Cold temperature and gear. OK or not?

My gear is in my trailer, which is in my driveway, which is in North Kansas City, which is getting very cold these days.

Which gear can take the cold and which can't. What should I bring inside between gigs?

Not good at all... basically when ya bring the gear into a warm venue two things are going to happen things like lenses are going to fog up and moister will also follow... keep your gear stored in a warm enviornment. If bringing it in or putting the trailor in a heated garage is not possible then I would look into some sort of heating unit that can be mounted to the top of it like a RV would have that can be run off of your home's juice... keep the temperature controled this will stop moister from building up.

Cold climes don't adversely affect speaker systems, amplifiers and other electronic equipment. If you are CD based, I would recommend keeping your CD case and frontend system inside where it's warm.

That said, Rob is right. If you must store your gear in a trailer where it gets very cold, get one of those little electric space heaters and set it in the trailer to keep the temp up. It doesn't have to be hot... just keep it above freezing.

We store our equipment inside and use a cargo van to move the rig. If we have to load up the night before and it's gonna be a cold one, we have a little space heater than can be set in the van.

Ditto what Fred and Rob said - especially when it comes to moisture build-up. I speak from experience. I used to live in an apartment and had to rent a storage unit next door to the complex - which wasn't climate controlled. Going from one temperature extreme to the other is hard on your equipment, especially if you are CD based like I was/am.

Aw I sure remember that, Sparkie.

When I was in VA, I lived in an apartment that had an impossibly difficult front porch to maneuver so I didn't store the gear in there. I rented a small storage unit down the road to keep it in.

It wasn't climate controlled... and the ride on the back of an open pickup truck didn't help, lol. When I'd get to the venues in winter it took several minutes for the CD decks to acclimate to the warmth indoors. The lenses fogged, the discs fogged. Everything had to acclimate so I made a point to get loaded in early.

Boy, those were the days. :)

Boaters that leave their boat in the water during the winter leave a small wattage light on. It keeps the hull above freezing temperature. I wonder if that would be enough.

During the cold (and hot) months, I always take 15 extra minutes and unload the equipment into the garage and use a small heater there. It sure is a small amount of time to spend to protect my investment...thx

Hi!
I do a lot of ski-opening and Ski-closing gigs. I do gigs outside at -10c and always have more problems with my laptop than with my other gear, and today early in the morning, the outdoor temp. was 5 below zero (celsius) and for first time I tested my Bose L1B1 system for two hours. I had no problems, it worked perfectly and I was happy. So dont worry about your gear in cold extremes (excpet CD players)

Hope I helped a bit.

WOW! I can't imagine spinning outside in -5 degree weather. Thanks for your post and nice to have a European perspective.

I've never had any problems, other than the aforementioned CD player issues.

I would probably put a skylight/vent unit on the trailer, and take advantage of the sun/greenhouse effect. If it's setup right, with a storage unit for the heat (bricks or a jug of water in a black container), it should keep the interior roughly the same temp day and night...

I too have a trailer in the same area as Kris. I've never had a problem. My gear spends all its time in the trailer outside. I have no other storage to speak of. I use CD Players too. The winters hear very rarely get below 15 degrees F. But below freezing for sure.

Here's what I do.

Unload
Open Everything up - cases/panels/lids etc.
Setup
Run Cables

This process takes me about 1 hour.
In that time, the gear comes to room temperature so indoor moisture really can't accumulate.
I've been using the same Numark AXIS 9's for about 3 years and no hiccups.
Amps for 5 years.
Pars for 5
Q-rolls for 3

Take a small hairdryer for the CD deck just in case!

Anytime your equipment goes from cold, to warm temps, you should be setting up early.

Like jeremiah said, when you get to the venue, open up all your cases to gradually raise there temps to room temp.

Speaker cones are NOT very flexible when really cold, and will rip if abused when really cold. (seen it happen)

I announce and DJ at numerous Snowmobile, and ATV races during the winter,
and all of my gear is still kickin'.....Even after the Ice Drags..It was tapping
-20 degrees that day.

I normally use my PC, but for those gig's i bust out the CD's

Just use some caution when in sub zero temps and you and your gear will be fine. (I live 10 min from the FROZEN TUNDRA of legendary LAMBEAU field):sqlaugh:

nice post, just don't start talking about how the packers finally beat my Chiefs and we'll be okay. :sqwink:

It's possible that over time if you live in a moist cold that electronisc could corrode but occasionally leaving it out shouldn't be a problem

In wery cold conditions the gear is not the problem-we are.We only need too know what to do.Every one of us have good or bad expirience but thats the reason we are here to share this expirience.or?
Good mix

nice post, just don't start talking about how the packers finally beat my Chiefs and we'll be okay. :sqwink:

I'm not that guy...................

The Vikings on the other hand...........:sqlaugh: