jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I think I once spent about 100 bucks on a TC novadrive because it had preset storage and external midi controlwhen I was all hot on that. These days I would just make something, so parts and solder costs. There's maybe 20 bucks of parts in anything and it's usually just a tubescreamer/sd1 or maybe a dod 250 ora hottubes/redllama... or a brown sound in a box if you like catalinbread and you have a deluxe reverb but want a plexi or whatever, they make a million riffs on that circuit...

I get it. I play a 62 ac30, I don't like to carry it now that I'm middle aged. I was gauging down from the space echo for awhile because of weight and a desire to have it wired permanently for studio use but as much as I wanted to love modern pedals I wound up with an ep3 echopkex. Bulky but lighter. Delay and reverb. There are so many good kinds from every era, but once you get used to something on your guitar that's it... tubes, tapes, tanks? It's hard to go back even for conveniences like tap tempo and a small footprint. I think I own a solid dozen processors at this point but on guitar I pretty much only use the evhoplex and roland for delay and verb... most of my pedals get used for synths and the rack stuff is patchbayed up to my mixer. It's all sweet stuff but not into a guitar amp. Maybe a bbd delay once in awhile but that's it.

Any short tank will sound like an Ampeg, not a Fender. That's more my spring sound but I seldom play with reverb unless specifically asked... for your needs its chalk and cheese! if I were you I would find a massive store with every boutique brand and try everything. Maybe something will get close. Lots of digital gadget at every price point can do a fender spring with reasonable to excellent fidelity but only an actual tank splashed when vibrated.

Or build something. I would think about mounting the tank in the amp but having an outboard driver in a pedal as previously mentioned though you may not want to lick such a nice amp... you have excellent taste.

This discussion came up on a diy forum I belonged to a few years ago and the true spring pedal quest turned into a massive group project. The OP started a solid state driven design with an ampeg style C tank in a relatively small enclosure because no one liked any commercial products enough to recommend cloning them.

As he had issues with his own design that kinda subbed fets for tubes people jumped in and we eventually came up with a pedal that was just a tank driver based loosely on a piece of 80s studio equipment I own that's designed to interface a guitar reverb tank or home built plate with your mixing desk auxes. We adapted that gadget to high Z low gain signals and chose some more modern ICs and lower noise discreet transistors I think. He then housed the tank in a wooden box separate from the pedal. Just a shock mounted tank with in and out jacks. The shockmounting was just ribberstandoffs to reduce unwanted splash but if he licked it you got THAT sound. Not my bag but it turned out pretty well. If you search the internet for something like 'diy spring reverb driver pedal' you might find the schematics for the pedal portion.

In my opinion there's not much on the market now to wrote home about. Personally my favorite springs are really studio gear. Love my chorus echo spring sound... sound workshop made a real winner, bit they're thin on the ground... my tapco is good in a trashy way... then there's the amazing AKGs. These are short tank studio units. Great but also more natural sounding. But you have a fender unit which is as good as surf guitar verb gets. Why retire the king? Nothing will touch it for what it does.

Sadness. I never got him to sign my prophet600

I really don't get why strymon doesn't combine all their effects into a multi fx rack with separate i/o as well as internal series chaining for each fx type. I would go out and buy one for my studio tomorrow. They really sound great but integrating pedals into a +4 post production setup us too much hassle. Or at least give me a rack big sky... I have the choruses and delays already, but their verbs are a fresh take, like, I can make a shimmer with a pitch shifter and a vintage reverb set as a giant hall but they gave a modern spin on theirs.

A good friend of mine has 2 H9s and I'm working on his band's album now. I've had some experience with the h9 and it's really impressive. I like the fact that they didn't make it another modeler. There are some analog simulations but mainly it's just capitalizing on the eventide legacy sound and granular programmability.

That said if I were you I would be looking at an eclipse. Its rackmount and allows 2 algorithms at once for less cabling. It's a fairly affordable guitar oriented processor that still holds up. The H9 is really less of an H3000 in a stomp than half an eclipse on a stomp although eclipse is no longer supported while H9 is expandable with new algorithms as they're released so the pool of fx for eclipse is just the classic stuff that I'm so fond of, h9 sports new fx... theres also the orville which is cheaper still... but you may want to stay away from used gear.

Ooh, behringer changed the tcf cosmetics, it's probably not the same anymore. If you're ruling out a used black and purple tcf which us what I have then go eventide. The boss is a major comedown. If you get an h9 the programmability is immense via computer so you may be able to craft some choruses you like that aren't the trichorus by deep diving.

And the mpx1 is not a serious lexicon unit. I have some cheapies like that in the studio and they do well for certain jobs in a pinch but if it's not a PCM series or better then don't bother.

If you're going pedal I shoulda mentioned the TC SCF... stereo, analog, very high line level handling... I own a reissue. It's great. But a pedal. They made a rack version called something like the spatialexpander? ? But despite it surviving well into the 90s they're hard to find, people don't get rid of them and they've not been reissued yet. The SCF on the other hand was still in production last I checked.

Also you could consider an ibanez ad202 which is everything from flange to doubling to chorus to delay... but it's not true stereo, just separate dry and wet outs. Its an amazing analog unit though. Theres also the similar roland dc30. Which reminds me...

Keep in mind some 80s chorus is a flanger with the feedback off... Andy Summers for example often used an electric mistress for his chorus sound, pretty much any time he wasn't using a jc120. So analog rack flangers are an option. They've really caught on in the used market though... as prices on the eventide instant flanger and instant phasers skyrocketed people started scooping up the competition.

But a lot of companies made analog delay units that covered the whole range of delay line fx just like the ibanez I mentioned. They're a little more under the radar... there are some boss units that claim to be digital but are secretly analog lol. I cant remember which ones, but that takes you back to a time where digital was a buzz word and analog and tubes were out of fashion!

If you want 80s rack chorus to put between a pre and power amp fulltones 80s rack chorus will probably be the best current production option and probably the only analog unit... its based on a little known 80s piece that I happen to own. It does a lot with very few controls and sounds stellar.

After that its eventide in digital. There's a really vintage quality to those harmonizer chorus patches even in new units like the h9, though it's more 90s to me. I would audition a boss digital chorus before committing. And I have no experience with UA outside of 1176 and LA2A reissues... they're a reliable company with a stable of great plugins, interfaces and DSP units but ymmv as far as what they think chorus should sound like.

Otherwise go vintage. I really love the Scholz Rochman chorus, though I can't remember if its stereo... I swear by the chorus in my roland chorus echo tape delay unit. It's the bees knees but mono. Also its houses in a heavy, maintenance nightmare of a vintage multi fx unit. You can find variations of that analog chorus in a lot of roland and boss units though, many 8f which are stereo...

Otherwise I doubt you'll do any better than the models in a helix or fractal. Really the only thing that sounds totally 80s is something with BBD chips. The h9 may be the most cost effective and the h9 max does a lot of things really well. I'm working for a band that uses them and I'm pretty impressed with the unit. It takes the ultraharmonizer to a whole other level. But its unabashedly digital... in a good way. And a pedal...

There's always the spx90 and its descendants. The symphonic patch was THE chorus from the late 80s well into the 90s. I always have an spx90 in my studio. They're workhorse do-all units that have a classic sound. Of course I mainly have it for symphonic because it's still the best chorus sound to add to DI bass. The new ones improve on the formula with modern conversion and features.

Theres also the klark technik 3rd dimension but I don't know how it compares to the original roland unit and behringer build quality is sketchy.

If I was feeling picky I would get a fulltone assuming he still makes it.

Something embarrassing happened in my pants when I clicked that link.

I gotta be honest, the route you're going should just have tons of studio gear. With what you're into I'd it were me I would've just scavenged my recording equipment for this rack... like hook up a proco r2dU and an 1176 or RNC or both in loops and get an eventide orville on reverb! I still really dig the TC g system with the integrated floorboard. It's a bit dated but sounds fine for modulation and delay/verb... and it's the heart of your rig control-wise. Might not be good enough for you. I thought I was fussy but you?

I own a prologue. Its a great old school poly that has a lot of class for the money. But on a budget? If. The prologue is a great deal already under $1k. If it's too steep watch the used market for a less desirable vintage synth. The korg poly61 lacks knob per function controls for example but has a great sound and trades for peanuts.

Definitely agree that it should be able access your camera!

You are WAY down the Rabbit Hole, my friend... I've been there and it's why rack systems for guitar went out of fashion for 15, 20 years or so... if you can't afford to hire a helper with money to spare for the best of everything it's a trick proposition.

In answer to your question I pose another question: how often do you use the compressor? Is it just for clean sounds or is it going to be contributing noise to your gained out metal solo sounds? You see where I'm going with this.

Also, it won't look as cool but you need more ventilation in that gear. In fact you may want to reverse the order of devices so the tube gear ventilates to the top... despite the fans your power amp is heating the underside of your preamp PCBs and both of them are cooking thatprocey fractal. Heat rises, flimsy PCBs like the sort in digital processors are very heat sensitive.

I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately you have the best converters in multi FX as far as I know.

I'm really concerned to hear the synergy system has hiss. The first step is to determine whether the hiss is a gain staging issue which is very possible. If you've done that and your signal is right in the optimal RMS range of dB specified by fractal on the manual then sadly the hiss is likely coming entirely from cheap resistors in the synergy preamp which is disappointing in a boutique item like that. Your pedals likely had restricted bandwidth at the analog input stage, all pedals tend to as a guitar amp andspeaker have very restricted bandwidth... whereas the fractal is probably passing 20hz to 20khz to the converters. Sp the pedals were rolling out the high frequency components of your hiss before apply9ng effects while the fractal isn't. By going through a 6 cablemethod it's likely magnifying the issue exponentially.

But while some hiss may be coming from the fractal itself, there's so few analog components in there that the bulk of it is must be coming from the preamp. High gain pres are prone to this and it can only be tamed dy careful parts selection at the design phase.

You really shouldn't have sold your existing rig to fund the fractal. I didn't realize that was your plan as I'm not in the habit of flipping non-redundant gear to find different gear.

But if you haven't done so, make sure you're not sending +4dB studio line levels where they're not expected. Running +4 to -10 or instrument level ins is a classic blunder that causes insane hiss and/or unwanted distortion artifacts. Consult the manual if you haven't done so. Going the opposite way, -10 to +4 is also a classic source of home studio white noise issues. If you're getting hum as well you have a ground loop.

I leave you with a thought you won't like... I've never been happier with my sound and hassle level than I've been since abandoning my old multi amp and pedals/fx/poweramp touring rig and following that midi based studio setup in favor of a single amp with an exhoplex and occassionally a fuzz or chorus out front. No one ever misses all the gimmicky effects and the broad palette of tones I used to feel obliged to offer. I just maintain my amps and tape echo now. Which is a quick once over every year or 2 that occassionally results in replacing a 60s factory part that finally wore out. I use 4 cables at most, typically 2.

my votes:

make it a bit easier to get to one's own page?

& have a simple way to invite friends, maybe?

Agree strongly!

I'm technically old enough to be your dad (it's weird thinking that if I had married my college girlfriend I could have a kid your age now)... if you have high blood pressure then you're definitely right to simplify. When I was your age I could feel my blood pressure spike every show right before sound check and I wouldn't calm down until 2 songs into our set. You don't want rig fears on top of the pre show jitters. If you're making yourself crazy about your rig outside of band situations then you have got to prioritize my young friend.

Thing is, no one in an audience cares what you're playing through but the guitarists from the other bands on the bill. Normal people barely hear the difference and don't get the fuss. As long as you have the connections you need and all the fx you want to use you're going to be fine, man. This is mainly for you because you're going to feel more confident with a sound you love.

Sigh...anyways, it all boils down to Helix vs Fractal at this point for effects. I'm done trying to deal with patch cable blues or overcomplicated switcher/line mixer rigs. At this rate I don't know how much longer I can live if the stress continues to affect my health.

I guess you don't have kids. Look if you want a fractal get a fractal. They're well regarded for a reason and are packed with I/O

Well you can just do what you like and not worry about technological advances or being able to create every sort of sound someone could ask you for.

Nah. My analog home studio has a gazillion patch cable, you just have a bunch.... it's a shame you can't go all xlr. I still find it ridiculous that strymon doesn't make a rack version of the timeline, moebius and big sky or a giant multi rackspace multi fx with all 3 and some upgraded converters for studio use... I would buy a strymon multifx unit.

Ooof, that's going to be at least 2 round trip AD/DA conversions if you're doing time based effects after your preamp.

Is it safe to assume you don't need preamp effects like boost, overdrive, fuzz etc and that you're just putting the unit between your preamp and power amp?

Obviously a melodica is more like a harmonica than an accordion... there are some crazy people adding content to this site. This shouldn't even be a question. Oy.

The cable categories have always bothered me too but have yet to be addressed... I dunno.

Bingo. They're made in Slovakia, they're a damn good tube, and yeah, outside of potential supplyline disruptions, shouldn't be too hard to get hold of other than everyone else swapping to them.

I don't actually know anyone in real life who uses Russian and Chinese tubes. All of my friends use NOS preamp tubes and JJ power tubes if only because of the superior durability. I do like the Russian tung sol branded 12ax7 but I can go back to NOS, I have quite a few GEs, bugle boys and those funky french RFT ecc83s stashed away... probably some pre-JJ teslas too.

People who are worried need to buy up lots of old untested small signal tubes from estate sales and flea markets. You get a lot of throwaways but there's typically some guitar stuff new in the box or used but testing brand new. For a fender amp th er y neverbettered the RCA grey plate and GEs 12ax7s are a close second. They last forever and they made millions of them. For british sounds and high gain I feel that Amperex bugle boys, similar Phillip's tubes, Mullard and RFT are really the gold standard in the euro ecc83 designation. Sadly Mullard and Amperex have become thin on the ground, they just made less than the US giants. But you still get lucky once in awhile and I encourage guitarists to go junk sale surfing... there's tungsten in them there basements!

Don't get 5 inch woofers. Even with a sub a ported 5inch will kick screwybass and lower mids in my experience. If your space is confined don't use 8 inch woofers the lows are more likely to create standing waves. If the speakers are going within 2 feet of a wall don't get a rear ported design.

Though I like a lot of older yamaha passive speakers I personally dislike the sound of the HS series. They're accurate enough but fatiguing like NS10s sans all that transient response from the sealed box and glued paper woofer... I would definitely go adam, the ribbon tweeters are smooth yet detailed and encourage brighter, more modern mixes with less ear fatigue. I've not used the TV series but I've worked o. the more expensive ones and quite liked them assuming I had a sealed, silk dome tweeter or giant sofit mounted alternative to flip between. Adam's. Yamaha hasn't made a truly great pro audio product since the PM1000 and 2000... they should stick to synths and consumer bookshelf speakers... and lawnmowers lol

They aren't manufactured anywhere but Russia and china anymore. The only exception to that is JJ with manufacturing in Slovakia if I recall correctly... and last I checked fender under groove tubes owned the old GE factory in California and makes small batches of 6L6 tubes... which are superb tubes but very expensive.

Also the rare earth metals used for the anode and cathode are also in high demand for smart phone components.

At this point fet 47s vary a lot. Many have taken a pounding for decades and have not been cared for... it was a weird mic for Neumann to release on the early 70s anyway. A cool mic I really like for lots of purposes, but it was strange to release it hot on the heels of the 87 with all those features and sophisticated circuit that's so tailored to the k67... I can't help but wonder what the thinking was on the fet 47.

One of the neve designed amek rack units? They're pretty sweet and still under the radar. I guess with so many 9098 and mozart desks having cooked themselves steadily since the 90s there's going to be a lot more recognition of those circuits as racked strips turn up. The rack units amek made at the time have never been a stellar deal despite being relatively unknown. To me, if it says amek it's not worth that much even if neve was involved. Sound quality is good but there's a lot of corner cutting in all amek and TAC gear, mainly in PSU components and actual construction methods. But now is the time to buy any of that amek gear from their heyday, it won't be sleeper gear much longer and as you say, youtube personalities really fuel these gear trends causing a feeding frenzy of kids with disposable income to venture into hardware. You missed this one but the inflated pricing may be temporary.

My experience with that era of amek is that even the TAC scorpion is a very nice sounding collection of circuits. Amek definitely put sound and festures first and if they had worried more about stuff like ventilation maybe they woulda managed to take down SSL... they sold a lot of those media desks to movie studios, but I doubt many are still in service like an SSL J or harrison.

You were right! Cheers!

They should consult Clearmountain on what ply toilet paper to tape over the ns10 tweeters lol.

Yeah, I was speaking in terms of the 47jr as a vocal mic.

It ain't nothing to write home about, but I wouldn't put an original fet47 on a vocal if there was a better choice like an 87 or even a 414. It's a really primitive preamp circuit and warm dumber it down further and you get an inferior capsule to those 70s k47s. Its tolerable though.

Definitely a better fit for OH. I can't argue with that and I agree about the Sony being used for overheads.

Thats really why I bought a pile of matched wa47jrs. I do more rock bands than anything else. I was mainly mixing but when I got yanked back into tracking last year I needed to add some reasonably priced multi patterns to my collection that don't have piercing top end when pointed near a cymbal in an overly bright room but that can also do a reasonable guitar recording, work as room mics, get a bass cab paired with a d112... not crap out in front of a kick in a pinch... get smooth gang vocals in omni, handclaps, tambourine whatever a 414 or audio technica 40 is too tizzy for.

They've been serving me really well at a project studio with a nice but bright drum room and a limited mic locker not well suited to the room treatment. I had low expectations of this warm mic bit they're giving a lot of value for dollar.

4 C800Gs as OH for drums in an Atmos mix would sound great but the benefits by the time its processed and rendered wouldn't be worth the life lost in the tubes, unless you're shooting a commercial for Sabian or something like that.

Ha!!! Good one.

I'm actually only using 1 mic as an over snare in figure 8 way up, the other positions are a bit unconventional but it's a large dw kit... it's a heavily modified glyn johns on most of this record. So its like overhead, sidefill, front of kit. Spot mics as needed.

I'm sorry I missed your thorough reply with the demo, Jim. That's not like me.

I've barely been on the internet so it's no problem. I'm surprisingly swamped with work right now. I need to raise my estimates and stop doing favors. I want to work a little less or be making a lot more. But whenever I do that business dries up. People DIY or go elsewhere. I really hate the business part of this business.

Welp. Time to setup more click tracks with tempo changes for Saturday! Oh the joy.

Just buy jj. I honestly have so many tubes I may never need to buy them again... although I tend to go through 84s pretty fast so who knows

It's all about the circuit. There are some pretty awful tube audio designs from their heyday... you just don't always see that junk around un modified. Though the junk from the 50s and 60s can sound novel and probably commands value in today's inflated market I'm just not that excited by wolensak tape machine preamps, gates line mixers or like those awful sano guitar amps... those are tube based audio products but not terribly good ones. I'll take a well designed circuit fulla 5532 opamps any day.

But if anyone is giving away an old RCA console or something I'll rent a truck and pick it up tomorrow!

I had good luck this weekend as figure 8 drum overheads. I'm not sure I would use it for a vocal beyond a demo but they don't suck all that bad and certainly sound better th as n anything else this cheap. I have to jump to an audio technica 40 series to get much better. I don't have asony c800g and probably never will... if I do? It'll be 1, not 4. I thrive on cheap mics. When a band can't afford a decent studio they get their shit on tape. Or computer these days. I prefer to go somewhere with a mic locker but that's not always in the cards.

Precision. Or better yet a music man stingray. Go used. Trawl reverb for people who seem hard up and make offers.

The stingray 5 is an east for this type of music although I'm not sure your budget will permit it.

In the USA to the best of my knowledge sub miniature triodes are used in a lot of military aircraft to this day to shield our revenge squadrons from the EMP generated by large thermonuclear blasts in the event of world war 3. Which seems like a good useof public funds since I'm really going to be worrying about exacting vengeance on a foreign civilian population once I'm vaporized...

They're still a pretty amazing invention in my book. Just the idea of sucking all the air out of a tube of glass or metal to allow electrons to react freely with some chunks of rare earth metal is pretty mindblowing when you think about it. You start adding control grids and its like... YOU DID WHAT? Go science!

Fancy but needed

The 5 LEDs are tolerable. I kinda want those on the desk for mic/line gain staging although a clip light for the preamp will do. Then I prefer to gave a meter bridge with 10 stage LEDs per channel and needle meters for my busses but I can live with needle VUs for the master. This isn't that important for tracking but in order to do anything with the mixer such as say mix with it? It's a big help to have reasonable metering on every channel and bus. For just input gain staging you really want the metering to be as good as a standalone interface in the same price range as your mixer and eith the tascam the bar isn't set that high in that sub 1k range.

Having an LED per-channel to indicate overload is great, and a whole column of LEDs per channel is better still. Having to do all your metering separate screen is less desirable than having dedicated old fashioned LEDs light up on each channel -- you can see LEDs no matter how dark it is or how blind you are -- so the Zoom wins in this regard. But not having a full compliment of EQ knobs per channel strip sucks -- regardless of any menu-based EQ options, not having dedicated knobs per channel is a major PITA, big win for Model12 on that point.

A lot to unpack there but one thing I need with more than 8 channels is a meter bridge or something like it. An overload light? I would just as soon use the DAW and my ears.

As for dedicated knobs? I don't care for tracking. But menu diving to mix is no fun. I don't think zoom expects anyone will print and release their monitor mix. The zoom is loaded with sub mix capabilities and headphone amps. It's for rock bands. Its impressive but I dont think it's meant to do the same jobs in the same way as the tascam and SSL offerings. I'm actually sorry I brought it up now. Its fir a different market sector. It looks like a really good product as a standalone recorder that can put 96k multitrack audio on an SD card but it's not a mixer in the live mixing sense. I would take a mediocre analog desk over like a Yamaha 02r any day just because I can respond to the music faster.