an artist client wanted my old leak 20 system. bad. and ive had it sitting upright whilst fixing the preamp . and ive grown accustomed to the new vibe. the power amp has a custom dual trafo power supply right at the bottom there. and the amp chassis … with the original single power trafo removed … looks like it’s got great big golden balls. the point one stereo preamp has new bass and treble controls which improved the sound action adjustment effects hugely of course. no small feat. the bass is a 5 meg lin dual! try and buy that from the dairy. i found 5meg board mount pots and some other dual pots by the same manufacturer & swapped out the resistor elements. he has a new balance control circuit too. it attenuates on the input circuit now, rather than the output. the overall sound is much alive with that preamp output loading left off. the wharfdales are my workshop throwaways but you can tell that pumping up some longlegged altecs with extra horn bossoombas is going to rock it. woof!. (i definitely have to get out more)
this is a neumann cmv microphone im fixing up for a client. it came to me all messed around with and not going. somebody had attempted to modify it from its original ec92 amplifier into an ef86 without a clue as to how valves actually work!. the thing could never have gone. they were just guessing. so after some careful brain surgery it goes beautiful now with a nice simple circuit . all new components. but still has a strange spurious noise issue to solve. the noise only occurs after bassey tones and comes up in the background for about 6 seconds. and then the mic goes perfectly quiet again. what the? so after repeating and checking everything im now resolved that the capsule has a fault. it still sounds great tho as long as you dont heavy breath close up. wouldnt suit darth vader.
- new driver
this strange little thing is a new reverb plate driver element. essentially its a speaker magnet and voice coil assembled with a double inverted spider (which holds the voice coil in the magnet gap) and without the normal basket frame and paper/poly speaker cone. a naked motor to vibrate the sprung steel plate.
old broken driver
this is the old blown up dilapidated one. see the handmade brass cone with the little nut retainer on the top … thats the kind of thing i need to make next for the new driver element. shaped from thin brass sheet and soldered.
vortex reverb
i have two types of pickup device ready to go. a barcus berry hotstuff – hotpoint – hot&hard(?) … and a PZM contact mic. these plates are close now. ive yet to make any driver or pickup amps yet of course. for the get going i’ll use my vortex spring reverb – chassis. its got the right kind of amps to fire up the plate. just for the meantime. im thinking of making the amps into old radios (with internal speakers). so for to allow double life as occassional penthouse apt salon/saloon valve mojo playback unit. or room reverb amp. or office ipod playback amp.
heres some details of my newest obsession. a pair of old plate reverb frames were to either come to me, or left to rust utterly. they need complete rebuilding. starting with the spring wire tensioner bolt arrangements. they are all rusted and weak. the plate verb sound is all about the plate being tensioned just right. so that the transducers can do their business. ive found some new spring wire and the hardened tags are being made. spring steel needs special tools. guilotines and hi speed diamond drills. i have made new tensioner adjustment bolts myself though. its quite a large project. the plate drivers have to made custom and the pickup devices to be sorted. there are driver amplifiers and pickup amps to make. and i have to work on them to sell now. or i fear they would probable get chucked out in the way-future for whatever dam reason. so my obsessive compulsive gear junkie tweaking and geeking brain gets another good smacking. i will make some sound tests of the plates once they work. in the meantime please enjoy a smidgen of lulus latest number entitled microphone
today i needed to veer off track to prepare final fitment for the new made meter bridge attachmentisation to the control panel. its gone to the painters now for a transformer grey coating. the meters & the spare are old masters instruments sydney vus. seventy mm cut out. fast like bullets. its an awesome looking thing. with just right angles and fatness shape. it looks like a hot rod air scoop. dam expensive.
these are the new boards for the klangenschmitt gogo model2. there are 16 preamps. 20 post fader amps. 9 virtual ground mix amps. ten single end output amps. 6 floating balanced hi level amps. and 6 meter amps. its been a busy week and my eyes are completely magnified out. ive been a freaking factory. rechecking each circuit for every detail at every component attachment moment .. and ive just spent the afternoon testing all the amps. and discovered only a couple o faulty circuits . a solder bridge splot and one small piece o wire missing. one completely bad transistor. not freaking bad.
these photos are of the neve ten81 i finished making in june09. believe me it was quite a mission. not only for its complexity but also due to the instructions being incomplete and sometimes incorrect. the ten81 has a mic/line input and an equalizer in four separate frequency sections and a powerful high and low filter section. a truly fabulous sounding tool. a surgical sword and sonic sledgehammer in one. heres some conversation between my australian client and myself post delivery (he loves it and its his favorite toy) Hi Eke, Well some of the controls are still as deeply lost to my understanding as hieroglyphics– I mean I want to understand it with my right brain ( or is that left?) but my left ( or is that right?) tells me to just go with it and play into it like a saxophone. Between the different clunks and turns seems the ability to do with sounds what I have been wanting to for ages. There is so much right about the sound of this pre/eq that I don’t know where to start. Is it possible to make it sound bad?? How?? Every combination I’ve tired for the last few hours just seems to work. I think I want to just learn to understand it instictively – that my hand reaches for it and with a few turns the lighting on the sound sweeps over the different clefts and niches of the sound. Dull sources get this kind of beautiful ancient light shone on them. ( my reply) “hey. so glad you are loving that. shes a powerful axe and best treated with care tho.. for she will. as is womanly want .. bite you when you least expect it. recording too much boosting of frequencies as to shine a sound up sooo much. as then when mixed in with all the other shined up sound morsels. the soup will be all brightened tastes with reduced depth. too many shiney things for anything to shine gently anymore. delicious miso mixes uncomfortably with ice cream. miss neve is very good at wipeing away a sound into a lovely murky background too . setting the mysterious glorious black back wall of fat black big blackness” Wise words on the soup recipe, chef. the new shining powers it holds might just burn my eye out occasionally. It’s a chainsaw and a scalpel. hilariously powerful and being able to go so far as adding 18db seems like it should bust some law of audio. but it doesn’t. I’m just about to get going on another dive in … am finding that I have fallen in love with things like acoustic guitar all over again – it just sounds so good through that pre. everything really. I just tuned up the pianos as well to give them a workout on them over the week end. that overdrive is legendary for front end boosting and they pair wonderfully well with the fat ladies as well for maximum girthosity. ah.. they really have kicked me off and I have a few new tunes brewing.”
well .. theres not much as satisfying than a satisfied and inspired client. perfect for me AND a great ad for rupert neve actually . thanks man. you designed a good thing and the challenge of repeating your work was so enlightening and confidence building. thankyou!
i been busy with this album mix of 11 tunes . they all more or less fit into this patched analog set up from an 8 output soundcard (001 for this project). the fat ladys, milli amps, and brian are all limiter amplifiers. klau, ekai, ekat, pev, and astor are equalisers. german is a germanium transistor line amplifier i have. it loves very smooth sounding instruments. seems to give the string parts extra bite! with no added top end. hmmm good ol harmonic distortion. we’ve been well pleased with the results. mixing all the songs thru the similar outboard chains made it so easy to make a great sound for all the songs. and. even tho all the songs feature different musicians and cultural styles, the album doesnt sound chopped up like a compilation album.look for the PEOPLE IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD record (i’ll link more detail later) and performance at WOMAD. new plymouth march 13 14 15 .
this is ray the delay (hanging off aux send A) and K-TEE is my Klark Teknik analogue time processor. the Vortex Verb is a valve spring reverb. totally old school.
a west australian client Ronan Charles is awaiting delivery of this fine pair of FAT LADY varimu limiting amplifiers. i built these two (and three others) in melbourne 1998. they’ve been in my recording mixing rig since about 2004 and have just received plenty TLC ready for their new situation. of course i got a new set underway, a dual chassis this time (because i have several emptied ones) . heres the design and a panel layout. i have most/all the electronic parts here too. the studio is quite busy coming up to christmas so i got next to no time to make my new twin fatlady.
meanwhile.. back on the w.a ranch… Ronan’s fat ladys arrived fed ex friday afternoon. and his first response . “Seriously – WOOWOO-F-ING-HOOHOO.They are here and blowing my head off! Been running a drum machine as a test for the fast transients and trying all the positions. So much power in these babes – huge huge. Subtle and smooth as well.They blow my drawmer out of the water for depth and range – and pure sex appeal.They seem to love attitude – do lovely things to a distorted signal. Bass is massive – nice and clear if you wanna or dirty it up. so good! Can’t wait to track real drums with them and plug in the moog.” (and the next day) “Just can’t stop playing with ‘em.I’m drunk with sonic pleasure- jeez the distortion is so juicy on NO and especially NO out to GO just sounds amazing.Thanks again for such an inspiring piece of gear with so much to offer.” i cant (dont want to) shut this guy up. heres more enthuising a few days later “Those big juicy dials just help a lot in general exploration and zeroing in what sounds good. I tracked some drums over the weekend to experiment with them a bit more. Found some great bass drum sounds with the NO setting – which of course kinda compresses anyway. GO is plenty fast and made for snare. Definitely my new GO-to chain for vox as well. I really love it. what a bloody magnificent beauty. I hope I do them justice. Metering is excellent. I can really see what is going on at the different attack and release speeds. “
david (venn prod. & karretta) had been playing two blue devilles for a while and wanted to join/control them together somehow. so i made a new plywood cabinet – strapped the amps together – added the stereo controls – added a stereo power soaking line output device. the whole kit sounds fantastic … the speakers sound has improved from not having the chassis in them too. they have rounder fuller tone.. more resonant.
