Ah yes, adventures in taping.
I've discovered the $22 cable I thought was good quality apparently isn't It must have shorts in the connectors because when I hook up my rig, I get no levels unless I jiggle and move the cable just right. And yeah, I've tested everything else and all jacks were properly seated. I used to ol' elimination technique. I've had this cable about three months.
And yeah, drinking too much beer can ruin a recording. Almost.
I was recording a local band Saturday at a new bar to scope it out for another show later in the month. My son was videotaping and I bought a pitcher of beer to last me the night.
Everything was cool at first, recorded two sets with no problem. Then a couple guys got up in an impromptu jam thing and I thought I'd set the R-09 to start again. I checked the levels and it looked good. Suddenly, the levels started to drop very low (the music was loud at this point) and I started to freak 'cause it's never happened. My STC-9000 light was strong and I had not idea what was going on. So during a break, I pulled the cable from the amp and went mic in. Everything looked fine after that.
Of course, I discovered later that I had failed to hit record and apparently was playing a previous file and watching levels that had already been recorded.
At least I got all of the band's sets, which was OK.
This is almost as fun as having a boat and waiting for all the fun things to happen on the water, like breaking down, running out of gas just short of the marina and forgetting to put the plug in. Yeah, I've done those too!