Hurricane Katrina - Flooded Gear Recovery (Warning: Devastation Photos)

[TedB]

Like many others, I lost quite few treasured items due to my home receiving 7ft of floodwater, courtesy of Katrina. While I escaped with what I could fit in my car, the rest was left to fate, and a cruel fate it met.

My home was under water (and it wasn't Evian) for two weeks. When the floodwaters were finally pumped out, I was able to get into the city with the help of a cousin who had the credentials to get us past the military checkpoints and to my neighborhood:

When we arrived on my street, it fit the definition of desolation. The smell of death was in the air:

Upon breaking through my soggy back door and pushing and shoving my way to the room where my gear was stored in anticipation of the storm, I was met with this view:

The one thing I cannot convey here is the unforgiving stench of the wet, slimy muck. Amidst the wreckage of vintage AC30s, AC100 cab and speakers, Selmer amps, 'vintaged' RI Bluesbreaker, and other oddities, I spotted the 18w Marshall clone I had just finished previously. Unlike virtually everything else, it looked salvageable (as crazy as that sounds). I reluctantly decided to drag it out of there:

I also took with me the corroded frames of several Marshall and Vox labeled 60s vintage alnico G12 speakers. I don't know why. I just tossed them into plastic bags, and threw them into a dark corner of my garage. Well, for the first time since then, I recently pulled out those trashed items and had a look.

The speakers looked purely trashworthy. The best of the bunch looked like this:

The worst looked like this:

Well, after revisiting a few bad memories, I put my resourcefulness to work in search of some minor consolation. After some creativity and lots of elbow grease, I am pleased to report that those corroded speakers now look like this:

And as for my 18w clone chassis that spent two weeks submerged in swamp water, it lives!! Just a few small parts changes and it roared to life. Unbelievable!

I'm going to send the speakers to Weber for reconing, and get a new cab for my 18w amp. It's hard to believe anything positive could have come from all this, so I'll take that and be thankful.

 

[Ryan Givhan]

thats a powerful story and even more powerful pics. i hope all is well with your life now. glad you could save some of your stuff.

 

[Texas Blues]

Sorry for your loss Ted. Takes a lot of heart to come back from that...and wow! on the speaker! Rather incredible I'd say. Good luck on the 18w.

 

[58Lover]

That is amazing. Great optimism and fortune! I feel for your and all your neighbors. Must have been horrible.

 

[The Shifter]

That puts things well into perspective, Ted B. Your attitude, even almost six years later, is truly inspiring. Weber should post the before and after pics on their site.

Best to you, sir.:salude

 

[The Shifter]

Also, I'll toast to you next time I'm devouring a shrimp Po' Boy from Domilise's.

 

[reswot]

My home was flooded in 2008. We got 5 ft of water. I know too well the smell that you refer to. We weren't submerged for two weeks, but, as I said at the time, "Two feet or five feet, it's all coming down (referring to walls, flooring, etc..)."

I managed to get the guitars to the second floor and they were fine. I put my amps up on counters thinking that they would be safe that high up (wrong!). Strangely enough, they all lived through being submerged for a couple of days (not a week, as in your case).

All of my amps had Weber speakers in them and I sent them up to Ted for recones. Ted was still around then and knew what we'd been through here, as we are only a couple of hours away from Kokomo. Ted simply sent me all new speakers (there were about 8 or 10) and didn't charge me a dime. He said we'd been through enough down here.

I had my share of disagreements with Ted, but because of this experience, I get a little irritated when I hear folks slag off on him.

Good luck with getting things going.

 

[TedB]

I suppose my salvage operations are therapeutic in a sense that they help to provide a final measure of closure to that ugly time. I'm just glad to be able to find a few bright spots amidst the loss of so much.

Thanks to all of you for the kind comments.

 

[Jeff West]

Ted- I'm sorry for your personal losses too, and I know they have to have included more than guitar-related things.

My wife and I also had the experience of being in the city two weeks after Katrina, definitely a day unlike any other in our New Orleans history.

Jeff

 

[Triburst]

Ted, the way you restored that gear is nothing less than amazing.

I live on the Northshore, and other than a pine tree smashing an evacuee's car in my driveway and some minor damage to our garage was pretty lucky except for two weeks of electrical outage (even though the eye of the storm went over our house).

I volunteered to help some of our employees and some friends with cleanup, mostly in the Slidell area but some were in New Orleans. That smell you describe from the flooding was brutal, compounded by the smell of refrigerator contents that aged in summer temperatures for weeks. You were never completely sure there wasn't something gruesome, somewhere undiscovered, dead and rotting in the immediate area.

If I have your neighborhood correct, I was on the team that rebuilt your local elementary school.

 

[Black58]

Atta boy! :3zone .. When the world fucks ya, say FUCK THE WORLD!! :yah :salude

 

[TedB]

Atta boy! :3zone .. When the world fucks ya, say FUCK THE WORLD!! :yah :salude

Well, I think I've done a pretty good job of that thus far. Although, what I'm trying to do isn't like making lemonade from lemons, but more like making chicken salad from chicken shit.

Jeff, you're right. I lost far more than guitar related gear, but in the end either one enslaves his belongings or becomes a slave to them. I think I was headed in the direction of the latter at the time. No more of that.

Some of the gear lost included AC100 cab and stand, original AC30TB chassis, Selmer Bassmaster 30w, RI Bluesbreaker (heavily modded), original SVT cab, Don Butler Rangemaster, loads of NOS tubes, electronic and replacement parts, diagnostic gear, etc., et al. Fortunately, the rest of my amp collection and all guitars were elsewhere at the time.

I did manage to salvage a Dunlop Fuzz Face that reeked of corrosion. Filthy water poured out when I opened it. If it were in a DIY box, I'd probably have just let it go to the trash. Instead, I completely refurbished it, adding a few upgrades (LED and power plug) along the way. The NOS NKT275s survived:

Just a small sampling of the NOS tubes that didn't make it. Boy, those Mullard EL34s are fragile. Not pictured are the junked preamp tubes, and there again, those Mullards didn't hold up well.

I am glad however that I took the time to pull tubes from junked chassis and recover them from their soaked, silted storage boxes. After much toothbrush work, pin sanding and testing, I managed to save some. The preamp tubes that survived:

The power tubes that made it:

About 60% of the tubes survived. I'll be satisfied with that. It's better than 100% of nothing!

 

[Jeff West]

Ted- Nice Fuck Face.

I tried to send something that might be of interest, but your old e-mail bounced back. If you're inclined, send a preferred one. Mine's the same, as listed on LPF.

J

 

[TedB]

I figured with as much work as I put into refurbishing that Fuzz Face, I deserved to call it whatever I wanted.

My work is only just beginning. While some hold a painting party to accelerate a project in their home, I'm needing to throw a speaker refurbishing party ...

Looks like I'm going to be busy ...

 

[keef]

Good luck Ted - great that you managed to salvage some nice stuff.

 

[Jeff West]

I'm curious, could you tell the failure modes of the nonfunctioning tubes, was glass cracked, etc.? Thanks-

 

[TedB]

The vast majority of tubes were boxed, so physical contact wasn't a factor.

With preamp tubes, the ones that were bad showed the dreaded 'white haze' that comes with compromising the vacuum seal. With no cracked glass apparent, it seems that oxidation to the tube pins at the seal (where pins meet glass) created a small fracture at that point. One Mullard ECC83 was still filled with water with no apparent cracks in the glass, even after 5-1/2 years.

With power tubes, the situation was even more prevalent, probably because the tube base trapped water inside, which aggravated the effects of oxidation. In some cases, the vacuum seal appeared intact, but the leads between the glass and the base pin are apparently compromised with oxidation. This was a big problem for old (type 01A) globe tubes. I still have the dead tubes depicted in the photo above. Maybe I'll cut open a base and have a look.

The remainder cleaned up and tested fine with a good pin sanding and careful cleaning of the glass.

 

[Jeff West]

Great info and very interesting. Certain military tubes were flight rated to very high elevations above sea level, but that of course requires dealing with lowered not heightened external pressures.

I salvaged a few audio tubes in flooded equipment put out on the street uptown after Katrina, and they all worked later despite obvious immersion in many cases, but not necessarily under 7 feet of water.

I have noticed that octal tubes can test as shorted for days after they appear to be dry, presumably from leakage paths in the base from retained water, although they test and function ok when they're really dried out (at least for awhile). Maybe why that's why Bendix pumped their bases full of semisolid goo that tends to leak out after heating!

I'm going to ask Bryan Lockey in London about this (submerged tubes), he worked at GEC in the '50s and is a living historian and eye witness to the design, production, and quality assurance lines at Hammersmith there during "golden years". Wouldn't surprise me if they did testing at Gateshead re: tubes immersed in water. I'll post any comments. Also will mention that KT66s and KT88s were some of the survivors!

 

[Flying Fish]

Good on ya Ted.

Keep us updated on those speakers please.

 

[TedB]

Will do!

I'll post after pics when all is said and done. The Weber guys are going to hate me with all those polepieces they will need to re-center. But it can't be helped. I need to disassemble every one.

On another note, it was miraculous that I was able to save my old 1964 Harley sporty chopper after being under water for 2 weeks. There was no water inside the engine. What an unexpected stroke of luck!