Kineticturtle's Tech Blog

Orban/Parasound 111B dual spring reverb

2012-02-25T00:50:00.002-08:00

I'm going to start with the result here, then jump back to the beginning and work my way forward again. I just watched an episode of Star Trek: Voyager where something like that happened, so hopefully I won't get as confused as Janeway did.

Although I figured I'd leave my Sunn Beta preamp in the shot for posterity (it's the only one I've encountered), what we're really talking about here is the Orban/Parasound dual spring reverb. I found a detailed manual online, tucked in Orban's unlisted FTP site. There are extensive mounting notes, adjustment procedures, etc etc. Which is great! But I'm taking a slight shortcut, and just opening the sucker up for a quick visual diagnosis.

And here we have confirmation of my first assumption - leaky power supply capacitors - or at least one, but we can assume here that the twins are in similar shape, since they're in identical packaging with identical date stamps. Nice looking blister on that guy! Finding exact package replacements would be difficult and time consuming, so I'll settle for radial replacements for these axial bad boys.

And here we have their upright cousins, fully installed. Would have been tough to find something that would for sure fit snugly underneath the power transformer mounted to the chassis there. I had a photo of one of the other smaller audio line electrolytics but decided against taking up unnecessary space - you can barely see one in the lower left of this photo. Suffice it to say that they appear newer and in better shape - they probably aren't actually newer, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for now. The parts list in the manual is dated 1/86, so they're roughly within safe limits.

Now for making connections. While I've always understood the logic of this setup, I still roll my eyes when it comes to actually hooking it up - especially on the workbench. I would up taking the cheap route and using the unbalanced "mixed" output for now. Digging through piles of old RCA stereo cable to make tails works well enough, at least for a test.

First attempt: failure. While the left side (white) is intact, you can see the crumbled remains of the right (red) side's coating there between the wires. Thank you Sony, for your humble attempt to make the wires identifiable, but something is wrong with your red dye 40+ years later, causing the plastic to break down. To the garbage bin with ye.

Although I have no more photos to offer, a second attempt has proven more fruitful, and I made some ghetto input tails as well. A successful install indeed, and now I finally have stereo spring reverb in my humble home recording rig. I'm excited to hear what this sounds like on my stereo gameboy signals, and I think the adjustable midrange on the EQ in these guys will be a fun tool.

2011-12-20T20:30:00.000-08:00

Today I modified my Rock Band 3 keytar that I use in The Glowing Stars. Unfortunately the project wound up significantly more limited than expected. The keytar controller has three big issues from a performance MIDI perspective (the perspective from which I approach it) that I went into this aiming to fix:

1. Backwards pitch bend ribbon (towards the keyboard is bend up)
2. pitch bend ribbon is set to modulation control by default - only by holding down the adjacent button will it output pitch bent info, but holding down the button makes your hand nearly useless in the process.
3. No damper button.

Not knowing what to find, I venture forward.

Straight ahead disassembly, but the final screw is hidden under this rubber stopper which must be pried out. Presumably somebody decided that if you're vain enough to be playing a keytar - even in a video gaming session - you would care about hiding only this one screw - but no more.

While I'm at it - if you disassemble one of these yourself, take note that the screws on the keyboard edge of the unit are shorter than the rest. I wasn't paying attention and almost drove a hole right through the plastic...

These tiny screws are held up from the board by a variety of slightly different spacers. If you don't get them put back together correctly, the "whammy bar" or whatever button won't correctly. The goal here is to bypass that button anyway, but why make things uglier than they need to be? Besides, it's a minor puzzle.

A close up of the well labeled solder points that are connected when the front panel button is pressed. Here (and in the previous shot, which was shown out of order), they're already wired to a submini switch which I'll install on a drilled hole in the case. When the switch is closed, it puts the ribbon controller in permanent pitch bend mode, and returns the unit to normal operation when it is open.

The final result. Relatively innocuous modification. I decided to place the switch here because it is out of the way, but still available while playing.

As for the other things I had hoped to fix;

The ribbon controller seems to consist of about 8 touch pads and a micro controller which I'm assuming generates data based on which touch pads are pressed. Not a particularly high resolution device. I wasn't willing to get into it on my only keytar, but once I grab a spare, I have hopes for cutting all the traces on the PCB and re-connecting them in reverse to fix the pitch bend. A little bit obnoxious, but I don't see why it wouldn't work, as long as I can avoid burning out the SMD chip.

The keytar does provide an 1/8" jack for control pedal functions. According to the manual it can handle one analog expression pedal (no details provided) and one "digital stomp switch" which functions as a damper pedal. Now if there's a standard for "digital stomp switches" I'm not aware of it, maybe someone can enlighten me? But for the moment, I find my hopes of a damper control on the back of the handle (similar to Roland's AX series of keytars) dashed.

2011-12-06T10:02:00.001-08:00

Ugh, modern crap.

This Korg i2, or some such stupid name, has a busted backlight. I think. Either way, I've replaced the backlight and I hope that was the problem, because I can't find any specs for the dang thing, and the complete service manual that I have is pretty much useless. All it has is scratchy little photocopied diagrams of where the screws are...

Pretty common situation.

2011-10-09T22:10:00.000-07:00

I'm working frantically right now to put together all the details for a little PulsewaveSF soiree at the East Bay Mini Maker Faire - besides the usual performances and hands-on demos of chip gear, we're setting up a diy table where I'll be most of the day, teaching basic gameboy modding. Check out those links for the address and times, and swing on by - it's on October 16th in Oakland, CA.

About a year ago I built an Arduinoboy Mini, as more or less as originally designed by trash80, based on the instructions he provided here:

http://8bc.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=167545#p167545

It has served me exceedingly well, providing copious amounts of MIDI data to my Gameboy's inputs on a daily basis while being rough-housed on the road - until the game boy link cable that I used (some 3rd party knockoff) finally took a dump right before a show last week.

The godawful things have six tiny little crimp pins that have a nasty habit of both allowing their wires to escape, and of falling out of the plastic housing. A major known issue with creating Arduinoboys is that many link cables lack a pin to carry 5V power from the gameboy into the Arduino, requiring an extra power supply. It is possible to move the wires around, but it's fiddly and often results in destroying a pin, making the cable useless.

You can see the issue here, I'm sure.

Having diagnosed the problem, I think I'm going to cannibalize this whole unit and rehouse the perfectly functioning guts in a different case with a new, better cable. It will be shipped off with the green Gameboy featured in my last post. I'll need to build a new arduinoboy soon for stage use, but I've got a bit before that will become absolutely necessary.

2011-09-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a commissioned gameboy mod in exchange for artwork by the fantastic pixel (and other ) artist KeFF. He requested something that, to my knowledge, has not been done before - two 1/4" jacks crammed into one original gameboy. The challenge is that a single 1/4" jack is generally squeezed in where the power supply is placed in a stock gameboy - then a ribbon cable is installed, relocating the power supply to the opposite side, in a smaller cavity. To install two 1/4" jacks, both of those spaces must be made available.

My solution:

By splitting the power supply in half and connecting the two halves with ribbon cable, enough room is made on each side for a full length 1/4" jack. It's definitely a squeeze, but everything functions.

As a bonus, the jack on the left is wired in stereo, allowing the option of a stereo cable, or a mono cable (grounding out the right channel, which can be accessed via the other jack).

Still to be done - wiring up the variable speed control and a switch, which I'm honestly not yet sure where to put. Those jacks take up a lot of space.

2011-09-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

Worming my way towards that delicious pile of goodies in the last post. Also trying to clean out my office.

These EQs have been sitting in the "fix-it" pile since 2007. What's wrong with them? Nothing, as far as I can tell. The Yamaha actually sounds quite nice, and has sockets for input/output transformers on the back.

2011-09-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

I've had a pleasant windfall of new toys thanks to an old biology teacher of mine. Thanks to him and another certain blogger who reminded me that people actually sometimes read what I write here, you can expect a windfall of new posts about it all.

That is, after I get through the pile of goods (and bads) that have collected in my office over the last two years. I've come to realize that at the University where I work, we've had a major purge every month of the 7 years that I've been there, and there's no sign of it stopping.

Today I finally opened up a multimeter that I found in storage and which has been sitting in my office for at least three years. Now I love a good crystaline structure as much as the next guy, but when battery corrosion has reached this point, I'm usually ready to let the affected piece of gear call it a day.

Close inspection reveals that almost every component in the thing is affected by the corrosion - not much to salvage, save some beautiful Bakelite knobs. Something of a shame I'm afraid.

Five months of events.

2011-03-06T19:27:00.000-08:00

Well, as you might expect, a lot has happened since October. In these last five months, a huge amount of music has been released in which I have participated, some of it somewhat unexpected. I hope you'll excuse my break from the usual technical drudgery for a bit of advertisement. I promise the rest of the post is filled with photos of cool stuff.

Tensegrity Nine, my defunct J-pop/Folk-rap duet with Peter Lim, finally released our posthumous album sugoi! All My Pretty Ones released an excellent little semi-live EP recorded at the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, CA. Radiation City, a Portland based band centered around members of Spesus Christ (of which I am no longer a member, sadly), asked me to record some trombone for their album The Hands That Take You, which is now available from Apes Tapes.

I'm also super excited to announce that my new chip-rock duet with Lizzie Cuevas, The Glowing Stars, has released a demo, and has a first show scheduled opening for Anamanaguchi and Peelander Z in San Francisco on April 7th. No doubt this will result in many more posts related to 8-bit modifications and building unusual midi interfaces over the next month as we prepare.

Probably the biggest project I've had in the works is my own album Rodent to Rodent - a double album released with my dad, who's original 1984 album Rodent to Rodent was never released, until we met two years ago and I created my own version. There's more of the story available at the Rodent to Rodent blog, so I won't get too much into detail on that, but to satisfy your craving for weird technical happenings, here's the lowdown on some of what was done to make our big presentational Rodent to Rodent show happen.

My wife was kind enough to help me prepare these custom grille cloths for the guitar cabinets we used at the show. They feature the Rodent to Rodent logo cut out of light black denim, whip-stitched onto burlap. The larger frame (for my Sunn 4x12) was custom built, as the cabinet comes from an era of Sunn cabinets which originally used thin black metal grilles (long lost to the mists of time, in the case of my cab).

Beyond the visually creative element of putting the show together, there were some venue related obstacles to overcome. Luckily we were able to survive the dangers of a weak power system, which was a serious concern, but solving the next problem required some more foresight.

That is a roughly six foot tear in a rather large red curtain. It was exacerbated by its location on the curtain near the draw rigging. Since this type of curtain track simply pulls on the center end of each curtain, any attempt to close the curtain simply tugged on the separated section and ripped it further.

In December of last year, I travelled to the venue to remove the curtain personally, folded it up, loaded it into my truck, and enlisted the assistance of one of the costume designers at my the theater costume shop at work to sew and reinforce the curtain, then replaced it with the help of Jonathan Mann, who hosted the final event.

As you can see from this photo taken atop a 16 foot ladder, the previous person to hang the curtain had some creative ideas about rigging and weight distribution. Although the number of chains and eyelets did not quite match up ultimately, we were able to clean up much of the existing mess. Of course, we never touched the other side of the curtain, so hopefully there are no similar problems. I hear they may be replacing the entire system sooner or later, but after a successful concert, I can personally wash my hands of the whole affair.

I have also recently been performing semi-regularly with the most excellent Family Crest, including at their album release show for The Village, on which I played accordion (almost 3 years ago). While of course reprising my Accordion role in the band, I have also become something of a hypeman and antics generator. As a result, I've been doing some work on accordion pickups, wireless systems, and of course, trick lighting.

Last night at a sold out show at The Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, I debuted this floor tom with a switchable, battery operated light. While somewhat obviously a $10 Home Depot affair, it was nonetheless highly effective in performance. The only unfortunate bug is the placement of the switch, which is prone to accidental engagement - an issue that presented itself almost immediately into the first song of the night's set.

The placement of all the hardware is dicated by the needs of preservation, as the drum is in fact part of a matched vintage Ludwig kit, which may some day be rebuilt and returned to stock. As such, anything mounted to the inside or outside of the drum must be mounted in existing holes. The aforementioned switch replaces the unused batter head mute, while the light itself is mounted on elongated bolts mounted in place of the resonant head hardware.

Of course, I also learned some lessons about trusting untested rechargeable batteries...

tiny things

2010-10-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

The amount of love that the good old DMG-01 has gotten recently is pleasantly astounding. Some wonderful shops exist making custom parts for their repair and modification, and a lot of great free info is available online. Here's some pieces I've put together. I've already made some changes since these photos were taken...

There's some great music being made on this old 8bit gear out there. The J. Arthur Keenes Band and NESMetal immediately come to mind. I may or may not also have some stuff in the works...

Tiny things and also large things. Re-wiring the beautiful old rooms at the music building at the unviersity to take audio again. End result will be 60+ balanced channels traversing our major rehearsal and recording rooms, plus ethernet and speaker connectivity. The panels are in and we're installing stuff. It's very satisfying to return functionality to these facilities, let me tell you.

2010-09-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

Been busy doing a lot of writing lately, so I haven't had as much time for tech stuff as usual, but some of what I'm working on got me fiddling with my old NES again. A simple mod to separate the voices somewhat makes it a more useful audio tool almost immediately. Even after replacement, the 72 pin connectors in these things still often need a lot of futzing, but they can be made to work, for sure.

I'm actually seeking another NES or two, as well as any old Gameboy gear that might be floating around, so if you have any of that stuff in your closet or know someone who does, please get in touch with me!

2010-08-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

The current budget situation at work has had me in a salvaging mode, and I've been reviving a lot of very old but beautiful pieces of equipment. Reviving is something of a misnomer, because these things are truly built like tanks, and most of them work just fine; all they need is a little cleaning and adjustment at worst a part or a tube replaced. Great old oscilliscopes, distortion analyzers, tone generators and such. Super useful stuff.

Believe it or not, there are still deals to be found on eBay, but you have to be patient. Some waiting and searching netted me the perfectly operating (and better looking than I thought!) oscillator in the photo. It's an HP 204C - it travels well outside the range of human hearing in both directions.

This is a great hobby, a great way to save money (although certainly not space!) if you want to get into electronics, and also a potentially dangerous trip if you don't know what you're doing; but don't fret! A friend has posted this great article on dealing with these (mostly tube based) relics, and you can visit it by clicking here!

2010-07-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

Some dancetheater, a Spesus show. New beautiful wooden ends for Junos, etc etc. Here's a picture of some amps.

Am I the only person who can't replicate the iPhone 4's supposed lack of reception?

2010-05-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, I may have been a little busy recently. A great (albeit short) tour with Spesus Christ, a wonderful show at work and tons of equipment brought back to life, including a Rhodes Mark I student console, a few pedals, and a Casio CZ-1000, reunited with my synth family in the photo. Those CZ series synths are seriously powerful within their little 80's world - the waveform options alone are pretty astounding... add on top of that the 8-step fully programmable envelope, MIDI and a pretty nice filter, and you have quite a tool, especially for less than $100 (on average). No aftertouch, but that's what the CZ-5000 is for...

Preparation for the Spesus Christ tour was a blast, and got me into full roadie mode, building XLR cables, preparing rackmount systems, and compiling sets of spare parts for vintage gear - things I honestly enjoy perhaps a bit more than I should. There's a sense of accomplishment in knowing you have built a tour-able system that can really put up with some abuse (with some attentive care) and most importantly, that it is a system which will help a group of musicians (myself included, in this case) put our best foot forward.

It's been an especially long time since I've posted, so this will be new to any readers who don't know me personally; I performed a set of my own music for the first time a couple months ago; there is related audio and video at matthewjosephpayne.muxtape.com

Game, boy!

2009-12-22T10:17:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year, I suppose. Somehow I managed to survive the holiday season without the usual overload of performances, , which I might normally consider a curse, but this year I see as a blessing - a chance to focus on family when I find my family growing rapidly!

I traded my bassman 50 for my dad's silverface twin, which after a little work has been an amazing little workhorse - she got put through the paces during the winter holiday show at work,

where I played the wurly 200a through her (at 9am every day no less!), mostly at very low volumes... the reverb picks up a lot of noise from the lighting system in our theater though, but I don't know how to solve that other than just loading up on sheilding... Kevin and I were involved in a bizarre Dandelion Dancetheater event yesterday, and experienced his silverface twin exhibiting exactly the same symptoms, so at least now I know I'm not crazy!

I've suddenly gotten into modding my game boy, and installed a great pitch mod kit offered by getlofi.com. Definitely check it out, but if you decide to do this yourself, don't watch the example video they offer on that page, watch this one instead! And then, get in touch with me because their directions are still a little off! Wonderful product though! I went a step farther and added a s

witch to

turn the mod off so I could also use it as a normal gameboy, then bypassed the headphone amp for a direct line level output - probably the most useful part of the whole thing! You can see it all, along with some xmas cheer, up in the first photo. Second photo is me and Kevin's twin twins playing piggyback...

welcome to the rat shack

2009-11-04T10:54:00.000-08:00

Recent Spesus tour was quite a success and proceeded without major technical incident. Tons of fun though! Played to great crowds in SF and Portland, and a small but enthusiastic crowd in LA. Now I find myself at home again, neck deep in projects, again.

Photo is of a delightful new device dubbed the Rat Shack. It's a rehousing of the circuit from a Radio Shack reverb unit of unknown vintage. Pretty messy inside, and the pots have extra-long shafts which I need to change, but it sounds great as both a reverb and as a distortion, and looks fancy on a pedalboard to boot! Whole project came about as we were using a similar borrowed unit as an effect in the Spesus set, as Cameron's was broken... took his apart and made it into this!

Have a show to design at the University, opening weekend after next, and another show to practice banjo for. I certainly don't expect anything to quiet down soon! I've got a pile of synths (my own and others') to fix, and I need to clean and change the strings on a borrowed guitar and get that back quite soon... oy oy....

2009-10-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

It is said that Bob Moog had a sixth sense by which he could sense electricity flowing through circuits with great sensitivity. It is said that this influenced his designs heavily. I always thought this was fascinating, but didn't really understand it until I started cleaning the Moog Modular filter set we have at the University. The concept of the layout, the attention to detail, the pure beauty of the devices is unparalleled in anything I've seen before. It's been a few years now since Moog died, but cracking these filters open have reminded me just how profound the loss was.

I installed a Rotatone in one of my rotary WE 500 phones so that I could use it with the system at work, which does not accept pulse dialing. End result; great success, plus some bonus features including speed dial! And it's such a huge improvement over the crappy phones they provide. Unlike most of the people in the building, I'd managed to avoid the "upgrade" to the awful sounding, digitally ringing monstrosities that are common around the system and at least kept something with a real ringer with real bells, but the switch to a rotary-encoded phone has really taken it the extra distance for me. Photos of that later - it's a custom blue/black look.

How do these things even happen?

2009-10-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

A problem on my Rhodes that I've been beating around the bush of fixing is the matter of the rear harp cover support splitting away from the body of the instrument. Besides letting the harp cover (the round top) drop into the instrument and look silly, it actually starts to get in the way of the damper assembly. Finally today I glued and clamped it.

Last week was both hectic and relaxing - spent it all in Portland with Spesus Christ, playing shows, recording a podcast, rehearsing and maintaining all the vintage stuff we use. I may have busted one of the 10s in my SVT cab, but I haven't even had a chance to look at that since I got home. Mostly, I've just been sick. Perhaps that's what I get for driving home from Portland to Oakland solo in one day?

Brought home some nice prizes though; a great Kirsch piccolo snare drum, and a couple 4-track (2 at a time) tape machines, one pictured here. Sounds as good as it looks, although both need some normal tape machine maintenance.

No turning back now...

2009-09-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Started chopping a beat up old Rhodes 73 mk 1. Poor thing was pretty gross, and the action has sofar defied all attempts at levelling, so instead it shall become a Rhodes Piano Bass, consisting of only the bottom 32 keys (and a lot of spare parts for future repairs). Just made the first cut; so far so good.

The action is not such a big deal; measure twice, cut once applies doubly here, since you do not get a second chance to cut! What is done is done... but once I get to the harp it will be a little trickier; metal must be cut and screw holes must line up or else the hammers and tines will not meet properly. Fun times to be had by all!

Ideally this instrument will be a solid backup for the actual factory built piano bass that used by Spesus Christ; with all the travelling back and forth between Portland and San Francisco, it will be nice to have one more thing that can be left at home one way or the other!

epiphany

2009-08-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

I find that with every device I work on for the first time (which is every one of them at some point, of course), there is a moment of epiphany where you suddenly know how the thing works. The Vox Jaguar is a relatively simple device, and that moment of epiphany came the moment I got a peek of the underside of the keyboard after unsticking the keybed from the bottom of the case.

This Jaguar took a tumble last night during setup for the first Spesus Christ show, but survived handily. The F# board has been a little funny, but I think I've got it ready to settle down and start a family.

Been working on guitars more, but of course neglecting my own instruments as a result; my bass went without a somewhat needed restring for the show last night, but it will soon get the attention it deserves. ta ta,

The Glassblower

2009-07-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

This is the result of a tube short in my SVT at full volume. The resistor on the left shot a superheated glob of its own innards at the resistor on the right, forming a small ball of glass. My SVT is now nicknamed The Glassblower.

aaaaaaaaaa

2009-07-21T01:35:00.001-07:00

It never stops! On the horizon; rebuilding a '71 rhodes mk1 suitcase - which I nabbed for $100! Someone tried quite a few not-so-successful modifications on the poor thing, but they left the action pretty much untouched, thankfully.

You can almost see it in the background, corner of this pic behind the wurly. Pic is of my studio, halfway through packing up after a Spesus Christ rehearsal... how many space echos can YOU spot?

2009-06-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

Pictured here is the aftermath of bowed piano for the Spesus recordings on Wednesday. Chaotic and tiring day, but very productive.

Eat the Path

2009-06-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

Busy busy busy as always. Played a gig on Stanford radio with Say Bok Gwai last night, on accordion of all things. Lots of improv, good times. Before that a T9 rehearsal and a semi-improv dance/theater gig in which I played accordion in a black dress, ultimately being carried offstage by a burly co-performer, whilst still playing.

Today recording and rehearsing with Cameron Spies of Raised by Robots for his project, Speesus Christ. Lots of fun playing around with esoteric vintage gear. Photo is Epiphone Pathfinder, mic'd up in the ol' closet.

Wurlygig

2009-05-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Lots going on, starting to have trouble keeping up, honestly.

The ability of electromechanical keyboards to continue to function nearly perfectly after years of neglect never ceases to amaze me. New Wurlitzer 200A operating nearly perfectly, just needs a few action tweaks. And a damper pedal. Luckily Vintage Vibe makes a really beautiful reproduction (as opposed to replacement) for it. Pricey, but you get what you pay for. Had a chance to check one out that belongs to a friend of a friend in Portland this weekend while on tour.

And an update on the Space Echo from last post... after a long time sitting in a rehearsal studio untouched, the smell has significantly reduced, and I suspect that with another few weeks of sitting open and out of the way, it may disappear almost completely. I may give it a vinegar scrub anyway, just to hurry it up a bit.

Now, have a Kurzweil PC88 to reassemble for a friend, bass pickups to swap, and a light show to prepare for Friday. Pic is of the new Wurly getting ready for a cleaning.

E•Cho

2009-03-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

I am a baaaaaaaaaad blogger.

Sometimes life just takes over though, you know?

Swimming in projects. I recently had a couple of absolutely painful experiences shipping telephones which have forced me to quit the telephone refurbishing/selling business. I might post photos later.

Luckily as my country's finances are turning down, mine are turning up, and I've been collecting amazing equipment for crazy prices thanks to Craigslist. In the photo is today's conquest, a Roland Space Echo RE-201. If you don't know what that is, it's like a delay pedal, except it uses actual magnetic tape.

It's in amazing operational condition, but it smells a bunch like smoke. I'm going to experiment tonight with isolating it with a lot of baking soda overnight to see what happens. The plan is to scrub the outside with baking soda and water, then seal it in a garbage bag along with a few tied fabric bags of baking soda, along with a bag or two inside the machine. Hopefully that'll do the trick.

absence makes the heart grow

2009-01-01T17:55:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, I have been taking care of my ill mother.

I won't get into details here (my livejournal has all that fun stuff), but a side effect of that has been finding some great stuff while digging through her belongings. She was something of a collector.

The other technician at the University is retiring, and I'll be filling both of our positions for the first few weeks of the next quarter, so I will be very very busy for awhile.

Picture is of a Proll-o-tone organ, my latest treasure from my mother's collection. Plastic instrument with plastic reeds, from a time during the war when metal for anything other than bullets was scarce. Like most toy instruments, it plays a diatonic C major scale (octave and a third).

2008-12-03T22:13:00.000-08:00

The Western Electric 5302 is a fascinating thing. From left to right in the photo, you'll see the 302, 5302 and 500 series phones. The 302 was Western Electric's flagship phone for a couple decades, but as soon as people saw the rich, curved lines of the 500 phone, it became a smashing style hit, and everybody wanted one on their desk!

WE still had piles and piles of parts for the 302 sitting around in the warehouse though, so they simply built new cases that looked more like the 500, which could be used with 302 parts; hence, the 5302. Although it looks more like the 500, it has almost nothing in common with in internally (within the realm of phones, anyway).

The 500 went on to be easily the most popular telephone deisgn ever, and the 5302 nothing more than a minor footnote, but they are really a fascinating step in the evolution of the device.

acoustic 808

2008-11-28T22:03:00.000-08:00

Between the show that's closing,
and the one I'm designing,
a sleep one does not visit me now.

Just closed a production of Tongues put on at work involving a 10 point soundsystem with hidden speakers in the audience, microphones hidden in the lobby, accordion and conch shells, dancers in wheelchairs, and four playback devices. Whew! Now it's on to a production of Peter Pan, which thankfully only involves a 4 or 5 point soundsystem... although one of those points is an actual onstage radio. It also involves a pirate ship and flying, of course...

I'm very excited to finally be stocking my online shop selling refurbished vintage telephones: smallbell.etsy.com. It's been quite a process, and I would have liked to have been a little earlier with it (with the holiday shopping season and all), but I think I'm doing pretty well.

Falls Protocol entered the recording studio about a week ago, and hammered through 40 minutes worth of drum, bass and guitar tracks (although much of the guitar will be replaced later). The next session will be more off the wall, likely including brass, accordion, and lots of fun electronics.

Pic is of our engineer's Yamaha board. Later...

shoved in a corner!

2008-11-10T07:59:00.000-08:00

Sometimes our workspaces are... less than optimal? But it is important to learn how to make the best of what is available. I just finished working on a dance show (with a hip-hop guest artist) that took place in a converted 100 year old house. It is normally used as a rehearsal studio, so there was no place for technicians, no usable live soundsystem, and the lighting system was original from about 50 years ago.

But with brilliant work by the entire tech crew (all four or five of us) and extremely creative thinking by the director of the show, we put on a really excellent production. Three different studios were used to house different pieces, giving each one a unique setting with its own lighting and feel. One piece actually took place outdoors and in the windows of the building, to great effect!

They have another weekend to run the show (without me, as there is no more hip-hop), so I'm on to the next project, which involves dancers in wheelchairs, hidden sound gear, and my accordion... I don't want to give away too much until the show is over though, so I'll leave it at that.

Picture is of the sound board from my cozy corner... on a piano bench. Cheers!

panic

2008-10-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

Building two shows at once as usual, with a third on the way.

The new recording space at work is coming along. Strange issues with a Henriksen bass amplifier; generating low levels of sound despite not having power. Second problem we've had with the thing, although it generally seems robust and sounds really great! The company is quite new, so only time will tell. Really awesome people at the place though, and really excellent service. I recommend looking into it if you're considering a Polytone or something similar... sure as hell beats Polytone in the service department, as if that were difficult...

Picture is of the studio, starting to look like one.

a second chance at life

2008-10-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

I wonder how much perfectly usable gear is floating around in people's closets and basements... needing nothing more than a good cleaning, a new pair of strings, or perhaps a new fuse... I picked up an old Roland Cube 60 (the kind with the adorable orange tolex) from a lady about 50 miles out from me who simply didn't want it. After a bit of knob twisting and some serious detail cleaning work, it's good as new, and looking like a million bucks! Or at least the full couple hundred that it's worth...

Now it's one more amp to keep spare fuses on hand for... it's a good idea to keep spare replacements of every part that can go bad and easily be replaced on your gear on hand, in a toolbox on tour or even at local gigs. This includes but is not limited to; tubes, fuses, pilot lamps, strings, batteries, cables (speaker, mic, instrument and power), cymbal felts, drum tension rods - if you really want to go crazy, tuning machines, casters, knobs, straps, strap buttons and strap locks, knobs...

My emergency collection is actually a little bit behind, but I haven't been taking my amps touring much lately. :)

Pic is of the new Roland Cube 60, chillin' with the telecaster.

2008-10-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

Modular mixing boards are, unfortunately, a thing of the past, which is really a shame. The ability to arrange a board however you want has contributed to the degeneration of mixing sound from something considered to be an art to something considered to be a "necessary evil" at anything other than the biggest, most professional level.

We've been dismantling a 24 channel Brittish DDA board, with the double intent of being able to fix a few dead channel modules and simply being able to move it across the building (and down the stairs from the theater booth it was in!). It's been going to waste sitting in the back of our tech booth, but it's headed for a second life as the center of a small recording studio I'll be building within the facility.

I've also been experimenting with hard drives as speakers, a-la James Houston. I've got an array of nine functioning, but I need to retest some of them for polarity, because I think they may be running out of phase. They generally run at 8, 10 or 12 ohms, which luckily tends to calculate into ohmages greater than the standard multiples of 4, rather than less.

Photo is of DDA channel modules stacked up and waiting for contact cleaner... cheers!

pre-post modern piano

2008-09-22T17:15:00.001-07:00

Still busy throwing everything together for the start of school. A flurry of activity around the house at the same time; new telephones, new projects. Oddball pieces of junk floating in and coming out as nice, usable instruments; a Japanese 12" tom with a nice red sparkle wrap, an old Univox bass cab, and now Rhodes Pre-Piano #2...

Harold Rhodes' first instruments were lap pianos made out of airplane parts for rehabilitating injured soldiers. When he left the army airforce, he made these "pre-pianos" and sold them for home use. They were only made in the late 40's, and most of them haven't survived well. Mine is in pretty good cosmetic condition, but is probably an 9/10 functionally. I just got a second one in terrible shape which I'm beginning to strip for parts to create one new one; my new pet project!

It's a great little instrument; it's basically an electric toy piano.

Pic is the new junker pre-piano, freshly unboxed.

the daily grind

2008-09-16T11:23:00.001-07:00

Business as usual for the time being. Tying up some loose ends before students show up in the middle of next week and all hell breaks loose; an ounce of prevention, as they say!

Trying to get Buchla #3 up and running, it's a mess as you can see. At some point it seems this unit became the dumping ground for any and all random synth modules that might have been floating around, and as such the wiring is total chaos. None of the power supply stuff is really documented, so it's just a matter of testing things until I'm sure I'm not going to fry some priceless 40 year old electronics by turning them on...

By the way, in case there's ever any question about it, always avoid buying the following; switched microphones, switched mic cables (the switches on both will eventually die and the latter will require new connectors, the former will require the switch to be replaced or removed), anything made by Behringer or Planet Waves (rubbish), and any cables at all with jacks that have plastic molded over them - if anything goes wrong with the cable, the whole thing will need to be tossed in the trash. Normally, you could save the jacks to live on in another cable...

Gotta run... pic is of Buchla #3 spilling its guts!

Never underestimate the classic Flea Market

2008-09-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

Amazing luck at an antiques flea market in Alameda on an abandoned Navy base; aside from sundry telephones and a ridiculous tambourine 6" deep, a Rhodes Pre-Piano has surfaced. It's in decent shape, but has a lot of work left to be done on it before it is fully playable. Expect much on the subject in the coming months.

Supposedly the tines in these are made from parts of old clocks, so we'll see how that works out.

Pic is of the piano's innards exposed for all to see! Fun times to be had include a missing tine, broken key, and a couple broken black key caps.

Bank robbery is punishable by twenty years in federal prison.

2008-09-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

Laying low for a bit, getting ready for the big push at the start of the school year. The shop seems quiet now, but no matter how well I prepare, everythign will certainly break on the first day of school! :)

Pic is of vintage testing equipment in my shop at work.

Labor day: a day of anything but.

2008-09-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

Today's a holiday here in the States, and I've never quite known why. I guess we just need to celebrate how much work we do over the rest of the year. The Romans, of course, had every other day off.

Spent the day as any good holiday should be spent; buying vintage phones and phone equipment from a wonderful gentleman who I met online. And hanging out with friends. And restuffing a 1953 office chair. And, well, in rehearsal.

The fella who sold me gear today (including the middle two units in the photo) offered me some excellent tips on refinishing phones, involving a Armor All Ultra Shine and an ethyl alcohol solution, which I'm excited to try out. I'm wondering if they might work just as well on effects pedals...

The beginning of the school year approacheth, so it won't be long before the workshop is filled with gear, and my inbox is filled with requests for new equipment to be installed. Our concert and jazz band tour has been postponed until the winter quarter this year, so I can put off maintenance on the road boxes until winter break, so I have time to do more organizational tasks that will make my life much easier through the course of the year. Hopefully, smooth sailing.

Pic is of four different lineman's handsets, as they developed through the ages. The middle two have special alligator clips with spikes that can be used to pierce telephone wire at any point to get a signal.

So you really think we need the bass?

2008-08-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

Lots of goings on around here. I recently bought a broject bass from Moe! Staiano (!) and took apart another junk bass for some parts to get it completed. Still to do; replacing the nut and finding a bridge. It's a fretless, in my favorite configuration; pbass deluxe, which involves a p-bass pickup and a jazz bass bridge pickup.

More vintage phone finds, including a bizarre old Erricson phone designed to sit on its dialing end, actuating the flash-hook with its own weight; as soon as you pick it up - dialtone! Also, a '53 Western Electric 500C; all original, except for the outer casing. It is extremely common for these phones to have parts swapped out, as they were built to be repaired (as opposed to replaced, like modern equipment).

pic is Jaymar toy piano with the guts exposed! When I originally opened this up, it had a high end action problem which turned out to be due to an acorn lodged between the top key and the casing.

Urei good person!

2008-08-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

Organizing equipment around the home studio for a bevy of performances this weekend. Always things to solder and repair. Also going through old outboard gear that's been floating around the department at work unnoticed, probably for decades at this point, including some Valley People gear, etc. Mostly rackmount stuff, but included an 8 channel mixing console with more small indicator lamps than most modern 32 channel boards (also about the same weight!)

I reworked the action on a Jaymar 2.5 octave toy piano a couple weeks back, and All My Pretty Ones be using it in performance on Saturday, that's to be looked forward to. It always amazes me how musical things like these can be, despite being intended as toys with no professional aspirations.

picture is of two Urei parametric EQs, model 545; one of them serial # 545!

More Cable!

2008-08-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

Most devices other than computers nowadays aren't designed with user interface in mind, such as the stereo receivers installed in the stereo systems we have in the classrooms of our music department; while it's nice for the non-tech savvy among us to see a row of buttons for all of the input options, it is not so nice that the "Tape 2" button works differently from the rest of them, activating a "tape monitor" function that re-routes the output of the amplifier through the tape 2 send regardless of any other buttons you might choose to press, until you press it again. I now have the tape 2 sends plugged into the tape 2 returns, so if the button is pressed, nothing happens. Nothing like good old fashioned ingenuity.

Lined up our polytone amplifiers and swapped parts until two of them worked completely. The only non-working amplifier left in the department is the Fender Bassman 100 head that someone pulled the tubes out of a couple years ago and somehow blew up the power switch (!). That's being outsourced soon, pending beauraucracy.

Pic is of polytone amps lined up after testing. Cheers!