neumann EQ

A modified 492 equalizer built in a 3U box. 10K:10K transformers on output. This is from an old german module, but I hate fiddling on those small knobs, so I had to build something bigger.

The Analag Poorman Fairchild 670

Built upon the silent:arts pcbs, and separate boards to stabilize the heaters. It sounds nice and different than the other vari-mu compressors I´ve tried. After this picture was taken I stuffed even more metal between and around the transformers (especially the first one T1), and moved them to a 45 degrees angle towards each-other. Which gave better noisespecs. One day I hope to P2P a real 670

6As6 tube injector

These electronic projects are just getting more and more fun for each build! I´m hooked and actually addicted to this stuff now. No way out. must.... build ...more...agh...bzzzss-.....zap!

A tool for getting some life and soul into samples or a bit of tub'ish harmonics into tha tracks. This is a clone of a more famous tube distortion, but the schematics can and will not be shared. sorry. have to keep these papers for my-selves. anyways, it functions as a tape-emulation, but with two 6AS6 tubes for stereo. 10K:10K transformers on both in and output. stepped attenuators and a Voltage Regulator Stabilizer Tube in the PSU. Mostly wima caps in the audio chain. They gave a more "crispy" sound than the other caps I tried. By the way, you just can't go wrong with Wimas.

dual LA-2a with switchable input iron - 1:1 and 1:9

A DUAL LA2A

TRIDENT EQ

Homemade Trident EQ based on the kickass S80 series

thanks to PeterC (!) and to all the the prodigy-pro guys

philicorda

And this is a Philicorda organ. You can get them pretty cheap on ebay these days. They have a fuckin cool spring reverb. It is mono, and it says spiong, but spiongs can be ok too, especially if you are into spaghetti westernish dessert guitars. See, on each side of the keyboard there, I drilled holes for extra jack-input and utputs - to be able to play directly into the spring-reverb- blocking the organ.

studer 169 upbrush

Salute to passionate audio engineers all around the world! Guess what? I found a 10channel Studer 169 at a flea marked. Covered in sand and trash. The electrolytes and some of the film-caps were no good. Hope to test it on an upcoming mix here at the Wrongroom ...real soon.

A supergreat source for servicemanuals, mods and other interesting documents can be found on studers ftp. ftp://ftp.studer.ch/Public/Products/Mixing_Analog/169-269/

The pre-amps sounds absolutely stunning, just brilliant!, both clean and overdriven. Kinda like API desks? This desk will be on every mix from now on, in some way or another.

I did almost every mod documented in the papers from studer. The insert-outs were moved to after- the filters, mute and faders - so that each channel can be used separately in a mix.

PULTEC MIDTONE EQ

LAWO & SRPP HAND IN HAND,

New build. Two MEQ5 equalizers in one! Both sounds cool, and very different from each-other. The LAWO is a slightly modded DV973/3 board. (Had to change a few resistors to get the same gain as the SRPP). Had some troubles with hum, but some unexplainable experimental grounding-cabling removed most of it. The power-toroid was put in an external box. And I had to swap the 3K3 2W resistor into a 20K to get the correct voltages on the PSU part of the SRPPboards
The eq-inductors are from Sowter
Under the large caps, there are 560K bleeder resistors
The AC/DC PSU for the LAWO is from JLM. it takes the 12VAC to 24VDC

DIY 33609

A Neve 33609 is born. 10000 thanks to Igor (tech-genius) for the pcbs and for all the group-diy guys! Got me some old Belclere trannys on the inputT1 & int.T2 and Carnhills on the output. Aiai, I still cannon believe how unbelievable cool it sounds, and how veritable it is.

behold, the almighty Thor

Been up all night making a fxpedal. Found the case at a local market, and I just had to fill it with something meaningful. At runoffgroove.com I found pcb layout and schematics for a pedal they call 'Thor'. Which they claim is a Marshall 100W Super Lead adapted for use as a stompbox.

Hohner Pianet / clavinet DUO

This is the Hohner/Pianet Duo. It has never sounded any good, just irritatingly dull. Something had to be done. Added a booster and an EQ before the output. The pianet sounds more aggressive now, and the clavinet-parts actually sounds like a clavinet.

two new pots (boost vol and eq) :

delaybonanza

got the case and the pcbs from some crazy circuit-bending kids on ebay a few years ago. And it's been with me on every concert ever since. Done quite a bit of soldering work on it. Had to stabilize the circuit and make it more predictable.

homebuilt vacuum tube compressor

Fuck I'm starting to get fat from sitting here doing electronics all day. So I decided that I'd rather spend some time on an update than soldering and crying, picking at the scabs around my genitals. Here is my new home assembled compressor. Sidechain for lowend and saturation control build in. Thanks to everyone at the prodigy-pro forum for valuable info and inspiration

fuse

When a tube blows or a rectifier diode goes west - something will get burned before the fuse reacts. This is a pic from inside my mesaboogie - which blew on the last Cloroform tour. We've actually been using it on the drumset. One mic over the bassdrum, and straight into the amp. The fuse should have been 1.5A, but we had a 5A in there or something... kaboom.

yeah recapping man

damn, how important it is for musicians and studio owners to know how to recap. I honestly didn't know how much diffenence it could do. If you wanna take it further than just recapping, and are looking for a well written electicity-book, I would recommend a book called “Tab elecronics : GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING ELECTRICITY AND ELECTRONICS”. This is the first book that I really enjoyed reading, and that finally made me understand the concept of good biasing among other things.

today, I worked on my Fender Twin. After recapping, it felt like the cleanest Fender, most beautiful amp, ever. If you're into vintage instruments and stuff, then you have to get comfortable heating that soldering iron.

and here's a pic of my recapped ol' Peavey Classic. Didn't have 200uF caps for the PSU, so I put two 100uF in parallel. The springs and the depth-tremollo in the old peaveys are extremely cool.

oh, When I record 4x10 or 4x12 cabinets, I often disconnect all but one speaker. Depends on the song off course, but generally the sound gets cleaner and easier to work on when it only comes from one speaker instead of four.

RAYTHEON RL-10

The tolerance for electrical-noise is low in the world of filmmusic (where I do most of my studiowork) so if I'm gonna use old equipment, then they need to be pretty clean sounding. The hum in my Raytheon RL-10 has been growing quite annoying, and therefore it hasn't been used much. So I gave it a shot. Here's some pics of how it came out. All the parts that could be changed, was changed with newer and better parts. The rotary switches was cleaned with a supersonic cleaner and all the cables was changed and got earth-shield.

BACK :

FRONT :

KEYTARS

The pics of the Weiltmeister Basset in the last post caused quite a stir. So here's some other pics for you keytarslutz. Om tuesday (March 4), I'm gonna play on a show in Trondheim (samfundet) with a choir+, .....yes, me on keytars... haha. 60 singing men plus keytar! ohboy

weltmeister basset

The Weltmeister Basset. It was used by dance-bands in east-germany- probably late 60'ties. Sounds pretty cool, and it was originally made for bass-lines. Haven't decided yet what preamp I'll build for it yet. But for the left-hand button, I'd like to build in some kind of "wahwah" filter.

mini-celesta

moog liberation

gonna do a Jan Hammer tribute performance in about a month from now, so the Keytar needed a shapeup. For now I just cleaned out the dirt, and changed a rotary pot + the sliderpots. But it will need a full re-wiring before I can take it with me on a longer tour. The wires are so rusty. Found the sliderpost on ebay. Did a search for moog sliders, and there they were. perfect.

homemade summing unit

Using it for summing my external FX's, together with a neve 8816 - Based around a Neumann 475-2a.

AMS RMX16

My adventures in the exiting world of audio-electronics continues with an upbrush in my AMS rmx16 - the all time favorite reverb, ever!

I've searched and looked for the schematics for the AMS rmx16 for two years now. It seems like it was never released. So I just had to jump in, and see what could be done with my limited knowledge. After cleaning the unit for old stuff and sticky glue (thanks to degreaser)
After cleaning, I changed almost all the capacitors. probably around 50! Found some nasty tantalums in there plus some really rusty ribbons. Then I cleaned the buttons, swapped the battery.

look! new tantalums!

Some of the opamps were changed too, but I don't think it made any difference in the sound.

finished! - Got the new ribbons from www.studioelectronics.biz.

wooden box for mics

here's my new wooden storage box for my mics. Previously they were in separate suitcases. It's much easier to have them simultaneously accessible at the same place, and off course more practical when you need to test different mics on different instruments. Through the last productions I've become a HUGE fan of ribbon mics.

DuKane Limiter (model 2A80B )

It was time to try to make an old stocked DuKane limiter work again.  It was unfortunately impossible to find schematics it, so by trial and error I did some mods, and swapped out most of the old components. Here's what I did : 1) All caps swapped, and the big 0.47 filmcaps was changed to smaller types, to adjust attack and release to normal lengths. 2) Installed new transistors on input and output 3) new grounding 4) new PSU parts 5) The 5K trimpot in the compressor psb was moved to a new pot on the tront where the channel2 was before. 6) The socalled noise-gate was dropped (the psb to the left) 7) The limiter on/off button and the ratio button on the back was dropped cause they did nothing good. 8) shelded cables on the audio-cables 9)installed stereo-jack in and outputs

after "fixing"  (click to enlarge):

AND THE RESULT OF MY STRUGGLING AND AMATEURISH FIXING : Well,.... though the sound got cleaner, I dissembled the DuKane again after one week of testing. There was an snap-sound in the compressor-attack that made it too uninspiring to work with. Hopefully, I learned something. This one goes in the trash. What a shitty compressor, what a waste! 

CUBE60-BASS

Colleagues and other musicians are asking me why the f*** I spend so much time studying electronics and modding my gear, instead of doing what I should be doing, namely to make music! But to me there's just no difference. The process of making a unit sound better, or whatever effect, is just another side of making music. Beside I'm more conformable on stage when I know how my instruments work, and how they are built.

Todays DIY project was to fix an old bass-amp that I haven't used for ages. It's a Roland cube60-bass. It's a soft sounding amp, but for bass - especially in studio-use, is an advantage. The pink textile on the front is my fault...gulp. what can I say.



Here's what I did to the pcb : As a mod, I changed the uF values on the mid-tone EQ, and went for a bigger pot (250K). Then I swapped out the old caps, and found a stupid D22A diode, which I changed for a more normal type. don't remember exactly, think it was a 4148 diode. The grounding was tied up, new jackinputs and new caps.

closed amp

homemade versatile amp-in-a box. Runs on 9V and can be used as a FX-pedal, a re-amp box or a send/return bus, etc... The attached microphone runs on phantom power. The mic was moved around, and is mounted where I thought it sounded cool. I tried it on some brass stuff here the other day, and it sounded like an aggressive guitar. The sound of the saxophone suddenly sounded hip-

ASHLY SC-66a EQ

Now this is a special EQ! When something needs an edge, or some lo-fi eq'ing, I might reach for this one. It's rough on brassstuff, samples, and especially guitar. It 's got a notch filter from hell. They come pretty cheap these days, so I've bought two.

With the orginal caps in it, the frequenzies that I usually played arund with was 2.0 - 2.5 KHz and 90-120 Hz

I've been working on one of mine for quite some time, experimenting with different caps. Plus I swapped all the 4558 opamps with 5532's. It is now more versatile than before, sounds warmer and more organic. The other one I've just kept the 4558 opamps. They distort in a compressed way when driven hard, like a good overdrivebox - only limited to a sertain frequenzy, which is one of the things I like to try when I use it.

edit / UPDATE warning : the 5532s gave too much gain, so I swapped back to 4558 on the freq-pcbs. Later I plan to get rid of the bigger film-caps that I installed- cause they made the sound to eh....bloppy/boomy in the low-midrange. Also on the try-out list is to test out the OPA2604AP which are supposed to kick-ass!

AM864 mod

Here's what I did to my old fav, the AM684 federal limiter.

As you'll see, I've put four controls on the front, instead of only one. If you own one of these, I'd recommend you to do the same. It makes a big diference in the way you'll end up using this fabulous compressor! They are ratio, input attenuation, and threshold and output-leveler. They are actually not Rato and threshold in a traditional sense. I see them more as tone shapers. but on the front I choosed to label them as opposite from the original. So the limiter threshold is my ratio pot. makes more sense.

All the caps were swapped out, off course, and some of the rotten old cables changed.



The last page of the instruction manual is funny. It's got a list of the ten best ways to destroy the unit if you suspect that it will fall into enemy hands. explosives are recomended.

FX router

An on-stage effect router for external vocal-delay/distortion FX's. Nothing special, just 4in and four out hooked to the joystick through some resistors, and a true-bypass.

On the first concert, it kept falling down from my keyboard to the stagefloor. The solution? Make it heavier. tied a stone inside (haha).

MS20 FILTERCLONE

The allmighty MS20 filter (KORG35).

the orginal plan was to build a stereo filter and put it in a 19" rack. Hopefully I'll get to that later. But somebody should deffinitively try it. Maybe in combination with a BigMuff in there too - switchable? Here's my portable- version 1



The Q filter and the freq filter was combined in to one dual stereo linear pot.

The VU meter shows the intensity on what's going on.





Got to have some nicer graphix done also, but that's boring work. o,well.

TAPCO 4400 Stereo Spring Reverb

Todays project was to remove some of the noise from my Tapco 4400. It's a stereo-spring-reverb with character and eq. Here's what I ended up doing :

Handled the grounding first and wired grounding wires to one star spot close to the power-entrance to remove hum. There was several potential ground-loops, so I also removed the screws that made contact between pcb-ground and chassis.

Next, I put in +/- 18V-regulators and bigger caps in the powersupply, plus a 100nF filtercaps to ground. didn't hear any difference, but a cleaner DC power doesn't hurt.

The VU meter looks cool, but unfortunately it brought distortion back to the audio (on one side), so I decided to disconnect it. Maybe there's a short somewhere to the audiochain.

Last, but not least, the caps were changed and the 5K sliders was changed to 10K sliders. The unit dates back to 1976, and the connectors needed a good cleaning. The Tapco4400 is a brutal kind of spring reverb. And with a strong boosted input - it goes SPIOOOONG. With the 4band EQ you can shape it's sound, and since the actual springs are so big, it is mainly used here for extreme reverbs and 'creative'-effects. - I dig it on perc stuff, woodblocks etc. and dessert-guitars

DEVICES AND DESIRES

This is the place where I'll share with you my own crappy recording-techniques and tech ideas.

My albums are recorded in traditional ways, with normal procedures. Most technicians know this stuff better than I'll ever will. But I thought I could mention some of the stuff that I like to do that might not be that traditional. Here's how I formed the sound on the "Music for moviebikers" album plus some gearporn. Thank you for looking, and I hope you enjoy what you find here!

DIY BOLT -

If you have any electronics ability, modifying your own gear can be a very satisfying experience.

You don't need to be an expert to crack open your equipment and start making changes. You basically need the ability to solder and desolder neatly, and you should be comfortable reading schematics. With very little electronics experience, I've been able to modify several pieces of equipment.

tip1 - what's that sound?

There are tons of pichshifting going on in these mixes. A normal procedure would be to pichshift an octave down (-12), then remove the artificial top and bottom with EQ, and then run it through some fxs. Like an external amp and some reverb.

This is a superb grip to try on accordions! If you want bigger or darker percussion sounds, like bigger cymbalsounds, pitchshifting will do the trick.

gear manipulations

G-SPOT SPRING FLANGER- cheap - flangers have a tendency to lay itself on top of the sounds, instead of blending in they often sound superficial. I have installed a small spring-reverb into my Flanger. I grabbed the springs form two mini guitaramps and stringed them inside. It makes my job more exiting to create alterations of everyday instruments. Is there anything more joyful than a huge, massively over-engineered effects pedal covered in LEDs, tiny switches and retro synth knobs? There are many reasons people choose to modify commercial musical gear. Upgrading internal components like capacitors and op-amps can clean up the overall sound. Likewise, providing a cleaner power supply can reduce hum and increase headroom, and help add fullness to the low end. Adding extra controls and patch points to an analog synthesizer can yield a much more expressive instrument, and allow you to interconnect it with your other gear.


SUGARDADDY 3000

Is a combination of a wahwah, a delay and an boss overdrive
pedal. Circuit bending is the art of ripping apart electronic toys and turning them into sound/music-making devices. The process of circuit-bending involves taking cheaply available electronic soundmaking toys and adding extra wires, knobs and switches to make new connections between parts of the internal circuitry and chips.

DIY - NOBODY'S PERFECT

Here's my hometweaked amps. They are not exactly "glassy clean" but has nice harmonics and a blues type distortion when cranked. The high gain channel picks up from there, going into heavy overdrive. So far I like em best with 12AX7-12AT7-KT66 tubes. Sometimes they serve a surprisingly pleasing and unmistakable sound quality, and other times they sound like dust. The one on your right has 4 jack inputs. I like to use it live as a selector between fuzzy&feedy vocalmics.

Vampire 6000 and the Ghia

What we have here (right) is an analog /delay/echo device. This device is will give me weird crazy chorus and uncontrollable controllable feedback.

On the Moviebikers cd, all of the gitarparts played with a bow went through here it's also some of the saw parts and the theremin parts.

Here's the homemade Vampire6000 controller. It's connected to the trigger inputs of the Eventide H8000FW. Different parameters on my favorite presets can be turned on and of here. Including tap-tempo for delays.

in control with sudden squeeze

The pumping compressor that you can hear on some of my songs, is made with my Bigmuff. You can blend in a fuzz, into the compressor, and make pretty cool effects. Its kind of difficult to the settings right.The Sustain control optimizes the long sustain with just the right amount of harmonic distortion. I like to keep the sustain close to zero.

The music on the album is played very dynamic. I wanted the album to kind of flow, so I used a lot of compressors both at the pre-amp stage, the mix and in the mastering. At the mixing stage, they were mostly used as limiters.

good mic meet bad mic

In addition to the good mics, I always like to experiment with additional mics that I record on separate tracks. They all sound crap, but together with effects and hard eq'ing, they are valuable tools.

The mic you'll never own

This is a Norwegian prototype condenser mic, made from high-tech military radar components. It sounds a littlebit like AKG C535 (but better). I used it on most of the east- European string instruments. It's called SYMFON BC-10 and it was developed and made by Thorleif Holm-Glad. Unfortunately, this great mic never got in production. Not sure why, but one of the reasons must be that it would cost a small fortune.

noise out

Old instruments and dippedutts have a tendency to make a lot of noise. I'm not really afraid of some noise, but I removed quite a lot of it on this album. It just comes with the territory of mixing digitally, cause everything is just so cleansounding. If you're gonna jump into the re-amp heaven, then there's no way you'll survive without a good noiseremoving plug-in.

what sound is that - part2

There are some accoustic stringinstruments on the album. traditional instruments, followed by other more different sounding toys, like the Dulcimers, chimedulcimer, psaltery, mandolin, el-sitar, lut, harp, lapharp, autoharp. The Norwegian Harding-fiddle is used on two songs. They were all treated with little respect of the original sound in the mix, and often taken through amps and effects.

Glissando melody

left : This is a picture of my diddey bow. We put a small mic close to the string, played with a bottleneck and ran it into the Vampire6000. Put a mic into it, and play near an amp, so that you get a little feed. Right is the real thing. My beloved Tannerin.

HARMOPHONE

This is my Harmophone. It makes sound with a windmachine blowing through its whistles. We didn't actually use it much on the album, cause the motor made too much noise. But you have to agree it looks pretty nice

keyboardroom

What you see (right) is a Clavinet duo/pianet ACE Hammond organ, toypiano (baby grand piano) and a Rhodes. Clavinets and Rhodes are recorded through Fender Twin and Fender Bandmaster. The organ went to a leslie 825. ( organ to the LEFT is called a "Hitorgan". ).

keyboard closet

I rarely record keyboards directly in to the console. They tend to sound better through a speaker. Tubeamps often doesn't work with signals from keyboards/synths.

I think I've found a pretty clever solution on how to work on keyboards in my studio. An SM57 and 2X15" is always rigged up at the bottom of the closet, and all the keyboards are routed to it. Makes it fast and easy to get going, when inspiration strikes. The signal is amplified with a modded Roland Revo30 w/a DIY on/offswitch on the leslie effect. These are fantastic amps for keyboards.

They are all linked together with CV/trigger. Fron the top : TEISCO400, microkorg, Hitorgan, Korg SH-5, ARP solist, Korg Monopoly, Circuitbent Philicordia and a Moog liberation front.

Waves Of Infinite Harmony

At the moment, I’m really into springreverbs. I collect them, and I’ve bought both organs and amps, just to get a hold on those springs. I’ve got them in all sizes, and I’m dreaming of building a big spring-reverb chamber, where I can route the signal into the springs that will make the best fit with the mix.

If you like the sound of a trembling springreverb, you should check out the reverbs in the old houseorgans. The ones that hangs in a wire are the coolest. On my Philicorda organ, I have installed extra inputs and outputs, so that I can use the springreverb separately. I’ve used it on everything from vocals to drums.
Here's a picture of the inside of my RA-500. Notice the speaker glued on the metalbox in the middle. I did the filmmusic to a 70'ties inspired spagetthiwestern film once, and I ended up placing sending deep sounds through the metal into the stereo springs. It was so cool, that I installed it permanently with a jack-input for the speaker on the front.

Here's a picture of the front of the unit. Four additional jack inputs, going to strange circuits making the springs go bananas.

oh and, The old trick with running the sound through a piano while holding some keys down still works - if you are up for it. That way, you can play and extent the harmonies in the reverb.

liberator

left, Rolf Harris stylopphone. right - a pic of my moog liberator. Two instruments that look nice, but aren't used much. At least not on this album.

re amping

Re-amping always ends up playing a big role in the mixing stage.. A roundtrip out of the DAW, through a colorful amp, in a nice sounding room and back, can do wonders to the sound. Not only have you gotten a more characteristic sound, but it will probably be easier to place in the mix afterwards, either alone, or blended together with the original track. I might re-amp anything from the reverb-bus, drums, strings etc. And you can re-amp a sound many times also. There are no rules.

I have a few favorite speakers that I know pretty well, and that I can mic up if a special characteristic is needed. On the “music for Moviebikers” album, I used an old gramophone speaker to help the melodyinstruments stand out. I might have gotten a similar result by adding some top, and make a distortion-bus, but not as lively.

When I use softwaresynths, they are often routed to an outboard effect while recording. I’m a little freaked out by the thought that thousands of musicians sit with the same samples, and the same software as me. That’s one of the reasons why I need to put some extra energy into making the sounds “mine”.

When you're re-amping (taking your sound through an external speaker) try to put a D.I. box the wrong way before the amp. Take the signal in the opposite direction through the output first. Sometimes it makes the amp sound better.