Setup & Maintenance

A tiny label on the plug and the board-side jack saved a full hour during rehearsal last night. The board came apart for a power swap and went back exactly how it left. Also: write the power draw on the underside of anything weird. Future you will stop guessing.

I keep one laptop backup, one cloud export, and a printed patch list, but it still feels fragile when the whole show depends on scenes. Has anyone standardized a pre-flight checklist that catches global EQ, input pad, expression calibration, and IR paths before doors?

I have one home patch that translates everywhere except tiny concrete rooms. Cutting lows globally works, then the next room feels thin. Do you keep per-room global EQ notes, or do you build a separate rehearsal-bank patch and leave the show bank untouched?

Posting because I keep getting asked. Drop C# on a Jazzmaster, mine, not a baritone, regular 25.5" scale. Strings are .013 to .060 with a wound G. Yes a wound G, the plain G in Drop C# is a rubber band, don't argue with me. Neck relief is .014" measured at the 8th fret with the capo on first and pressing 17th. That's a hair more than Fender spec but a hair less than what most setup guys would dial in for heavier strings. The Jazzmaster neck wants more relief than a Strat under heavy strings because the headstock angle is gentler and the string tension through the bridge is different. A flat neck under .013s will buzz on the wound strings between 5 and 9. Bridge: I shimmed the neck pocket 0.5mm to raise the action and get the bridge angle steeper. This is the single thing that fixed my Jazzmaster tuning stability in Drop C#. The stock bridge angle in alternate tunings causes the bridge to rock when you bend. A shim is $0 and ten minutes of work. Posting in case it saves someone a setup fee. Anyone running C# on a Jazzmaster who didn't shim, tell me how it's holding tune. I'll bet it isn't.