Noise Pollution Stories

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Anyone got any stories to tell about their neighbours complaints about loud music?

I got a heap... but a few realyl stand out.

Story 1:
We had these knob head neighbours, old-ish couple, very bitter man. He used to tell the kids off across the road for playing football on the street, and my sister off for playing backetball in the driveway just because he had nothign better to do.
One day however, a week or so after I got my first bass amplifier for my bass guitar, I was playing a little late, about 9pm, not too loud however, gain on 3 and volume on 3, tone controls 5, 5 and 5.
Anyway the night was over, and a few days later the weekend came. I was cleaning my room on the Saturday afternoon and I found a slug on the carpet while vaccuuming. I told my dad and he goes that it was from a slug gun. We looked at my window and there was a clean bullet hole through the outside canvas, which was always down as it was summer at the time, and a clean bulelt hole in the window. The holes lined up and pointed straight to my next door neighbours side door which went to his driveway.
SO my dad called the cops, they came over etc, and they said they were goign to go nexct door to ask him if he knew anything. 5 minutes later they came out, and had him under arrest!!! Later on we found he admitted to firing the slug gun because he was in a rage about music etc. He told the cops he did it the night that I was actually playing my bass guitar, so now he was up for malicious intent because we were actually home at the time, when he actually fired the gun the mornign after when no one was home.
Anyway in the end he got his gun license banned from him for life, and all of his guns taken off him. A few months later they moved out after having lived there for 15+ years.

Story 2 - The New Neighbours
Okay I admit I play my music loud... but when your neighbours are up your *** every minute, you learn to listen to it softer, as I did, but these retards would complain about music they could barely hear when standing in their driveway, but I am sure as hell they couldn't hear it when in their house, they just liked to complain.
Anyway one night we had a party when the parents were out of the house (we = my sister + I) and we had the music going pretty good and loud til late. We gave them warning when the music was going to be loud for infrequent parties, we had done it once before for my 18th birthday and they didn't seem to mind, but this time they got all narky when the night came, and perhaps because my parents weren't there. Now the next door neighbour came over with a piece of wood and starting bashing on our door with it!!! Everyong being rather drunk we didn't know what to do so we just turned it down, but the next day when my parents got home, told our day, he went and had some words with him... never happened again. My dad isn't very subtle.

That's about it frmo me, we got really cool neighbours now, and in fact I am helping the guy install his car stereo 🙂
A happy ending hehe

-Mike
 
1) I actually thought it sounded good, but my son would practice the trumpet before school (later he was first trumpet in the college orchestra) -- apparently trumpet harmonics are not pleasant to neighborhood dogs -- and every household has a dog -- ergo the incessant barking!

2) when the kids were in high school they hooked up their Electrovoice Disco speakers to a pair of bridged Hafler's -- yes the police did come over. I believe that this was in the early punk era.
 
We had a dog, Brodie:RIP: , that would sit by the turntable (not the speaker) and howl to the Supertramp synthesizer. He rarely howled otherwise. As long as Brodie was in the house, we couldn’t listen to Supertramp without his accompaniment.:snoopy:

Rodd Yamas***a
 
My neighbor decided it would be pretty fresh to blast some speed metal crap at outdoor concert levels at 2 o'clock in the morning. I live in a crowded San Francisco neighborhood, so when I looked out the window I could see the other neighbors looking out their windows, standing on their roofs and porches, and so forth. So I just walked next door and cut the mains power. Problem solved.

Talk about noise pollution: let's swap stories about noisy refrigerators. I turn mine off whem I'm listening.
 
A couple of neighbours back, her issue wasn't so much the volume, though it was always too loud, but the choice of music. Solved it with one word: karaoke. After I'd yodelled "The Greatest Love of All" off key a few dozen times through a small PA in my yard, the complaints stopped. See, then she knew how bad it <i>could</i> be.
 
All true stories.

1/ Read about this 7-11 store had a problem with all these young punks hanging around out the front and ordinary customers felt intimidated and didn't feel safe to come there to shop. The solution? They put up a speaker in an out-of-reach location and played Barry Manilow songs! heh heh (puke)

2/ A friend's father decided he would give the neighbours some of their own medicine so when their loud music stopped for a moment he ran outside and started up the car and gave it such a huge rev up that it broke a conrod and put it through the block. 🙂

3/ Another friend of a friend who lived in the ordinary, quiet Melbourne, Australia suburb of Clayton decided he couldn't wait to try out his just finished pride and joy. So he wheeled out and started up his just-restored Rolls Royce Merlin 27 litre V12 aeroplane engine. The police where there in microseconds....

GP.
 
Earthquake Machine

So, who has used their system as a convenient alarm clock?

Years ago, I used the outboard timer (Pioneer) unit to power up my open reel RT909 deck, (remember this thing, Peter?) until I had a wee mishap...

I had the unit patched through a dbx switch bay, to a Counterpoint SA 5.1 preamplifier. In the morning, the timer would start the deck rolling through the unmuted Counterpoint, to a rather heavy pair of Infinity RS II speakers.

Power was provided by a bank of 24 Hitachi MOSFETS.

Ever use a 5.1? It doesn't have a "tape monitor" circuit in the classic sense. There's a switchable "tape out", with a switch for either RIAA or line output; the tape units' output is selected directly, just like any other source.

I can hear the gears grinding, folks! I had left the tape output engaged, and rotated the input switch to the open reel's position. Well, all was fine until 6 am the following morning...

A little power relay went "click". Two big reels began to turn.

And those Infinitys about threw me out of the room!!!!

My neighbors talked excitedly about the gut wrenching boom later in the day, both next door, and across the street.

I told them that the experience in the room was pure Zen. :yikes:
 
Neighbour Intimidation.

Brett said:
A couple of neighbours back, her issue wasn't so much the volume, though it was always too loud, but the choice of music. Solved it with one word: karaoke. After I'd yodelled "The Greatest Love of All" off key a few dozen times through a small PA in my yard, the complaints stopped. See, then she knew how bad it <i>could</i> be.
More like she heard that there are loonies living in your house. 🙂
 
Payback...

My old man told me of a neighbour who would come home really late, blind drunk, crank the hifi and fall asleep on the couch.
The eventual soloution was to turn off the power at the neighbours meter box.
At daybreak he jumped the fence and turned the power back on before disappearing.
Of course the system came back on at full power for a rude awakening.
The neighbour never cranked his hifi again. 😀

Eric.
 
Level Control...

My old man told me of a beer-garden where an annoying small background music speaker blared loudly and disrupted conversation badly.
The fix was to take a thin sharp sewing needle, and surreptitiously insert through both legs of the figure-8 speaker cable and snab the ends off, flush with the insulation.
The amplifier blew up and was repaired 3 times before somebody realised that it was a cable problem.
The level was reduced in that zone from then on.

Eric.
 
Re: Level Control...

mrfeedback said:
The fix was to take a thin sharp sewing needle, and surreptitiously insert through both legs of the figure-8 speaker cable...
An even sneakier way would be to bring along a pocket sized high voltage dc-dc converter and big cap with needles attached to the terminals. Atack the cable with the cap and pins snakebite style. 😀

GP.
 
Aural Torture...

All this reminds me of my flatmate who took it on himself to wake me in a wrong mood to the Sex Pistols or Dead Kennedys or something playing overly loud and overly early one morning.
I did not growl but I vowed to myself to pay him back with interest.
Next morning he awoke to a close miked recording of a high speed dentists drill on repeat at 100w + 100w as I vanished out the front door on the way to work.
End of game - I won. 😀
 
mrfeedback said:

More like she heard that there are loonies living in your house. 🙂
Eric,
I am <i>deeply</i> wounded by those harsh words. The karaoke technique was developed as a contrast to the 4lb-lump-hammer-as-a-tool-of-negotiation-approach, during a period in my life when I was moving away from my psychotic biker persona, into the caring, sharing, tree-hugging, petter-of-small-furry-animals, envoronmentally sensitive, emotionally vulnerable, celebrate the moment, all around wonderful and well balanced model specimen of a human being I am now.

<i>I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow
If I fail, if I succeed at least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all inside of me
The greatest love of all is easy to achieve


Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all</i>

May your day be filled with Magnificence, and always remember, the Goddess is Dancing.

Hugs to ALL.
 
All,
i once pulled a mean stunt on a schoolmate. He was staying overnight as we two had to get up and our early to attend a threatre group meeting, we simply had to.
So i suggested i put a tape with his preferred flamenco music in my tape recorder and let my power switching clock get us awake with music. I still remember the silly grin he wore when he fell asleep.

What i did not tell him, that i recorded the endless applause too which was coming before the music and on elevated level. Clear to me, flamenco would never had gotten me awake, but the applause (volume cranked up of course :devily: ) was doing a solidly reliable job. On me. He would be floating half a meter above the bed next morning while i was slowly getting awake. 🙂
 
The Setting: Quiet Detroit Suburb, Early.....REAL EARLY.
The Reason: Socialy Inept Punks had finaly shut it off next door about 2 hours ago.......Time for revenge.....Motorcity Madman Style.

The Equipment: a matched pair of Bi-Amped RCA "Ubangi" 15'x2 folded/ported Horn cabinets with 27' RCA horns. Driven by about 2500watts of Crown DC 300a power. Picture (2) 7.5'x5.5'x4.5' concert speakers+horns side by side.

The Music: Ted Nugent, Weekend Warriors. (It was Sat. morning after all.)


The Result: (1) one missing window...It just left the window frame...Zoom-Zoom! 😱 Most objects not FIRMLY attached to something solid, were not where they were supposed to be anymore. One set of very sorry feeling punks next door.
( I got a Nice big "Sorry Dude")
One very upset woman from 3 blocks down asking Me to keep it down, as Her husband works nights.(I didn't hear most of it, there was this loud ringing from somewhere......) And a very happy/fuzzy feeling knowing that I will always be remembered as causing their lives worst hangover for about 15-20 punks.

Life is good!,
Tall Shadow
 
Re: Level Control...

mrfeedback said:
My old man told me of a beer-garden where an annoying small background music speaker blared loudly and disrupted conversation badly.
The fix was to take a thin sharp sewing needle, and surreptitiously insert through both legs of the figure-8 speaker cable and snab the ends off, flush with the insulation.
The amplifier blew up and was repaired 3 times before somebody realised that it was a cable problem.
The level was reduced in that zone from then on.

Eric.

ha ha, I can think of any number of places I'm going to try this...
 
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