Now y'all be bein' to hard on the cable guys, after all, they be just bussin' tables and sellin' slurpees at the Chevron station the day before. They are really good guys.

It's the painters, man. Today, I'm checking these four in-ceiling speakers that buzz at higher levels, all four. I've been around speaker reconing for 30 years and this doesn't sound like a blown driver. Not only that, the grilles are sorta loose and look really really bad, like discolored and all.

So up the ladder I go and pull a grill. Flip it over and find butcher paper masking taped to the inside of the grill. All four of 'em are that way. I'm surprised the backup of sound didn't cause the wiring to explode.

"How many years since the ceiling was painted, ma'am?"

I had a builder who NEEDED to have speakers in and music playing for an open house. House was in that phase where some baseboard is up... walls have first coat etc. I loaned him my old Yamaha receiver that we use for a customer loaner and my kids DVD player... made him a smooth jazz CD and put it on repeat.

Came back the next morning to get my stuff and found the strictly spanish speaking painting crew had sprayed my equipment with white oil base paint. They had also REMOVED the prep I put up over my OnQ panels and doused all the modules and wires... covering the labels and rendering some of the phone modules useless. I have been in a battle to get this stuff covered. The builder shorted them but they threatened to sue him so after 13 months we finally settled and I'm OK now. What a f----g bunch of idiots!

Cart before the horse my friend, never go in with finish product until the painters have left the premises!

HA. I can top those stories.

About 10 years ago, a builder calls me and says to do the finish out the intercom and vacuum systems on a very specific day. I set the schedule. On the specific day I load all the product in the van, drive the 2 hours out to the site and lo and behold, nothing is painted at all. Raw drywall, raw trim.

What do I do?

Why I finish of course! That's what I was told to do, right?

Next morning the builder calls me raising he**. What the he** am I thinking? Who the he** told me to do that?

I replied. "You told me to do it on that day, so I figured YOU wanted it done on THAT day. That's what I was thinking. Now if you'd like it NOT done on that day, you shouldn't tell me to do it on that day. Right?"

He was used to dealing with roofer's, painter's, etc, that show up late all the time. Whereas I show up on the day I schedule.

It never happened again......He got over it.

At least the drivers weren't speckle-painted. Besides, wire doesn't explode, it melts insulation.


Absolutely right!!!

I've had customers ask me to install the switches, receptacles, and fixtures so they can be used during drywalling and painting.

"I don't think so, Tim!"

Not always!

In a television servicing class, a newbie hooked his oscilloscope up to a hot chassis TV and the ground wire exploded, vaporized, you classify it. There were several inches of the ground wire missing and several more where there was insulation and no copper inside. Not a trace of melting there!

We joke about the audio cables with arrows for direction of signal flow, that if you connect them backwards the electrons back up and cause the cable to expand dangerously and explode...

Have you ever installed speakers because they just had to be in so they could be faux painted, then go back to find painters removed paint shield before SPRAY painting them? I don't think yellow tweeters sound the same as black ones :)

Anyone remember paint soaked scrim??
I'm sure nobody missed it when it was gone and the baffles and drivers were just black behind the perfs.

Well, scrim is back in at least one major manufacturer's 2004/2005 line.

If anyone decides to paint the speakers w/out removing the grilles and taking out the scrim, it gets caked with paint like a wafer thin sponge that it is... and you know WE get called by the irate client when the music is too quiet, or when the amps get nuclear hot trying to get sound into the room.

Aren't they brighter???

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I understand this also happens with cats, that if you stroke them the wrong way, sooner or later they explode.

Ernie, You got it backwards. IF you stroke them the right way...

Yeah... I put the cart before the horse and I do know better. Figured it was a big favor for the guy. Knew it could be a problem... that's why I tried to get back on a Monday morn to take it back out.

Regardless... you have to have a pretty low IQ to shoot paint all over an obvious piece of electronics. And you should be fired for taking DOWN prep materials and allowing whats behind it to be painted... do you rip window prep down and shoot the nice stained wood windows too?

I guess we all learn our lesson. Next time its "sure... I'll do that for you... buy the stuff first and assume all liability"

I cannot count the number of times that the painters around here have removed the paint shields from our structured wiring panels and blown paint all over the inside of the can and the wires.

About 6 months ago I had a big prewire with 2 rack locations, two 48in panels, over 40 outlet and keypad locations. I spent half a day wrapping and covering all exposed wire and panel locations. Wrote "Please do not remove" in both english and spanish on the paint shields and masking. Came back after paint to begin trim to find that the painters had renoved EVERY bit of masking and blew paint and texture all over everything. None of sparkys wiring had so much as a drop of paint on it.

Rather then pushing the painters off their scaffolding (I was beyond pissed). I went to the GC and showed him what had been done. Watching a bunch of angry painters cursing at me in spanish while cleaning off a few hundred wire ends made me smile....... Bet they never do that again.

RR

Hey RR,
You found a good solution to what was obvious vandalism. I am proud to be in the same industry as you!

Not only that, he made the GC do his (the GC, not RR) job. Outstanding!