Your cosy home studio can be more like a death‑trap, as Christopher Holder warns...
During a recent appraisal of an effects unit with an external power supply unit (PSU), I began to think along the lines of this little gripe. The words 'external PSU' have almost become a mantra for reviewers to incessently bleat on about. In fact, if anybody outside our happily cloistered hi‑tech sphere were to eavesdrop on one of these diatribes they'd be forgiven for thinking that the dreaded wall‑wart was produced in Iraqi sweatshops, in flagrant breach of a hundred different UN directives — not to mention the Geneva Convention, the Zagreb Pact, the Treaty of Rome and The Horse & Haywain Handshake. But no, it wasn't the PSU that got me pondering, it was the widgety thing that manufacturers bolt on the back to stop the unit becoming accidentally unplugged. In theory this is a splendid idea — not as good as an internal PSU, mind, but still better than a power meltdown. What we don't always hear about is that the widget presents some other mortal dangers in the studio. Let me explain.
The term 'home studio' has a very cosy ring to it — it's all visions of warm cups of cocoa, soft lighting, bean bags and the strains of the Teletubbies theme echoing down the hall from the kiddies' rumpus room. The reality, as anyone bothering to read this article will know, is something entirely more sinister. Don't be under any misapprehensions: the home studio is a minefield, and if we've learnt only one thing from the life of the 'People's Princess' (other than not to travel at twice the speed of sound in a titanium‑plated Mercedes), it is that minefields aren't to be trifled with.
As gear becomes lighter and PSUs sprout around power points like so many barnacles around the culvert of a unloved seaside pier, so increase the dangers of becoming entangled in power cords. Furthermore, as reviewers we're encouraged not to bolt gear into our rack units, thus preserving its aesthetics. This can mean having bits and pieces stacked precariously around the studio in a manner that openly invites disaster. The cord widgets, although well meaning in their purpose, can sometimes turn a dangerous situation into a truly deadly one.
Home studios are hotbeds of inspiration; at the beginning of an evening you can unwittingly catch the soaring thermal of a mind‑expanding idea, and for the rest of the night, by heck, you do your best to stay with it. This involves sharpness of thought, and nimbleness of movement.
One of the quickest motions (so to speak) is in answering nature's call: you wheel around in your chair, you spring to your feet and make a frantic dash for the door. Of course, the harsh realities of life dictate that your flailing limbs, in their haste to help you relieve your bursting bladder, intercept at least a couple of these infernal lightweight external PSU power cords. Without the widget, this encounter between limb and lead results in the relatively harmless unplugging and clattering of gear. With the widget, it's an entirely graver scenario. Your body might already be in the bathroom but your foot is back in the studio, firmly ensnared in the cords of death, the sheer force of your ablutive zeal sending the unit's chassis catapulting across the room, spinning and flying with all the menace of that feral kid's razor‑blade boomerang in Mad Max.
The other classic threat in the home studio involves the common‑or‑garden pair of headphones. Sure, the headphone may seem innocuous enough and is an invaluable tool for certain types of monitoring, but many a poor unsuspecting sod has nearly been strangled, decapitated, or torn limb from limb by one of these vicious little buggers. Firstly, every session in the studio must start with the act of sitting on your headphones, resulting in the expense of yet another pair and six months in a pelvic brace. Often the damage can be even worse when you haven't sat on your headphones. How? Everyone knows the feeling of sitting down then just catching in your peripheral vision your sunglasses/full coffee cup/Auntie Ethel on the chair. Your body goes into seizure in an attempt to avoid the collision: your arms flap, your legs buckle, you grasp at anything that might assist you to avert the inevitable. In the end your headphones are totalled anyway, and you've succeeded in burying yourself under an avalanche of the entire complement of your synth rack.
Other favourites? How about leaning over to tweak a synth while monitoring on your headphones, only to find that the lead has wrapped around your chair leg, resulting in both of your ears being ripped off by the impact? What about forgetting that you've got your headphones draped around your neck, heading out of the studio, tripping over the lead and face‑planting into an ashtray that hasn't been emptied since the coronation?Take care out there, and I mean, take care.
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