Nashville flood damage to MANY amps, any tips to save?

[geetarpicker]

As you know in Nashville there was MAJOR flooding. The biggest storage facility for the studio and live touring pros is still under water, and estimates put the gear lost at many millions. We are talking gear owned by folks like Vince Gil, Keith Urban, Brad Paisley, Brent Mason, and many other touring and studio pros.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... wD9FH0KD80

http://soundchecknashville.com/wordpress/

That said in a day or two (as soon as they allow access) I'll be helping a friend salvage what we can of his collection of studio gear including amps, guitars, pedals and more. The guitars may be a total loss, the pedals perhaps, but I'm hopeful the amps may be more salvageable.

We are talking Fenders, Marshalls, Vox, Bogner, etc. Mostly newer amps.
My first step will be to pull the chassis and start to dry them off and try to sterilize and remove any dirty water. If it's obvious they were submerged (possibly for days) I plan to pull the transformers and put them in a food dehydrator to bake. The Hydrator isn't very hot, but is fan driven and dries things out quite delicately but well. Switches will be replaced. If the pots are totally open types I'm hoping they may be savable with cleaner if corrosion hasn't set in yet...

Anyone had any experience with saving water damaged electronics? I'm hoping circuit boards will be OK. The fiber boards in the Fenders may be ruined since they are porous. I would hope most molded caps and resistors will be ok, but I wonder if electrolytic caps will survive such trama as most I'm pretty sure are vented?

Also I wonder if any attempt should be made to clean out any water logged transformers before putting them in the food dehydrator? Clean water, rubbing alcohol, etc? I'll pull the end bells if possible. The food dehydrator is pretty gentle (used it before to bake analog audio tapes) and should be safe. I'm hoping none of the amps have cloth wiring, as those would probably need to be redone and if on the transformers may be quite a task to replace.

I'm already assuming the amp cabs will be coming apart, and speaker cabs will be rough at best and will probably be coming apart.

HELP?

[paulster]

Glen

What a nightmare project.

You seem to have the bases pretty well covered but I'll just add that electrolytics should mostly be fine because the vents are sealed but serve as weak points. If you look at the bottom of a radial capacitor you'll see it is usually divided into three segments that will pop open in the event of a failure.

Larger capacitors tend to have a vent hole filled with resin or similar on the top, so the capacitor itself should be sealed.

I'd probably get Phil from Heyboer on the phone to have a talk about transformers and where you stand with these. I don't know what state paper formers will be in, but he can probably give you some good advice based on how they build them of what best you can do.

I'd certainly want to know that everything that's already been in contact with water has at least been cleaned out so you're not left with potentially corrosive deposits in there at least, so a flush through before dehydrating could be a good idea.

The Fender boards might actually be salvageable. If they have enough mounting points to keep them reasonably taught then they may not have warped too much. They'll have taken on water, but if you can get the water out of them, which it sounds like you can, then you might have a solution. Whether you'll get them back to pre-ingress levels of resistance is debatable but a lot of this will be fairly uncharted.

Paul

[Richie]

not a simple job, i have brought back a few amps that have been totatly submerged in water. The hard part is, getting the mud out from the amp.
When the water goes down, it will leave a 1/8" or so coating of caked mud in everything. Alcohol is good to use, it cleans,and dries fast. A time consuming job, as everything has to be taken apart, cleaned, and put back together. Speakers will need replaced. But the amp worked fine,so it is possible. Keep us posted how things are going.
I know some of the people you mentioned, go out of their way, when bad things happen, to be the first ones their to help. Vince might show up in golf shorts because he didn't have time to change. But thats how some of them are.

i found some pics of a gibson amp i did,so you might get an idea. and the amp is still working..

[M Fowler]

FEMA would not allow people to salvage anything due to sewer backup in North Dakota/Minnesota floods. Everything was piled high on the street curbs and all was thrown to landfills.

Then the homes were each inspected and walls stripped and studs or concrete scrubbed.

Lots of hard work ahead of you Glenn and no ideas to help you out sorry.

Mark

[Andy Le Blanc]

use a dental water pick and or low pressure spray and clean first with deionized H2O.

Let dry, or force dry in a "drying cabinet", just a low temp convection oven.

Its the salts in the soil that'll mess things up, and not really getting it dried out.

After that its more what you would expect.

[Scumback Speakers]

A lot of musicians in Nashville are in depression right now, for sure.

I've already heard from Keith Urban's tech about this mess, and they're scrambling to get some gear going since they start a tour in less than two weeks. I'm not sure where they're going to have me ship their next order, or if they now need cabs to put the speakers in. I know the main cab Keith uses with Scumbacks in it is under 3 feet of water for sure. While the speakers can be rebuilt, the old 73/74 checkerboard cab might be another story.

It's just a nasty situation, and I'm sure a ton of great amp/cab/guitar tones are lost forever. Best of luck with any restoration of the gear you're involved with Glen.

[crbowman]

The electronic stuff is just going to be hard no two ways about it.
As far as guitars go, they might not be a complete loss. I have a '55 Les Paul Jr. that I got years ago for $75 because it was found floating in stagnant water. Took it home dried it out for a couple of weeks, and it's still going strong 20 years later. Looks like hell, but really didn't have to do anything to it but dry it out and it still plays and sounds great!
Rory Gallagher's famous strat was allegedly found submerged in a drainage ditch. Looked like it too.
You might not want to look if you're squeamish.....
Prayers be with you Glen.

[Structo]

Yeah, when I heard about the flooding in Nashville I felt really sad because I knew there had to be a lot of gear ruined.
Irreplaceable stuff that will have to be trashed.
I think the electronic stuff will be hit the hardest.

A friend that had his house flooded a few years back sent me a few photos.
He had a pretty good vintage gear collection and in his music room the picture showed several guitar cases floating in the water.
Those were the lucky ones.
He had about 15 vintage amps that weren't so lucky.
I think he was able to salvage half of those.

This dude is not a wimp be any stretch and when I talked to him on the phone he was crying he was so upset.
A large loss for him and many others down the road that would have owned those pieces of gear.

The thing a lot of people forget, sure it's just stuff that will be hard to throw out but the memories preserved in photographs and all the digital stuff that will be lost is priceless.

Prayers and good thoughts for the people afflicted by this flood.
Tom

[Bob-I]

FEMA allowed us to salvage anything at all in the NJ floods but there was nothing really that could be salvaged. the real issue is not mud, but sewage and oil. By the time I got back into the house to start the clean-up, mold and fungus had started to grow on everything, the kitchen cabinets were filled with what looked like green and blue cotton candy that just came out at you when you opened them.

This is a terrible disaster.

[paulster]

I'll add a +1 for Alex's comments over at TGP.

For safety's sake get those transformers hi-pot tested once they've been cleaned up and dried out before giving them a clean bill of health.

If it isn't bad enough having so much gear ruined, the last thing we want to hear is of a musician getting electrocuted by one of the salvaged amps afterwards!

[Richie]

FEMA would not allow people to salvage anything due to sewer backup in North Dakota/Minnesota floods. Everything was piled high on the street curbs and all was thrown to landfills.

Then the homes were each inspected and walls stripped and studs or concrete scrubbed.

Lots of hard work ahead of you Glenn and no ideas to help you out sorry.

Mark

I'd imagine i'd be camped at the landfill..
Most things could be replaced. things like a guitar or amp owned/bought/or handed down by some of the music ledgens could never be replaced. I would hope they would not just take those to be thrown to a landfill. I'm sure any of that could be cleaned, So at least it could still be around, even it it wasn't playable.

[Zippy]

For safety's sake get those transformers hi-pot tested once they've been cleaned up and dried out before giving them a clean bill of health.

+1 for hi-pot testing. If you don't know what that is, it's time to learn.

I'm an ex-Navy electrician. Yes, you can salvage flooded gear.

As someone else has mentioned, de-ionized water is a good flush. Isopropyl alcohol helps displace the residual DI water. After that, blow it out with low pressure air. Your idea of the bake out is a great one - especially if you remove the endbells on the trannies.

After the trannies are dry, perform the hi-pot tests on all windings. This applies a high voltage to check for insulation breakdown. Don't hi-pot the whole amp as you may damage some capacitors with overvoltage.

I doubt whether the potentiometers will be salvageable. If you can remove the backs, you might be able to flush them (first DI water, then alcohol) but my concern is that carbon traces will most likely suffer.

Whew... This is a lot of work. Not nice. I'd start with a lil' triage - select the ones that are most valued with the least damage to start.

G'luck!

[M Fowler]

My wife's company owns Harris Electric in Nashville so she has got truckloads of Encore wire, telephone units and all necessary products to help restore power to the area estimates she said $7 million right now.

Mark

[iknowjohnny]

Well, since most are newer, a lot if not most may be PCB which i think should be easier to reserect. Still i would hate to have to do this !

[M Fowler]

CNN Anderson Cooper had some good information tonight and yeah they believe they lost everything, Brad Pailey said he would get to look into his locker tomorrow to find out.