. . . you're gonna have to do better if you want to win a new Mackie PA system. To celebrate twenty years since the introduction of the CR-1604 compact mixer, Mackie is holding a contest -- called the "20 Years Running" contest, natch -- wherein they're giving away a VLZ-1604 compact mixer and a pair of their newest HD Loudspeakers.

So how do you claim these probably* awesome PA speakers? Lie. Lie your face off. Or fingers, in this instance. See, Mackie wants Mackie-users to submit stories of their experiences with Mackie gear, specifically stories in which said gear goes through some sort of physical mishap or trial-by-fire** and yet emerges unscathed, or well-scathed but still functioning.

Which brings me to urine. As an example of what Mackie's looking for in a good gear-yarn, they posted a story submitted to them years ago*** about one mix-engineer's experience with a CFX-12 mixer. Seems a leak sprung over his head right in the middle of a set, and before he could power off the system, the mixer got soaked. That's not all:

"I later came to learn that it was in fact a toilet that had overflowed from the men’s room above that had poured into my new gear. . . Left it alone for about a week. . . To my amazement, the mixer worked! In fact, the sound quality seemed quite unaffected by the incident. . .

So, like I said, lie your face off. So what if Mackie wants you to submit a photo (or better yet, a video) corroborating your story? If NASA could fake the moon landing, you can dummy-up a char-broiled SRM450. Good luck, the contest starts April 20th, 2009 (potheads and Neo-Nazi's, don't read into in).

BTW, we're obviously not actually suggesting you lie to win this contest. Lying probably would and should get you disqualified. For a complete posting of the official contest rules, go to Mackie's contest page.

*we haven't heard them yet.
**ooh, trial-by-fire! That's a good one to write about! ***by some selfless sole who didn't need a contest to motive them to share.