Josh Fuson and I are going to team up for the RPM Challenge in February. We'll be writing and recording an album in 28 days. This past weekend we wanted to start breaking-in my new studio, so we recorded one of Josh's songs. You can listen to it over at his site. I played bass and keys and mixed the track. Josh did everything else, including setting up and tuning my new old Ludwig drum kit.
I'll try to post updates here on our progress throughout the month, try being the key word. It's going to be hectic.
Pedals
Written by Nate
Saturday, 14 November 2009 13:49
I built some pedals over the past week. First is a Mosrite Fuzzrite clone. Really simple, sounds good. Not as buzzy as I wanted though, so I'll probably tweak the circuit a bit more.
The other one I built is a Tycobrahe Octavia clone. This thing is ridiculous. Crazy washed out distortion plus a switchable octave-up overtone. Lots of tweakability here. I also experimented with painting a chassis for the first time, using a hammertone-type finish that I baked in an old toaster oven for durability. It had the added side-affect of yellowing the finish, which gives it a gold hue.
I'm working on some headphone cue boxes for the studio. The design is finalized, and I've got one finished. I'll post more about those when I finish the other four.
Hooray for content!
Written by Nate
Wednesday, 21 October 2009 06:23
So, it's been a while since I've updated the site, but I have my reasons. First, the home studio sucked up a huge amount of my free time, but it's pretty much finished now. Well, the control room and iso rooms at least. I've got a couple minor things to finish this week and then I'll be able to start recording.
Second, we did a whole bunch of landscaping around the house, so that sucked up even more time.
That being said, I've started working on a few electronics projects now that I've got all my tech gear set up in the spare bedroom. My latest project was repairing my friend Sean's guitar amp, an Orange AD30R which was blowing fuses.
Looks alright from the inside. However, the filter capacitors were bulging at the top, although it's hard to tell from this photo.
So I dropped some new ones in there and played it for a while. Sounded great, for an Orange anyway.
I've got a few more projects in the works, including some headphone cue boxes for the studio and a fuzz pedal.
No news is good news, right?
Written by Nate
Wednesday, 03 June 2009 20:30
I've been on hiatus from new electronics projects for a while, or anything else for that matter. I've got to get the home studio finished before I try and tackle anything new. I'm in the process of trying to find somebody to finish my drywall, because I really hate taping and mudding drywall joints.
I take that first thing back. I built some tremolo pedals a couple months ago for my friends Tate Eskew and Josh Fuson, and a third for myself. They're similar to the 4ms Tremulus Lune. It's based on optocoupler technology, which has been around for a while and used in other tremolo and compressor circuits. I was really pleased with how they turned out. Well worth the effort.
I'm hoping to have the studio finished by the end of August. Maybe painted by the end of June, and then have the floor and trim done by the end of July. Then I'll need to solder the XLR wall plates and build some acoustic panels and bass-traps in the corners. So yeah, August. Damn, this has taken forever.
While I was waiting...
Written by Nate
Sunday, 08 March 2009 10:06
I'm waiting for the doors for my studio to come in, so I thought I'd work on some projects that I've been meaning to do for a while since I had some down-time. About a year ago, I bought four channel strips from a Yamaha PM-1000 console with the intention of racking them up into two 2-unit boxes. So about two weeks ago, I started pulling the stock channels apart and stripping all the extraneous wiring and controls, leaving the mic preamp section and EQ. I replaced all the electrolytic capacitors with Nichicon audio-grade caps, and replaced the film capacitors in the EQ section with Wima's. I also adjusted the EQ frequency points from their stock values to somethign a little more usable and closer to the frequencies used on the Neve EQ's. All the transistors were replaced with newer low-noise versions. I also swapped the stock slide switches for rotary switches because it's easier to drill a round hole than cut a rectangular one in a front panel. I had the front panels laser engraved like most of my other gear. I finished up the first unit on Friday night and it's currently being used by my friend Josh Fuson. I knocked out the second channel yesterday. Here's a shot:
The other project I started at around the same time is to refurbish the Allen & Heath SD12-2 mixer I bought last year. It's a pretty simple circuit, but it's really damn noisy, so I'm replacing all the electrolytic capacitors and opamps. I think I'm also going to add an EQ bypass switch to each channel to hopefully cut down on some of that noise. Based on the date codes on the back of the pots, it looks like this board was probably built in late '79. At this point I'm not sure that I'm going to keep it. I don't think it will fit into my current setup. I kind of bought it on a whim with the intention to use the pres as a front-end for my DAW as it has direct outs on every channel, but the last thing I need at this point is more preamps. So it will probably be up for sale in the next month or so. I'll post some photos when I get it all finished, but here's a shot of the stock guts:
