untune

Hi all, Just something I'm pondering at the moment. My mate plays guitar but we don't get to actually meet up too often, so he sends a lot of ideas and such via skype and we throw ideas back and forth. On the occasions we will get to do some recording and jamming at mine, it's not really practical for him to be dragging a head and cab across Manchester then up three flights of stairs. I'm not a guitarist myself but I love recording, experimenting and I have synths and generally just like to play with sound so I've thought about getting a little valve combo or perhaps head/cab to handle re-amped recording duties. My mate can just record a clean DI when he comes round, he can put the amp feed through the amp and then when he's not around I can re-record, play with mic placement, preamps, effects, etc etc. Purely for recording, not for gigging or practicing. I'm in a flat, it's very quiet and I have a room for recording - I don't have any neighbours bordering the room but at the same time I'm going to keep it to moderate levels as not to wind anyone up. Super high volume is not important. Ideally I'd like something fairly cheap, valve, with the ability to control the gain and master so I have some tone shaping options at low volume. Tonally my mate favours Vox amps, I'd like something that can do clean and crunchy fairly well as we aim for a sortof blues rock sound but also do a lot of clean stuff. I'd also like the option of doing a bit of modding, as I have a few nice preamp valves lying around and wouldn't mind trying different speakers and such. Anyone know anything that fits the bill in their experience? Cheers

Headstock logo looks off and the scratchplate barely follows the body shape!

Looking great!

Also it has impressed me how many people it has drawn together so quickly, all working together to solve the puzzle

[quote name='risingson' timestamp='1367331407' post='2064303'] I've been waiting for this release for 7 years Untune! I've followed what's been going on, the uber-fans on the forums have been going mental trying to crack codes and mathematical equations, I've just sat back and waited for the release announcement from Warp For those who might be unfamiliar with Boards of Canada, they took their name from the National Film Board of Canada, when they were young they emigrated from Scotland to Canada and were inspired by the scratchy warmth of the soundtracks that accompanied a lot of the films. They're known to sample number stations as well in their earlier work amongst a load of other things. Really psychedelic and always interesting to listen to, they're considered to be pioneers in electronic music. [/quote] It has been one hell of a marketing campaign if nothing else! After such a long wait they had to make an entrance and I think they've managed it in a way only they could I've already pre-ordered both the CD and the vinyl... which leaves me just more than a month to find myself a decent turntable, amp and hi fi speakers. Preferably from the 70s

For myself and Risingson mainly [url="http://warp.net/records/boards-of-canada/new-album-tomorrows-harvest"]http://warp.net/reco...morrows-harvest[/url] I can honestly say I've never been more excited for an album release in my life

Agh.... this has made me want a Ripper so badly! Great work so far!

Yep been a fan for a while - great stuff! Check out the Menahan Street Band - pretty sure it's them who record the actual songs and therefore their bassist. I like playing The World Is Going Up In Flames, great dynamic bassline that keeps you on your toes!

I run my bass through the front end of a nice Ferrograph Series 6 recorder to add some valve grit... the line out into a Pultec valve EQ clone and we've got some lovely Jamerson going on I've thought about tracking one down to use purely as a preamp, they're harder to come by though. In fact I've got a working Brenell Series 2 that I want to convert to a standard valve mic/instrument preamp but it suffers from a low level hum (probably bad caps) and I lack the confidence - anybody in the Bolton/Manc area got the know how? Back to the topic though, they look great and a lot of 50s/60s British tape recorders already had a sortof 'amp' shape - if you took the preamp panel out and flipped it, stood the whole case on end and covered the gap for the deck with grille cloth - voila There's a vid on YouTube of a guy who turned a Ferrograph into a guitar amp like that. I can't comment on that machine but a lot of decks of that era seemed to be about 3 or 4W max output, and the speaker impedance on mine is 15 ohms.

Not strictly bass related in this case but it may apply too - I have an EQ unit that was hand built and it uses a metal toggle switch, just as you'd get in a guitar or bass, for the bypass. It's mounted on a front panel and so it's a bit awkward to get behind it, and there are six or more wires going to it. I noticed when testing it out that bypassing was working oddly - in the up position (bypassed) then it was bypassing everything except the low cut control, so the signal was still being rolled off and the rest of the controls were ignored appropriately. I thought at first this was a wiring issue and after cleaning a couple of scratchy pots with switch cleaner and doing more testing, I noticed that wiggling the switch just right caused it to bypass properly. Wondering if it might just need a clean but is there any way to actually clean the internals of a toggle switch? I want to avoid having to re-solder anything if possible! I've searched around and people have mentioned using a business card or dollar bill but i can't work out exactly what they're getting at - they seem to be sealed from what I can see. The components in this particular EQ are all UK/German made so I wouldn't expect it to be a dodgy one

I remember a mate throwing up some mad ones a few years back. The Ground is Pat Butcher was one, along with the Micro Beadles. I even did a logo for that one with little hand on it.

[quote name='BetaFunk' timestamp='1362918502' post='2006122'] This doesn't sound too bad to me [media]http://youtu.be/z91l_lPz1oc[/media] [/quote] The amount of times I've listened to this to try and match that tone - the crazy thing is, it's so simple and yet still so difficult to hit it bang on. The tone in this case is more about the stages AFTER the bass (the DI, the desk, the tape etc) - it's after all basically just a precision wide open - but then again the string mute is what gives it that great attack. The great thing about Motown recordings is that they were so distorted and still sound fantastic, especially on the bass where that bit of grit isn't obvious in the mix like it is in isolation. Listen to the bass from My Girl, it's filthy!