I "tour" nursing homes. As I get older lugging gear from the car, up steps, elevators...multiple trips gets harder and harder on the back and legs.

So how do you guys do this? Rock-n-Roller carts? Gator carts? On Stage carts?

What are your recommendations for cart size vs cart weight?

What about wheel size...regular casters vs all terrain wheels?

Would appreciate your insight and experience.

Jeff

Grandchildren?

As I get older, slowly.

Perhaps more helpful, I have a few tools that help. If I’m bringing my PA, a hand truck with small wheels on the long side can carry it. If I’m just taking horns, I have a small luggage carrier that resembles a hand truck but the great thing is the three wheels pattern on each side: it climbs stairs very easily.

Two years ago, I helped a town with their grant application to remodel a bandstand in a park. The architect’s initial design eliminated the ability to drive up to the bandstand to load in. I got that changed. If you are ever in position to advocate for easy access to a performance space, do it.

when I was playing solo with backing tracks, I couldn't risk multiple trips because I didn't have anybody to watch what was left while I was gone with the first load. So I bought a rock n roller cart with pneumatic tires (recommended). That enabled me to move everything in and out in one trip. They come in different sizes, and I think bigger is better. Even with a fairly large cart, you need an organized method of stacking your gear to make it all fit. The biggest constraint is whether your vehicle has enough space to hold all your gear AND the cart. Even though they fold up, they still take up quite a bit of space due to the wheels

There is no easy answer to this issue for young or old. It all depends on what you are moving. Bigger wheels are generally better. Pneumatic tires, as Pat said.

At some point in my life, I had to stop being Super Man leaping onto small stages with a single bound...lol I had to hire someone to move heavy stuff and just say no to second-floor gigs. You may find it disheartening to discover that common moving labor is worth more than skilled musicians in all too many cases. OMG, I remember staircases in Holland that looked like ladders. I am lucky now if I can walk to the elevator...lol

Reduce the load by using modern equipment. Play and sing through the PA. Use Guitar Rig 6 instead of lugging a Twin Reverb around. Use a Mexican Strat instead of a Les Paul. Leave the spare repair parts and tools in the car. Be glad you are not a drummer.

Put a crash garde between you and all your gear in the van. It is a good idea not to get killed on the way to the gig.

Sure, I "want" a B3, three guitars, four hundred pounds of tube amps, a snake, and a sound man...well, and a couple of cute girls just for good measure. That ship sailed a long time ago for almost all of us...lol

The other answer is just don't ever get old. Live hard, die young!

Billy

We just finished tearing down a whole orchestra within the last hour. The musicians took care of their instruments - grandsons of one of the board members put the music stands and chairs away.

Grandchildren work wonders for this kind of work.

For one person, I would get one of those lightweight modeling amps - with my guitar that would be it. (Substitute whatever instrument you want if you don't play guitar.)

...Deb

Amen,
For my instrumental (guitar with backing tracks) gigs I use a line array pa (ev Evolve 30M) a direct box (Tech 21 FlyRig or Quilter Superblock), a telecaster (usually), an Ipad and a bag of cables.
The base of the PA weighs 32 lbs. 2 trips by myself. pretty easy for a64 year old man.
That handles 99% of the gigs, inside or out.
For bigger I own the Ev Evolve 50 whose cabinet weighs 44lbs. Less than a Vibrolux.

The line array has great sound clarity and coverage. Not too loud inside but plenty of gas for an outdoor cafe or swimming pool.

If just playing guitar I use a Quilter Micro Pro 2 or a Fender Tonemaster Deluxe. Both of them sound great and weigh 22lbs or .5 Fender Vibrolux.

I'm done carrying tube amps and 18" cabs.

---"I couldn't risk multiple trips because I didn't have anybody to watch what was left while I was gone with the first load."---
_____________________________________________________________

Gee, it looks like we've played some of the same places, Pat...LOL

Thanks folks, appreciate all of your insight. Yea, grand kids...no help they're 700 miles away! Think I'll go with a Rock-n-Roller cart...they don't make the ones with pneumatic wheels any more....some kinda foam filled thing instead.

Gotta save the back or my "touring" days are over. Just hope that when the day comes that I'm in the audience rather than on stage, there be some younger guys that come in and do some entertaining for us.

I never much thought about the nursing home circuit until I saw how much the residents appreciated the entertainment when my mom was there. Even a hack like me brings a lot of smiles and memories back to these folks. Pays nothing but definitely one of the best "jobs" I've ever had.

Jeff

Reduce the size and weight of your gear. It was one thing to have monstrously big gear back in the day but with technology and audio improvements there's no need for big bulky gear. Especially if you are playing small venues.

Even so, it's often difficult to get everything in and out with one trip.

I bought a small utility cart $30 at harbor freight. battery powered PA 20 lbs, my laptop, small case with cables and connectors, and either a nylon string or steel string acoustic.

Bluetooth the laptop to the little PA, plugin the guitar and one Mike and folding stand. It all fits nicely on the cart. If I need a bit more punch I have a tower speaker that has a bit more power but is still not to heavy.

Thankfully, I'm in a duo so there is someone to watch.

I have a rolling rack for my PA and synth modules, and a dolly (piece of plywood with 3" casters on the bottom.

We are very gear intensive. On stage, we both sing and play guitar. Plus she plays a Buchla MIDI controller, I play sax, flute, and wind synthesizer. Add pedals, stands, powered speakers (15" woofers) and gear boxes, and it's a lot of schlepping.

It keeps me in shape, as I don't need a gym membership to lift heavy things.

There is more than one answer to your question. It depends on the terrain and paths you usually follow.

Notes ♫

Just to be clear, you meant to stand by the car and watch while you schlep the next load to deter theft, right? Not "Watch while I do all the work?"

Bob (Notes Norton), Which Buchla MIDI controller does your wife play? I did a search and found Buchla offers, or has offered, a variety of midi controllers.

It is fun playing the nursing homes, but you may want to inquire, as many have a budget for entertainment. There is no need to give away what the places may pay for.

I picked up a cheap cart from Harbor Freight to haul my rack case (Bass Amp / Tuner / Wireless / Effects Processor), a 1X15 cabinet, a 4X10 cabinet and two bass guitars in cases. Can do it in one trip.

Harrbor Freight Hand Truck

I'm 62 though and seriously looking at changing this setup to something MUCH lighter and easier to get in and out of the truck . . .

Perhaps that is possible in today's market.

I still have a Gallien-Krueger 800RB 300 / 100-Watt Bi-Amp Bass Amp Head which is about the size of a loaf of bread. That amp is heavy as hell just by itself, must less a four-ten cab and a fifteen.

PA systems have definably have gotten better, and so have amp emulators, but nothing sounds like the real thing.

Playing live, the bass is more than just sound. It is also about moving air.

I have never heard anything that really sounded like a fifteen-inch speaker but a fifteen-inch speaker.

That is the issue with modern light equipment; it just does not sound like the real thing.

That is the compromise we have to accept to use lighter equipment. It may be the only solution when you get too old to move all that heavy stuff around.

Perhaps it does not matter as much in the world where music is being listened to on cell phones.

Billy

Keeping in mind that playing nursing homes is not exactly playing Hollywood Bowl, and you are probably playing in some kind of small gathering room or parlor, a big amp with a 4x12? C'mon. You don't need more than a 15w combo amp with one 10" speaker and a tiny portable PA to make those people happy. Especially with backing tracks. As one who grumbled for years about how much junk keyboard players have to move (it's just slightly less than drummers!), that actually contributed to why I don't play anymore. If I was a seriously touring musician on the road promoting my latest platinum CD, maybe, but I was playing in a tribute band covering up the horn players (who were barely in the FOH mix) because they played so badly out of tune. So outside of Herbstock, I don't move gear anymore. And Herb pays the musicians with steak!

She plays a "Thunder" tactile MIDI controller, hooked to a Roland Sound Canvas sound module.

It will do things a traditional keyboard will not do, and the traditional keyboard will do things the Thunder cannot do.

It is extremely flexible to set up.

The problem is, they don't make them anymore.

We have two, and if they break, they go back to Buchla to fix.

So far, we had few problems through the years, and they could be fixed. But they no longer make some of the chips that were used in that machine, so if one of those go, it's goodbye to the Thunder.

BTW, Mrs. Notes does her share of schlepping. I lift the gear out of the minivan, stack it on the wheels, and she rolls them in. It saves time that way.

Mrs. Notes is not a diva, but a hard-working equal member of the duo. Her smaller size and strength means I do all the heaviest lifting, but she does her share.

I got very lucky with her.

Notes ♫

Saw mill moosic thats the cart I have. It has haul music stuff and a full apartment full of stuff.

yeahhh... it's a commonly told story among musicians: You come back to the stage after taking one load to the van, only to discover the rest of the stuff has vanished.

A guy here loaded his drums, went in to use the bathroom, had an accomplice of the thief buy him a beer on his way out and when he went out 10 minutes later his van was empty

It's surprisingly possible to obtain such chips. There are two sources. One is that when chips are going obsolete, companies make a "last time buy" of as many as they think they may need, but they then go on to design the chip out of their product. Once they've done that, they often release much of that last-time stock back onto the market, so chips that were unavailable bcoume available again. They may release another tranche when they stop support for the product.

The other is recycling. A surprising number of components are recycled from old equipment and end up back on the market. Those should be identified as recycled and some can be tested. That's always a risk, though.

octopart.com can often help.

Most ICs will go on for years provided the power supplies behave.

Yes, but you have to find technicians with the skill level to analyze and identify the problem Integrated Circuit. Most service guys nowadays are 'board jockeys'. It's such a shame. But it's true.

Board exchange is pretty close to inevitable now with so many components so small that one needs a microscope, heat table, tiny heat gun and tweezers.
Now I'm 70, it can be a struggle even doing that.

Fortunately most of my design prototypes get assembled by someone else now.

A chip I'm using at this moment is 3mm square, has 10 under-chip pads on a 0.5mm pitch and has a central thermal pad under the centre of package. I've used smaller.

What is a chip...lol My last design.



Some design schematics.



Billy

LOL on that schematic! Looking forward to meeting you in person, Billy.

Here you go Trev. I actually own a few transistors...lol

Mullars stuff from a VOX T60 amp the Beatles Played





Billy

EDIT: Mullard...spell check only understands tube electronics...lol

Me 2, C U Saturday.

Billy

Rock & Roller with the fat tires https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/R12RT--rock-n-roller-r12rt-all-terrain-multi-cart

Thanks Danny! Took your advice and went with a RocknRoller but I got the R8. Doesn't have the wide all-terrain tires but it weighs a heck of a lot less and su[pports the same weight. I figure if I find that I really need those wide tires, I can change them out to the all-terrains. Right now, other than size, weight is the most important criteria for me.

Thanks for the advice.

Jeff

One of the two day-jobs I had in my life was as a Cable TV field engineer, back in the 1970s when I tried unsuccessfully to quit music. I found out quitting music was a stupid idea for me.

When something broke, we were component jockeys. Amp, filter, equalizer, power supply, whatever. Pull it out, and replace it. Send it back to the factory where they had the sophisticated equipment to not only find out what was broken, but to make tests to try to see if anything else was likely to fail in that component.

And I remember when guitarists used to re-solder the phone plugs on their cables. Now they just buy new ones. Same for mic cables.

Times change.

On Sweetwater. From our computer. And they send them right to our houses!

Times do indeed change. I remember when I had energy and motivation. LOL!

LOL, I remember when guitarists re-solder cables also. Like today...lol
This is about as complicated as opening a can of beer. Letting the gun heat up takes two minutes, ten seconds to fix it, and ten seconds more to check the resistance value.

I knew where it was broken before I unscrewed it. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt...lol


Sweetwater solution
Fender 0990820086 Deluxe Series Straight to Right Angle Instrument Cable - 15 foot Tweed
15' Instrument Cable with Gold-plated Connectors - Straight-Angled, Tweed
$26.14

No thanks!



Billy

EDIT: This all assumes you know how to solder and where your equipment is, and have some high-quality marine shrink tube...lol

What it should look like when finished.

Soldering. UGH!!! I bought this to not have to bother with it anymore.

I still solder phone jacks.

Takes only a few minutes. I like Switchcraft brand phone jacks.

XLR Jacks? It depends. Some brands are a major PITA

I also remember when guitarists brought single strings instead of sets.

In my first band, when I was just a kid, the guitarist made his own light gauge set by buying a banjo string for the first, the E was second, B for third, a wound G for 4th, D for 5th and A for 6th. He learned the trick in Nashville. Black Diamond brand strings.

That was before the retailers started selling light gauge sets.

We toured the country in a car with a U-Haul trailer. We rented it for 6 months, and the dealer said just renew the lease wherever you are then. But nobody wanted to renew it. When the license became 2 years old, in the middle of the night, we backed it into a big U-Haul lot and left it there. I suppose the owner had a time trying to figure that one out.

We bought a used trailer for our gear and never painted it. It looked pretty rough on the outside, but we figured it looked like there was nothing valuable inside that way.

Those were fun days for me. Traveling college towns, playing singles bars, before DJs took over that end of the business.

Notes ♫

You are very welcome.