some cheap studio purchases that don’t suck

/in /by

Since most musicians are on tight budgets these days, I thought I’d share a few things that I use constantly, sound great, and don’t cost much.

Though the Purple Audio Biz MK mic pres and Action compressor don’t technically belong here as they are high end stuff, the price is great and they truly rock my world. Notice the Sweet Ten rack/power supply for 500 series modules. I had originally bought a brand new API Lunchbox. It was noisy. I returned it and got another. It too was noisy. I bought the Purple. It was silent. Enough said. While these are not exactly cheap, good mic pres are essential and they are very reasonably priced for what they are.

The little Radial Pro RMP re-amper box on top of the Purples costs $100 and buys you as much external processing as you have amps and stompboxes. Much loved it is.

 

My pair of Oktava MK-012s modified by Michael Joly at Oktavamod. Fully great for so many things. If you don’t already have KM84s or Schoepps or some other very expensive SDC pair, consider these. They’re amazingly good sounding with the mod.

Here’s another recession-busting gem. Same guy, Michael Joly, does a serious mod on this el-cheapo Apex large diaphragm ribbon mic and makes it kick some serious booty. I’ve had it up against Royers and chosen the Apex. Nothing against Royers, they’re wonderful, but this thing cost me 1/5 of a Royer and it’s not worse, just different. It’s my electric guitar cab mic of choice.

This tuner gets used every day and is the best one I’ve ever found by a wide margin. Tune by ear to the little speaker and set it by microtones to the track you’re matching. Beauty and joy! The company is Intelli. Made for the classical market but the rest of us can benefit from it’s well thought out design. Also has temperature/humidity/metronome/audio out/chromatic 1/4″ input. I got mine HERE. My brother owns this shop and I guarantee satisfaction.

This brand new EH delay pedal is dirty nasty lovely analog yum yum. It has a tap tempo, foot pedal control, and toggles through musical subdivisions for dubby bliss.

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That’s all for now.

 

UPDATE: 12.23.2001

 

I’m sad to say that my beloved Intelli IMT-301 actually kind of sucks. It was great. Then it stopped working properly. Nice idea, poorly made.

Making Media

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I just spent 4 days at the IsOkOn with D. James Goodwin tracking the second Media record. It is a pleasure and a blessing to be in a band with such talented and good natured people: David Baron, Gail Ann Dorsey, and Zack Alford. Mr. Goodwin at the helm made everything relaxed and easy. For the first record, I engineered and played at the same time and it is somewhat stressful to do it like that. This time I just got lost in the music, knowing that Dan had everything under control and was making it sound great. Now it’s time for editing and mixing. I’ll be doing that for a while and then I’ll post some music here for sure. Meanwhile, here are a few pictures.

Drum setup

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mannequin head is listening to the drum with little mics shoved into her ears. That signal is being tweaked and freaked and variously processed by D. James Goodwin to his heart’s content while we play. So we get a surprise process track live.

keyb porn 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

keyb porn 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little synth/key porn for all my friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gail & Zack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of my stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

things to buy before new monitors

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When you’re setting up your home studio, the quantity of things to buy can be overwhelming and confusing. The gear can be addictive and it’s all expensive. Here is my unsexy list of things to spend time and/or money on before getting new monitors, mics, pres, plugins, etc.

1. Sound treatment of your room, especially bass traps.

– I can’t stress the importance of this enough. If you can’t hear properly, you can’t make the decisions which will get you the best results out of whatever gear you have. Better to have a bad signal path and a good listening environment than the other way around. Of course, once you have a good listening environment it will expose the problems of your signal path, but at least then you can make intelligent choices about what to buy next. There is a wealth of information on how to do this on the web. I will talk more about how I did it in a future post but in the meantime research and take it seriously!

2. Sound treatment of your room, especially bass traps.

– Ok, that’s just obnoxious. Next…

3. Monitor Stands and Proper positioning

– Now take those crappy monitors and put them on solid isolating stands or mounts and get them away from corners and walls. I made a pair of stands out of plywood filled with sand. Works great and very inexpensive. There are many options out there.

4. A/D and D/A conversion and clock

– Most low to midrange DAW interfaces cheap out on these things very badly. It makes a huge difference when it’s good. Now that you have sound treated your room, you will love hearing the change when you get a better I/O with good solid clock.

5. Mic Pres

– Now it’s time for the sexy stuff. Expensive too. Now that you can hear properly, your fancy new pres will make a real difference.

6. Mics

It’s really good to have a community of recordists and friends with whom you can share mics, pres, and other gear when needed. Most home studios do not need a full compliment of expensive mics every day. You need the choice ones that you use for your specialty and whatever else you can afford. Then when it comes time to track other things, borrow. Chances are that whoever you borrowed from will need the mics you have someday too. This eases the pressure to spend too much money.

I’ll pause here because this list could go on forever, and from here on it is very well-mined territory. I’ve covered the things I feel most people ignore to their detriment so they can get to the mics faster.