Beta Pack Service

[Tom]

We have two portable racks of 4 Beta Packs, one with built in distro. Someone thought they got a little tickle off one of them the other day which made me think I should probably get them serviced.

 

Who is best to send them to, or is there anyone whod come and do it on site? We are in London N1.

[IRW]

We have two portable racks of 4 Beta Packs, one with built in distro. Someone thought they got a little tickle off one of them the other day which made me think I should probably get them serviced.

 

Who is best to send them to, or is there anyone whod come and do it on site? We are in London N1.

 

@Drv might be your man...!

[DrV]

We have two portable racks of 4 Beta Packs, one with built in distro. Someone thought they got a little tickle off one of them the other day which made me think I should probably get them serviced.

 

Who is best to send them to, or is there anyone whod come and do it on site? We are in London N1.

 

@Drv might be your man...!

 

Thanks Ian,

 

That's a whole day out plus from here so I'd need a little persuasion. Happy to look at the Betapacks back at base though if you can arrange transport to KT206JW. Send me a PM if I can help.

Dave

[Tom]

PM sent.

 

In the meantime does anyone have any other options?

[paulears]

the first thing I'd do is stick a meter onto them - case to real ground, case to neutral at the very least. Seeing anything gets them taken out of service - at that point you decide to have a look yourself, or pay the bill and lose the time.

 

If the case is live then usually it's a very simple fault to find and fix. If you're not comfortable, then ask an electrician. Despite many domestic electricians being hopeless with theatre/events stuff, they should be able to find a fault like this and when fixed, test it, and give you a sticker and a bit of paper to keep others happy.

[indyld]

A 'tickle' could indicate issues with the installation earthing system, not just something with the seemingly offending device. Worth a check.

[DrV]

Tom,

 

I've re-sent the PM that seemed to go missing.

 

It is worth pointing out that a tickle from a piece of equipment doesn't necessarily indicate a problem with that equipment itself, nor indeed with the general installation earthing. For example, if you have a good connection between your hand and a microphone connected to a bit of leaky equipment and you brush your arm against something which is well earthed, then you will feel the tickle on your arm rather than your hand.

 

As Paul says above, it is a pretty trivial task to check with an A.C. voltmeter (a modern high-impedance digital meter, not one with a moving coil!) connected between a known good earth and anything you think may be causing a problem. Anything over a volt or so would suggest a problem. This is NOT of course an exhaustive test and MUST NOT be relied upon to verify safety. It would only be an indicator of where the problem might be.

 

Beware of readings involving Class II devices (many wall warts and laptop PSUs and basically anything with a "double-insulated" symbol on it) as the maximum permitted leakage current is 250uA which you can just about feel with a damp hand and a light touch to earth.

 

Dave