heres some pictures of a 2003 custom build that came home with a small but annoying intermittant issue. actually worked out to be oxide/fungus between two signal weilding steel tags. just needed a clean and tighten. couldn’t we all just. the guts of this machine was made in the early 1960s. not too bad. of course i completely ‘ruined’ the once perfectly functional 1/4″ full track tape recorder by badbinning the tape transport and hacking into its multitude of preamplifiers with an hammond organ spring tank. the rola pro77 was ideal. the little speaker power amp can dish it to the spring exciter and the tape replay amp can pick up the reverberating reflections of spring steelnes . the line input/mic channel … well is still the line input/mic channel. the old ‘line input / tape replay’ switch becomes a dry/wet function and ive put a ‘dry to mix in’ control into the reverb pickup amp. there’s also a kill switch ‘dead or alive’ .on the reverb spring drive. theres alot going on with all the preamp modifications. all manner of gain changing and tape eq circuit taming . the result is big fat ultra juicey verb. and you can effect the reverb time by dampening and freaking with the spring.at the top there. sugalicks runs this one. i was thinking that any old 3 head tape recorder amplifier channel could do this … so if youve got one spare laying around. get in touch . the tanks themselves are quite cheap and we can talk fair and square about a reasonable mod-freaking-experimenting fee for me and my kids. they kids help alot and need to be compensated.
anyways ….the klangenschmitt gogo2 mixer is almost completely freaking finished . just waiting for some paint to dry. its very cool – sounds amazing and looks utterly mad :/
ekadek couch party
my little daughter found me and drew me on the chez couch. evidence. shes there on the left …with butterflies above her. and have a listen to this track of us playing in the studio. she sings and i have the korg ms20. i mixed it all whooped up with my echos and phhazer. this is an 3min46sec mp3 off the playback of my ampex 351. lulubird1
this other track features more of the family. and some beaut old vocals by ivan davis. recorded in melbourne 1992 for a dancer . the largess beat (after the softish intro) is a looping remix from an outro of some other ekadek thing from the pile. play it. it is 4min43sec. and it has an awesome very end. ivanbird1
leslie boinkin and diogo got back after listening into lulubird and ivanbird. “great jams as usual from the studio, good to hear the family in there, i must do more quirky recordings with the clan aswell, georgous! thanks again EK. the gear you have helped me with over these years has enabled me to make “REAL” music……good music?…BIG music!!! thats it BIG music. much love. boinkin hi ek, first of all let me say that the tunes you got on the website are really cool 
really really cool…the first one immediately reminded me of “the shinning”, a movie that i first saw when i was 8, gotta thank my mother for that one. really atmospheric, intense and and eerie stuff, i really liked both of them, especially the second one, although your baby girl on the first one is incredibly awesome. what’s that sound on the second one, that sounds like an eerie owl…sounds like something oscillating…especially at about 1/3 of the song, can you tell me what it is? sounds like some twin peaks vocals or something, but i bet it’s a synth, isn’t it . maybe not. everything sounds great btw, really textured. great work sir
just in the last push to the finish line now. ive been testing and calibrating and playing today with all kinds of audio sources. mostly to try and work out a satisfying meter level. having the klang channels all fired up inside to sound good. and what one sees to look like on the meters. o set. and then matching that into a soundcard device’s headroom. juggling. more complicated systems than this one have all sorts of buffer amplifier stages to make it seem right. the klang boy is free from that mutation. but where to set the meters eh? +10 for the entire board sounds great! “but can e take it capn . converters gonna blow” igor is madly rear engineering the main neve 535 boards so as uncover a possible solution part. my gut feeling (tho fruitful his labour will be) is that the amplifier has to go just as fat as a big fat amplifier has to go to feel good. im just raving … heres the movie.
just another busy and oh-so productive day in the workshop. … igor and me decided to take klang for a walk. this pile of electronics is his heart and veins and nerves on the morning of assimilation surgery. there’s 17 discrete op amps – 9 integrated circuit mix amps set to virtual zero buss pickup – hifi phones amp – talk-back amp – and 20 channels of neve line power amplification. we’re making life down here. igors hump is itching and more ekadek juice is boiling in the attic. there’s a fair amount of preparatory stages yet before firing up klang gogo. an essential long list of intricate details – and klang gathers steam and funk.
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.
famous jazz musician and producer nathan haines has borrowed gear from me a couple of times. has loved it and has written these kind words.“I have used Greg’s equipment on several sessions and I have to say it’s fantastic sounding gear! Warm, translucent and with that real ‘vintage’ sound. His pre-amps are perfect for adding depth and character to any instrument or voice.”
hes talking about the cute MB1 valve mic amp called PHILLIP
and the ekadek/neve 535/538 all transistor stereo mic amp. theres a four channel channel version eka/neve 535/538 too.
heres a jam of a new track. called PHILLRAY GABRIEL. the bass drum, ‘hand hats’ and drum machine beat is by Phill Lambert. guitar by Gabriel Everett. korg and RAY DELAY effects by me. my little daughter (nearly 4) jammed this great little tune with her toy organ and vocal cuteness BOOB. i mastered a new sugarlicks album too.”the ghost tones”. ultra cool urban voodoo groove post funk ? i’m doing a remix for december release of a ghost tones track. “hoolahoop champion”. voodoo sufi soup. in the workshop. designed and tested a new discrete headphone amplifier for the anritsu-neve-mixer and have made the neve preamp boards. ive got all the parts and im just a few clear days away from finishing it. and. ive met a website ninja electric badge who is organising some awesome new things for ekadek.com. big developments. very excited bout that.
