h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

All sounds familiar to me

I see you've signed up for the Guild When I have a moment, I'll log in in my 'official capacity' and add you to the list, but in the meantime, welcome to the Guild

And have you seen the finished 'Guitar injuries' Entry at A1124632 - you might find a lot of it painfully familiar!

No one has mentioned my favorite ELECTRIC guitar injury...

This is not something I ever experienced, but it is a legend, and happened (Fataly!!!!) to the guitarist from kenny rogers band before he went country.

When you plug in your amplifier, always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS! use a grounded outlet. See, if your amp has no ground, then your GUITAR has no ground... and being electrocuted by your guitar in the middle of a set is no fun. It's pretty common to be zapped a little by a microphone while playing, because of a polarity difference (which is fixed by flipping the three way switch on the back of your amp, if it has one. Luckily, mine does ). The guitarist I mentioned, however, was playing outside and stepped in a puddle... and his amp was ungrounded... sooo...

*ZORCH*

Sorry, "a polarity difference with the PA and your amp"

That's why the 3 way switch is there, as well as setting a better ground. usually, if your amp is noisy on it's own, flipping it to the other direction will help.

Oh, and I've been whipped, stabbed, and lacerated by strings as well.

I don't play trombone, but a similar effect occurs while your playing a trumpet and in a moment of panic try to insert your straight mute at 150 mph. I split my lip open and couldn't play for some time.

I've never been seriously hurt with a guitar but I find it particularly annoying when you replace one or all of the strings but can't seem to find a wire cutter in order to clip off the excess. I've put a lot of holes in my thumbs that way.