Ageing rocker replaced

UPDATE: The faulty rocker switch on the Wharfedale PM600 was prised open (by depressing two lugs either side of the cover the top came of it) and the cause proper was found; one of the two sprung contacts inside had become misshapen over time and that pole was no longer connecting when the switch was in the 'ON' position.

It had been temporarily lighting up the power LED in the mid-range of its switching motion as that was when the contact was pressed fully home, but as soon as this pressure lessened (or was finally removed) the contact failed.

The separated components of the dismantled rocker switch

The rocker section itself - note the lug on the outer right

The removed spring contacts. Problem: different angles

The main body of the switch into which the spring contacts were fitted. The circular pads on all surfaces were still in good condition - not that it mattered, as the entire switch was replaced anyway (a perfect match was conveniently found in the workshop)

This side profile shot shows how the connections at the rear are actually lugs which are principally designed to be plugged into connectors. This is no major problem, although some care had to be taken whilst re-soldering the wires onto them because (if too much heat gets transferred to the spring contacts inside the switch) this can cause warping - and would've effectively put us right back at the start!

Anyway, the new switch is now fully installed and operation has been returned to normal ...

Gratuitous pounding

Ricky laying down the drums for Changeling

A funked-out EF86

For the past several weeks it's been obvious that one of the valves in my cloned VOX AC30 amplifier had gone microphonic; the tell-tale sound (even before tapping them for confirmation) can be heard in the short video clip just below when the amp is first powered up:

Several other problems also began to occur at practice a couple of weeks ago, involving a 'tinkling' sound and general feedback wails which weren't being caused by interference from the guitar's pickups (or at least not by its usual means anyway). Thankfully both of these issues seemed to have been remedied by simply removing the valves and refitting them, so I'm assuming they stemmed from poor socket connections (?) ... You can see in the following photograph how the valves appear to be sitting slightly uneven, indicating likely bad connections with their associated sockets. I'm guessing vibration can cause them to shake loose over time.

The next photo shows the wonky 12AX7's all nicely re-aligned.

The microphonic valve was verified as being the EF86 at the front end of the amp (sitting far right in the above photograph). A simple test to find the valve responsible is to simply tap the valves individually (using a drum stick or similar implement) whilst the amp is on. The normal result of doing this should just be a gentle tapping sound on the glass of the valve itself. However, if a valve has gone microphonic you'll hear the tapping amplified through the speakers. This is demonstrated in the following clip:

The faulty valve has now been removed and I await in the post a pair of Telefunken EF86's (new old stock) which were purchased through an online auction last weekend, and only now beginning to learn about the inner workings of my amplifier, knowledge is minimal and therefore ongoing, my approach simply being to trial various components to see what works and what doesn't.

If nothing else, the old Telefunken tubes at least look the part ...

Rocker switch very much not so ...

With our Wharfedale PM600 powered mixer now into its sixth year, the rocker switch on the front panel has finally started to cause problems and over the last couple of practices we've had trouble powering it up due to the switch's connection intermittently failing. Or rather intermittently being maintained ...

With a little experience in electronics, I decided to open it up to check for any obvious issues with regards the wires leading away from the switch itself. Eight screws (four top and four bottom) that held the PM600 together were undone and the inside electronics and casing simply pulled completely out as a convenient single unit.

I then carefully stripped back the necessary heat-shrink with a scapel to get a better look at the wires inside. Of course, there's no particular concern with these connections breaking because there is only ever minimal stress placed upon them.

Which leads us to the conclusion, namely that everything (somewhat unfortunately!) appeared to be in good order, confirming that the fault itself appears to be within the plastic-encased rocker switch itself. And due to the sheer number of times it's been operated over the years, it would make sense for the failure to relate to this component.

How exactly I get inside this I have no idea though, and I'm guessing that the best solution will actually involve replacing it completely anyway. A brand new component would certainly increase it's reliability at any rate ...

Click Click Click CLUNK ...

As far as recording the actual tracks for this album, and the best means of getting a click track into Rick's brain (taking into account the present absence of Tim's vocal cues), we've finally managed to achieve satisfactory results by simply funneling a previous version of the song directly into some headphones.

This bypasses the need of a traditional click track, which we found to be wrought with problems during the making of the last album. This is because a few songs were found to have subtle, natural rhythm changes (one hellishly frustrating attempt to record over a flat-metronomed version of 'Shaken Partial' was enough to convince us to find another way) and attempting to remedy this within the click track itself seemed a little too mechanical.

A basic run-down of how the last album's drum track was achieved is as follows:

The drums were set up in one room of the house and connected to the PA system, which then gathered all five drum tracks simultaneously before spitting the result at the computer as one single (or mixed-down) track. This meant that it needed to be mixed on the way through of course, and little could be done with it after the fact. The rest of the band stood out in the hallway and played 'silently' into an old 10-track mixing desk which was wired through to the drummer's ears to allow him to play along with us; this is important, as the drummer needs to know where in the hell they are for various fills and changes and whatnot. This method also allowed the natural feel of the songs to be captured pretty convincingly (other issues sullied this a little, but that's a different story) ...

With such previous experience in mind however, this time around, a couple of quick attempts were made to bypass the click track issue by having both Rick and I hearing my guitar through two sets of headphones (the guitar was played into the old 10-Track with the signal being split at the phones jack). The results were mediocre at best due to lacking vocals and lacking volume in general.

Obviously the best click track to use would be a pre-recorded version of the song with all elements and all cues present - and with our penchant for recording each practice, there were plenty of options to choose from.

Once the track to be used had been decided upon (proper tempo, no major gaffs, etc.) the idea was to simply play this on the computer and via headphones have it pounding away in Rick's ears as he laid down the new track over it's old bones. Getting to that stage wasn't quite as straight-forward as envisioned, however, as the distance from PC to drum kit (and up to ear level) was approximately seven metres; a problem further complicated by every cable and patch-lead being mono when stereo was needed in the phones so as to properly block out unnecessary percussive distraction during the live take; nothing to throw you off a drum fill with two of them happening at once!

We eventually got there by temporarily re-arranging the practice space to have all leads stretched to their utmost, as documented by cellphone captures below:

This photo shows the rear of the PC, with the black cable headed to the lower-right being a headphone to RCA connector.

Shown here from the reverse-angle, the PC cable enters this old stereo from the right-hand side of the photo. An old set of 'closed' headphones then exits the front of the stereo and heads directly towards the drum kit.

With little room left to move, we had no option but to actually secure the headphone cord through one of Rick's belt loops so as to keep it away from the kit but

allow it to reach his ears.

Although seeming a little convoluted, the results were excellent and have since inspired us to continue using this method (at least in the short-term). Newer material will probably be recorded in a similar fashion to that of the first album, but for the time being this will more than suffice.

We've since lessened the ordeal somewhat by truncating the distance from PC to stereo to headphone too (though I've yet to take a photo of it) ...

Panned by the critics of knowledge

My initial idea with regards the panning of each individual drum section (all recorded into the desk straight down the centre and panned afterwards during the mixing stage) was characteristically an amateurish approach and documentation has since been found that produces a far better initial result and, by extrapolating the scenario further, a superior end-result also.

Rick's research into this (which actually stemmed from an altogether different issue that'll be discussed in a future post) discovered that one should set the correct panning during the recording process itself, which of course seems obvious when faced with hard copy detailing of such simplicity.

Beginning from zero knowledge though, below were my original ideas of how we'd (eventually) pan the various drum kit components (the information gathered from my best interpretation of a track from The Deftones' album Diamond Eyes whilst sitting with my face buried between two speakers):

My terminology with regards the toms exposes me as no drummer,

but you get the idea.

And above/below are the settings we now have on the desk with all components panned accordingly as they go in: hard left (HL), hard right (HR), or centre. So far we've kept these settings in the final mix too (by effectively re-panning them in the editing software), with the exception of the hi-hat going to 50% left.

Eight heads of the snake

So, on Monday night, with the departure of our vocalist to Peru for a month or so, we finally set about organising the Korg D888 for some serious attempts at recording.

The first task was to unload Rick's Wharfedale KMD-7 drum mic kit and to attach the various pieces around the kit as necessary; one of the major benefits of having clip-ons (as opposed to microphones balanced in and around the place on various stands or dangled on strings from the rafters) being that the microphones won't get knocked and shunted sideways by any errant feet and/or instruments etc. This means that each time we enter the 'studio' there won't be any need to re-measure and re-align any of the mic distances, as they shouldn't ever move; the barest alteration can make an enormous difference ...

In an effort to keep the floor space as tidy and efficient as possible, we're utilising a large snake cable that's been cut and separated at both ends so as to allow the various sockets to reach their appropriate mics. The only issue we had with this was the need to get the KM3s capacitor stick mics above the kit, so we settled on using independent leads hung from the rafters for those.

These stick microphones also provided us some further bother until we realised that phantom power was needed for them to collect any sound; the fact of my having neglected to bring the manual along a major hinderance. With this activated however, we had all eight channels receiving ample input, as verified by the alighted peak meters.

Thursday night was spent tweaking the sounds that we were getting (eg. thickening the kick by adding low end and stripping out some high). Again, the capacitor mics caused us some problems in that even with nothing being played (their associated tracks merely armed) we were getting a whole pile of ambient noise. We eventually just trimmed the hell out of the tracks they were active on (until no ambient activity could be seen on the peak meter at all). Despite our initial concerns though, there was plenty of sound still being collected by them.

After recording several sample beats (playing them back through the PA for purposes of basic critique) and getting the foundation of the sound pretty well sorted, the next step on Monday night will be to actually record a couple of full drum tracks so that the guitar can then be laid over top, which'll hopefully give us a better idea of how and where the drums are going to eventually sit amongst a mix (of sorts).

Gideon's Disease

'Twould appear that straining my left wrist around some atypical chords over the weekend (whilst unnecessarily employing a wide-necked classical guitar) has aggravated a previously minor ganglion cyst, which has since swollen considerably. Admittedly, it's still a decidedly weak specimen when placed in direct comparison with those found on various websites about the place.

Pictured below however, it's the weird 'bump' on my wrist (thumb side). Photographing it properly was inexplicably troublesome too, though perhaps this was simply a case of me wanting the photos to lie in their exaggeration of what wasn't actually there ...

Not quite sure of how best to approach its remedy (or, in lieu of this, minimalisation) but I suspect paying greater attention to my arm/wrist position whilst playing and making alterations as necessary will help considerably.

Incidentally, a new demo, aptly named id=10T (though not purposely so) was evacuated into being during the conjuring of this current ganglion's rage.

Milking a dead horse ...

Video footage, from an entirely different angle and courtesy of an entirely different video camera, has come to light and has thusly now been shared via Youtube. This new footage contains the opening acoustic set of the Wundy gig (23 April, 2010) and can be found here.

And now that the well has run dry with regards this particular gig, next stop: recruiting a new bass player.

Electrical genitals

An issue that was recently brought to light whilst unloading some recent recordings from our multi-track recorder was that the vocals, although occasional buried beneath the sonic surrounds, were actually (and obviously) still there - merely decidedly low in the overall mix. This was easily remedied by simply lifting the affected track within our editing software, making it more prominent when necessary (normally only the first half of each verse) before leaving the remainder relatively untouched.

Of course, when playing live, this luxury quickly vanishes beneath the general fuzz of on-stage noise, and so mooted for trial at our last practice was the idea of attaching a foot pedal to the microphone, effectively returning to us some basic level control. Conveniently, we happened to have a disused Boss DS-1 laying around.

This pedal will intercept a newly purchased Cannon to Cannon lead, which was cut in half to give us the two desired end connections (one for the back of the mic and one going into the PA) plus two newly severed ends that'll have the necessary jacks attached (one for the DS-1 input signal and one for its output).

There's a level setting on the DS-1, which controls the output volume, and (with the applied distortion amounts set to effective zero) we'll hopefully get a simple boosting/de-boosting of the vocals when the pedal is kicked on and off.

Of additional benefit, we'll hopefully also gain the oft-mentioned ability to apply effects to Tim's vocals (most especially within 'Movement Eight' ) ...

A quick Google search for 'replacing XLR with jack' led me to here; a simple diagram showing the standard method of wiring an XLR to a 1/4" TRS (stereo jack plug). I managed to harvest a spare one of these from the workshop, although another one will be needed to finish the job, of course.

To confirm which connections needed to be made and to where, I stuck the multimeter on 'diode test' and followed the wires from the Cannon sockets (numbered 1, 2, 3) to their appropriate ends, listening for a 'beep' whenever a connection was present (as shown above). Once I knew that the shield (the weaved mass of wires surrounding the four actual wires inside the cable) was 1, blue(s) was 2, white(s) was three, it was simply a matter of connecting them all appropriately.

Note: Before soldering the wires into place, ensure that the eventual sleeve is positioned back down the cable (as above), as once you're done, this pulls down to cover the connections and provides a nice finish.

The final two photographs show the end result (albiet of only one cable!)

Whether or not there'll be any complications with this idea when it crosses that all-important line from concept into practice remains to be seen ...

Edit: Turns out that using a stereo jack was actually overkill, because the DS-1 sockets only have two connections and thus support mono only. The basic idea did worked in practice however, though some unwanted 'noise' started to creep in when lifted to the volumes we wanted to achieve. A fix for this new annoyance shall now be worked on ...

The Mixer; facefixer

After recording the drums for our debut album with five microphones syphoned straight into our PA system (the sounds then merely flung at the computer in whatever mixed state we could achieved 'on-the-fly'), it was decided that this time around we'd employ a proper multi-track recorder to do the job, whereby we could then tamper with the results to our heart's content; deepening the kick, lifting the hi-hat, dampening the snare, without each manipulation automatically being applied to every other component of the kit as well.

And so, with this specific task in mind, the purchase of a Korg D888 was commissioned.

The sheerest modicum of knowledge is possessed by the sum of us three with regards recording in this manner however, so there'll be the inevitable difficulties, although my delight of moulding mistakes into justifiable musical expressions is wallowing in frolic at the prospect!

Prior to the departure of our bassist, who possessed a wealth of recording knowledge encompassing the better part of two decades, we (in the collective sense, that is) did actually manage to capture several live recordings of various songs, and I've since managed to extract these from the D888. This was easily achieved and no more drastic than transferring data from one external device to another.

Below is a screenshot of the result (it essentially dumps eight streams of equal length into sequential tracks):

'Twas a positive beginning.

From memory, five tracks were derived from precariously-placed drum mics (kick, hi-hat, snare and rotos, toms, and cymbals), one was the vocal mic going directly in, one caught the bass amp, and the last microphone performed duty in front of the guitar amp. Bleed was present, although it was relatively minor (or at least workably so), and makeshift baffles - actually old office dividers - were used in front of both amplifiers to aid in this prevention.

Also, as a delightful surprise, also found on the mixer were some older, full-band practice runs of two (at the time) brand new songs, 'Under The Table' which has since been smoothed out and played live, and an energetic version of 'Face Down'. This last song, although slated for inclusion on the new album, is not currently being performed due to its ungainly bass-driven structure being irrepressibly hollow at present, so we're certainly glad to have this early rendition for future reference; both from a technical point of view, and one merely divined by interest.

Amassed before the gates they be!

Indeed! The recording of our sophomore album shall soon be embarked upon with gusto, and with our vocalist away ransacking the jungles of Peru for five weeks (or the equivalent of nine practices) Ricky and I shall be putting the album into solid pre-production, organising the various techniques we intend to employ this time around with a view to at least having the rough mixes done (sans vocals, of course) prior to Tim's return.

We're continuing to work on new material until our very last practice as a three-piece; total number of songs ready so far for contemplation within the realm of this new recording being eleven with two more currently under construction with a view to them also being included.

In-depth accounts of all aspects of the recording process will be detailed in this blog as we progress through it, stumbling and learning as we go.

Two left feet + deep end = jump

Weren't no other choice, for with time rapidly disappearing, our decision to run with an extended setlist and an overly ambitious stage set-up was about to go down in flames before even a chord had so much as been strummed, as everything was suddenly (and horribly) compounded by our general sub-par level of knowledge when it comes to the business end of sound engineering.

After a few failed attempts to get the sound wired through the various means we'd envisaged and discussed during the week, we settled on at least getting the same basic approach going as we have in the practice room (having thankfully taken our own PA system with us); surmising that if worst were to come to worst, we'd at least be making some noise ...

Stage notes during set

Once this decidedly rudimentary set-up had been established, we then set about trying to amplify our presence by simply getting more sound running to more outputs.

To this end, we eventually managed to send the vocals directly through the main in-house system, which cast a more generous level of volume towards the crowd whilst simultaneously freeing up our PA for another use, as directly in front of the stage was a large foldback tied to the main volume; our inability to isolate these (the front-of-house speakers and the foldback) caused some problems with regards Tim's vocal mic feeding back but he received swift, screeching reminders if he stepped too close or moved too far sideways though, so this was kept to a minimum - though at the expense of a much less animated frontman than we're accustomed to seeing.

A healthy level of foldback was paramount though, because it was our first outing together as a band and we'd never gotten around to mimicking the stage layout (and any crucial sound discrepancies) of a live performance beforehand. This is surprisingly important, as various cues can all of a sudden disappear when you're least (or most!) expecting them.

Centre page of the programme

Anyway, our own PA system was then utilised to partially disguise some of the missing bottom-end by clipping a microphone onto the kick drum. It would've been preferable to run some reverb across this as well, although (due to being unable to get the sound through front-of-house) this unfortunately wasn't an option. The guitar amp was also sent through our own PA unit, which helped to better scatter the sound as it would otherwise be coming from merely one source; the more sound we could throw about the venue, the better ...

As it turned out, the onstage sound was by far the best we've ever actually experienced. Naturally, our having been reduced to a three-piece instead of a five-piece was a contributing factor - less instruments needing to point sound at less musicians equalling less chance of it all becoming a muddied shambles onstage.

Thankfully we also had time to run through a couple of half-song sounchecks (one acoustic and one electric) for an audience of three who helped shape the final sound with minor adjustment being made to various EQ settings where possible. Thanks Em, Mel, and Karen!

The entire electric set (currently sourced from one stationary angle, though another more dynamic view exists) is up on our Youtube channel

Pandora's neon box, baby

After recently making the transition from playing rhythm guitar on an electro-acoustic (whilst seated) to now needing to play a full electric set (standing up), I was suddenly confronted with the annoyance of my feet constantly becoming entangled in masses of cables. There was also a lot more gear to cart around and organise prior to plugging in; no longer could I simply strut in with my guitar and a lead and head for the nearest P.A system.

The new set-up consists of an amp (a replica VOX AC-30), a Pandora PX5D, a separate Korg tuner, a footswitch, guitar, and various leads to and from the guitar, the effects box, and the amplifier. It didn't take too long to realise that the nuisance of twice-weekly having to organise this equipment at practices needed to be streamlined, a convenience which would also translate over into gig situations; less time pissing about at my feet meaning more time to concentrate on matters elsewhere.

Having just begun learning how to operate the CNC milling machine at work, this seemed like an opportune project for me to experiment on with drawings and g-codes et cetera.

Here was my initial drawing (with both top and bottom layers visible simultaneously), which makes matters very confusing and of little use to anyone. The offsets are even further off-putting ... but there you go, the original plans.

If you compare the diagram above to the photograph below (which is shown from the same aspect) it all hopefully starts to make a little more sense.

The base was made purposely wider so as to allow room for the four-plug board, as by building this into the design it means that both the Pandora effects unit and the footswitch are always plugged in (meaning two less items to attend to when setting up and less everyday wear and tear on their associated cables).

The small channel that was milled down from the top left of this portion of the base (refer to the original drawing) is where the two adapter cables are fed through into the main cavity of the pedal box. From here, these cables were either shortened and/or simply run back and forth along the space we'd allowed for this between the plug-pack wall and the tuner/footswitch/effects unit - conveniently placed screws and plugs hold these further in place.

The angle in the above photograph might actually display that a bit better.

Several other connecting cables were also fitted down here; the one going from the footswitch to the Pandora as well as the lead going from the tuner to the Pandora. Again, where something needed to be connected on a permanent basis, this was done, although all of the jacks are readily removable and can be re-routed (not as tidily, mind you) if disaster should strike halfway through a set and rearrangements needed to be made.

The Korg tuner isn't actually used very much, but seeing as I had it and there was room for it, I thought it'd be a good idea to have a battery-powered back-up just in case.

Of course, the top of the entire pedal casing unit is merely screwed on, so at any time it's easily accessible for matters such as changing batteries, cleaning, and the like. And, yes, the screwdriver for this is always in my kit bag!

The small rectangular hole that's positioned just left of the yellow tuner is to allow access to the On/Off or Calibrate switch of the tuner itself.

This is of course a view from underneath.

Because the pedal box is constantly being kicked as I stomp on the footswitch to alter the Pandora PX5D settings, the main components which were housed inside of the pedal casing needed to be stabilised. This was done partly by having them fit snugly into the cut-outs (they were under-sized and then manually worked on to get the correct fit) and partly by the slight pressure of the lid squeezing them downwards.

The Pandora actually has some stiff foam holding it in place too - this was originally going to be done with more acrylic but this exuded a little too much pressure on its body, and therefore would stress the electronics inside over time. And, after leaving enough space for my fingers to reach all of the various dials and buttons and whatnot on the PX5D, there wasn't actually very much room left to get that fancy with it.

Some rubber 'feet' were also applied to the base of the pedal casing to prevent it from sliding around the stage.

With access to the engraving tool and a newly-designed logo, it was a fairly logical step to go from there to some proper personalisation. A blue LED was then slotted into the side of the top faceplate to illuminate the design in the dark. Why not, right?

The hole on the wall facing us now is where the lead from my guitar gets plugged in. The yellow tuner is essentially bypassed at this stage (unless, in case of an emergency, it's been manually switched on) and there's a shortened lead that takes it from here into the PX5D (bottom right as shown above) whereupon it exits and heads of to the amp (from the top right). Note: These main leads aren't shown in the above photos

So there we go, from having a multitude of cables and units to piece together each time I wanted to play, to fitting one plug into the mains and connecting my appropriate input/output leads.