kit, Grrr!".

 

 

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

I think my view point may be coloured by the fact I am an amateur: my kit is mine, paid for out of my own pocket and makes me no income. To me losing a couple of DMX leads isn't a trivial matter.

 

If you buy DMX cable by the reel and connectors by the case, replacing lost leads probably takes a few minutes and costs a couple of pounds. I have to pay full retail price and await delivery (which can be two or three days). Therefore I am careful about not taking other peoples' stuff as I wouldn't want them to take mine.

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If you buy DMX cable by the reel and connectors by the case, replacing lost leads probably takes a few minutes and costs a couple of pounds. I have to pay full retail price and await delivery (which can be two or three days). Therefore I am careful about not taking other peoples' stuff as I wouldn't want them to take mine.

 

Your quite right, its not so important for a member of a large comapny to come back with different gear. A)its not going to directly affect him, B) It wont cost as much to replace as it would to the pubic, C) A Large company makes a huge amount of proffit (Hopefully) and therefore £10 on a DMX lead wont even be noticed.

 

And your quite right, everyone tryed to come back with the right gear, but you if you ever find yourself on a frantic get out, with gear coming in and going out from numberous different companys, it can be very hard to do. Hence the reason most large companys mark up there gear very thoughly, and usually do the curtosy of returning other companys gear.

 

We have a huge bin at work filled with other peoples gear. The situation usually goes something like this, punter returns gear to warehouse after hire, I start cheacking it off, hmm, too much 10m XLR's here. I sort throug the pile and find one without our markings on, 'excuse me sir, I belive this is one of your cables,' "no its not" they normally reply. " Well it dosent belong to us, as its not marked" "well I dont want it if its not mine either" I usually get back. So it gets chucked in the bin.

 

However its the marked ones I dont get. A guy brought back some gear the other day with two extra SM57's. These were engraved with the name of a local college. The guy said they wernt theres, fair enough hes probably a student being roped into returning gear, he wont have a clue. However when I rang the college the next morning, they denied evey loosing any! That was a month ago and there still sitting in that bin!

 

Rich

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A student venue I used to work in often had to leave mics unattended for conference / society type events.

Despite the venue being covered by CCTV, and decent security staff (we know they weren't in on it before anyone cries fowl, in fact we knew exactly who it was but never managed to catch him red handed :oops: ) around the place there were always SM58's going walkies, we invested in a bunch of super cheap £5 a pop mics.

 

Ironically since going down the budget mic route (about a year ago) there have only been two thefts. On both occasions the culprits were identified thanks to the CCTV and detained by security staff in the buildings nightclub, and carted off by the boys in blue. I got to talk to one of the thieving toe rags, he was under the impression the mics were of SM58 standard and he looked even more red faced and ashamed when he realised he'd just earnt himself a criminal record for less than £20 worth of mics!

 

Typical that it’s only ever the decent kit that goes walkies, and the Cr*p stuff you can just never lose! (I also discovered 2 summers ago that sunglasses ;) suffer from the you can't lose the cr*p ones phenomenon. After losing 10 pairs in 3 months, I bought a pair for £5.99 and have them in my car to this day.

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