About a year ago, I recorded a few songs for a band in Waco. Since a couple of the guys are old friends of mine, and since I hadn't recorded any other bands ever before, and since they didn't want too much, I think they paid about $100 plus gas and food. We set up and recorded the songs live as a group in about 3 days. Those were the days.

Fast forward, this time when they called, I suggested that we work harder and record material for an album. Last time the songs were just uploaded to myspace, and it helped get the word out, but a sellable album will be much more beneficial. So, I drove to waco last night, and we're about to start scratch tracks and metronomes in an hour or two.

I'll post a gear list later.
Last year's recordings: The Autumn Lights MySpace

Okay, this is day five of actual recording. We skipped a day so I could go home and get sick. So far, we've tracked drums, cellos, pianos, and guitars. After tracking pianos, we discovered some tuning issues, so we'll be retracking on a newly tuned piano. Also, the cello was out of tune a little on a couple of songs.

This is a lot of work since we're recording in different places. Drums were recorded at the drummer's loft, as was the cello. Piano will be recorded in the pianist's kitchen on a baby grand. I'll post some photos later.

Pianos are done. Bass tracks may or may not be done. We're waiting to listen on more systems.

I guess a gear list is in order:

PC-
Windows XP sp2
Athlon x64 3000+
1Gb Ram
200Gb SATA HD - wavs
60Gb IDE - Programs, etc
Samplitude v8 Pro

1 Firepod - Rental

2 Oktava 319 - Joly modded
4 Shure PG58
2 Sennheiser e835 - Rental
1 MXL 603
1 Nady CM90
1 Altec 639B - Ancient ribbon mic
1 Audio Techic Kick mic

2 JBL Control 1 mini monitors

I know this is not a great list, but it has been surprisingly sufficient.

Scratch guitars





That's me on the right. The drummer was in class, so the guitarist was playing around.
This is the drummer's loft.

9 to 10' ceilings are good for guitars.

Only the Firepod can handle the stress of a 44 oz. Diet DrPepper.


This is the pianist's apartment kitchen.

Note to self:

New Tube preamp

I think i've mentioned before that I work at an old AM radio station. We have quite a bit of cool vintage gear, most of which has little use for recording. About a week ago, I spotted a device in the rack that had "Mic" & "line" knobs. I had been drooling over preamps for a while and was excited that this might be a tube preamp that I could use. I asked my boss about it, and long story short, he gave it to me and suggested that I use the tube tester to find some good tubes from our old stock-pile. JACKPOT!!! I had to find the tube tester and the manual, and I already knew where the tubes were. After about 2 hours of digging, testing, and trashing tubes, I was in business. I also had to reconnect the xlr mic input which had been snipped, but not removed. The line input isn't there. I'm going to have to figure out which parts only served the tape function (this was part of a reel-reel machine) and I'll be adding phantom power and hopefully phase reversal. I also would like to try making that line in a 2nd mic input, and find a way to send it to its own output. Imagine...my first dual tube pre!

The Timeline Post records again

After a long stale period of waiting for our engineer/producer to finish other projects, (why do these types have trouble saying "no?"), my band, The Timeline Post, decided to take a swing at finishing up the cd at home. With my newfound preamp, I was at least ready to get her out of the nest. Also, before we tracked guitars, I stopped by BAM's course for some electric guitar advice. Wow. that combination is lethal. I'm very excited about posting some new clips & pics soon.

CONCERTONE PICTURES





These are the meter light bulbs that I need to replace:


The folks at Gearslutz are being pretty helpful. Info on Concertone is rare.

That is pretty effing shibby, if you ask me. What kind of tubes are in that thingy there? Wait. Mever mind. 12AX7. Says so on the circuit board. I'll of course be waiting for some examples of this beast in action!

The Timeline Post - Sweet & Sour

Tubes:
12AX7
12AT7
6X4
12BH7

If anyone knows where to find a list of tube name definitions, please let me know. The letter at the end is the region/location the tube was made, right? And everything in front of that is gobblygook to me. Maybe they teach these things in college.

Thanks.

Not exactly. I know that, under the american standard for tube names

-The first number(s) = heater voltage
-Letters = what tube it is...

As you can see from the 12A_7 series of tubes that they are all very similar in terms of construction...which is why in many circuits you can pop an AX for an AT, AY, or AU.

I dont know what the letters themselves designate...you'd probably have to do some more research for that...and I don't know where to look...

thanks.
searching for "tube nomenclature" in Google turns up almost nothing.

Anyway, I'm building a set of links. It's more of a note-to-self than anything else.

http://www.tubedepot.com/whisbipo.html

Concertone Update:

I had been having trouble with the Source/Tape pot giving me noise. It was painful to realize that some of my guitar tracks had been tainted with so much crackling that I wanted to cry. Last night, that pot and I fought it out. I won. I bypassed it with some trial and error, and I'm enjoying much less noisy signals.

I am still getting some noise that I suspect comes from old caps or transformers.

I am learning how to read schematics thanks to a long list of symbols and definitions. I also learned how to check resistors, and I'll be learning how to check caps and other stuff.

I was thinking yesterday, I wonder how much more I would be learning if I was in college for this. With all the free info on the web, and a few willing mentors, would college be worth the money? I can't say "no," but I'm getting too good a deal.

Reformatted the program/windows disk overnight. ughhhhh...

quote:

Originally posted by Discolightning:
Concertone Update:

I had been having trouble with the Source/Tape pot giving me noise. It was painful to realize that some of my guitar tracks had been tainted with so much crackling that I wanted to cry. Last night, that pot and I fought it out. I won. I bypassed it with some trial and error, and I'm enjoying much less noisy signals.

I am still getting some noise that I suspect comes from old caps or transformers.

I am learning how to read schematics thanks to a long list of symbols and definitions. I also learned how to check resistors, and I'll be learning how to check caps and other stuff.

I was thinking yesterday, I wonder how much more I would be learning if I was in college for this. With all the free info on the web, and a few willing mentors, would college be worth the money? I can't say "no," but I'm getting too good a deal.

I'll pretty much lay odds that unless the transformers are damaged terribly, the noise you are getting is from old, dry caps. I would think that if a tranny were damaged to the point that you were hearing it...it'd be so catastrophically damaged that you'd probably be running into issues with it blowing things up rather than just making a weird noise. But that's more a hunch than anything else. Lord knows I've been wrong before!

Recapping Instructions

You might talk to these guys http://www.analogdomaininc.com/.

I talked to them about some of the Berlant / Concertone preamps one time before I believe, or maybe it was on re-working a power supply.

Anyway, these guys seemed really helpful - something about the old preamps and limited bandwidth - forget what the story is but these guys can steer you in the right direction.

quote:

Originally posted by Discolightning:
If anyone knows where to find a list of tube name definitions, please let me know. The letter at the end is the region/location the tube was made, right? And everything in front of that is gobblygook to me. Maybe they teach these things in college.

Thanks.

Disco, sorry it comes rather late but you may find this website helpful-

Cheers!