Tips & Tricks

Color Coding Gear

The lights go out, your part of the show is over (unless you are the headliner), and everybody starts packing up their gear to clear the stage. The next show, when you look into your gig bag, where the heck is that guitar cord and your vocal mic?

Maybe this doesn't happen to you a lot, or maybe you have reeeeally good roadies, but for most musicians, keeping track of their own gear is a must. It costs a lot of dough to replace whatever you are missing! A visit to your local hardware store quickly solves the problem.

Buy some colored electrical tape (not black, since most gear we use is already black) and make that your signature color. Put a strip of tape on everything you own. For example, I put a strip of tape on both ends of every instrument cable and mic cable, a strip around my microphones and mic stands, the handles of my guitar cases, amplifiers, etc.

Even if it seems like an unlikely piece of gear to lose, tape it anyway. I once shared the stage with a guy who used a very unusual, hard to find, amplifier. Sure enough, somebody who happened to sit in with us one night had the same amp. When my friend got home, guess whose amp he really had? And the other guy was a long ways away and heading for another show.

Tell your band mates about this trick, and you won't believe how fast the stage and studio cleanup can happen. Oh, and the color red is taken. That's mine!

And green ain't mean compared to red!