Heath and safety By Owen Hillier

P.A.T TESTING PAT Testing is an essential aspect of a company’s health & safety policy to ensure that staff aren’t harmed by any electrical equipment within a business premises. PAT Testing should be performed regularly to protect employees, customers and yourself, against any accidents and liability within the workplace. PAT Testing is carried out by a business in accordance with guidelines stated in the IEE Code of Practice. Quoting the IEE Code of Practice: The electricity at work regulations require it in regulation 4(2). When you carry out a PAT test it is in 3 steps. * User check This informs the use or any potential danger signs, and an appliance can fail on this check i.e. a frayed cable can be marked as ‘not safe to use’. * Formal visual Inspection This is a simple process of visually inspection all of the appliance, cable and plug for obvious faults, including the fuse and wiring of the plug should be tested. * Combined Inspections and PAT testing This is the main test, that involves the PAT testing equipment. This determines if the device is electrically safe to use on the ‘class of construction’ i.e. Class 1, Class 2 and so forth.

Fuses in your equipment Make sure you cheek what fuse your equipment i.e. speakers, AMPs. Most AMPs use a 13A fuse. If you put in a fuse in a AMP that is to high you can blow to speaker or damage to your guitar.

Leads When you are playing on a stage or at your practice place and leads are all over the floor you can trip and fall so to minimize the risk of this happening you can put a rubber pad over them or you can use duct tape to hold them in place for the duration of your playing time or you can invest in getting a wireless adapter for your guitar.

Posture When you are playing your guitar you need to sit in the right position not slouched, you need to be standing straight because you can do long term damage to you back and for to your neck. If you are playing metal music on stage and you are going to be running and jumping about on the stage you need to be aware of the leads on the floor and you can pull on a lead and bring down a amp on stage and can case a lot of damage to the amp or your-self.

Electrocution An improperly grounded amplifier can kill. Just about everything metal on an electric guitar is connected to the guitar's ground connection, even the strings (there's usually a wire under the bridge that goes through the guitar body and connects to the ground connection). The guitar ground is then connected to the amplifier ground through the guitar cord. The problem is that if the amplifier ground isn't connected to a true earth ground properly, then the ground can "float", and can float up to the supply voltage of the amplifier (usually 120 volts). So, you are playing your guitar and you've got one hand on the strings, which happen to be floating up at around 120 volts, and you touch something else that does happen to be grounded, and ZAP!