Zenitram

God I'd never thought about that. I'm on a Global Communication album from 20 years ago, doing a funny voice, which I did by phoning up Tom's answerphone and leaving a message. I wonder how much I'm due. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3f_HCmWzsg

It's actually an interesting challenge; can the Basschat Christmas Collective come up with a festive song, in collaboration. By committee, as it were. Define it, from the actual chords and notes, to the words, the instruments used, the production treatment applied, etc. Does anyone like the idea? It'd never work, would it.

[quote name='obbm' timestamp='1385151202' post='2285159'] XLRs are used for many different signal levels. [/quote] Right, yes, as I suspected. Thanks. [quote name='obbm' timestamp='1385151202' post='2285159'] What you need is balanced cable, not a stereo. [/quote] Need for what? I don't follow. [quote name='obbm' timestamp='1385151202' post='2285159'] TRS jacks are used for balanced mono and unbalanced stereo, however the cable type is different for each. [/quote] Blimey. How can they be told apart?

[quote name='andydye' timestamp='1385148335' post='2285108'] Not necessarily matey, it may be a balanced signal but still might have more or less than the input will like. I prefer to have a level knob on any di send so I can make sure the desk gets the right line level signal [/quote] I don't quite know if that answered my question or not.

Stupid question: just because something takes, or sends out on, an XLR cable, doesn't mean that it's mic level, does it. Or does it?

Ted just got back to me saying that "it behaves normally. The compressor on these units is extremely smooth, it was designed to be that way." He's going to test everything again, but it's working as it should, he seems to think. And he designed the blummin' thing, so he should know, really. So, er, there you go.

Yay! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWMYGLxSWPM

It's been rather nice all round. The guy I bought it from just offered to pay half of the repair fee, and I've just spent a very pleasant hour or so reading about Ted Fletcher and his adventures in the world of making stuff to make music with. "The first stereo optical compressor was designed in 1993 as a result of a little project to make a ‘travel video’; I did not have a nice sounding compressor in my roomful of old recording gear, so it seemed like a good idea to see if some of those old designs of the 60s still had any merit. The result was a few days intensive development and using some modern ways to approach old problems, I came up with a stereo compressor that had the ‘weight’ and ‘urgency’ of those old Fairchild units, but in a stereo form. The story about the colour is true. I was about to take a prototype to a London Studio and it was housed in a nasty looking aluminium chassis. It was late in the day and I drove into Newton Abbot to a car accessory store to buy some spray paint. I asked for something really hard and durable but quick drying, the disinterested assistant reached behind him and handed me a can of bright green ‘Hammerite’. Everyone hated it, but it stuck!" "In 1960 I had just got married and lived in a small semi-detached house in Camberley (Surrey, UK). I was working as a very junior civil engineer designing the least exciting parts of drainage systems for housing developments in the Camberley area. But my burning hobbies were playing music and learning how to record music. There was little available in the way of equipment so I had to start from scratch with parts rescued from old radios and from government surplus stores. A few years later I had left civil engineering; it was not exciting enough for me! I was in the music business and running a small demo studio in London’s Tin Pan Alley (Denmark Street). Again, there was not a lot of equipment around so I built the mixer and achieved a wonderful collection of microphones by repairing ‘irreparable’ Neumanns and AKGs thrown out from other studios. My association with Joe Meek in 1963 to 1965 gave me a lifelong interest in what makes a recording ‘sound’ good. Combinations of compression and EQ. I founded Alice mixers in 1969 and the company that specialised in compressors in 1993, so I have been designing and building electronic equipment since the early 1960s…. that’s 50 years!! Ten years ago I stumbled onto the idea of producing spatial sound from a single loudspeaker enclosure. That idea took root and blossomed into a company that is now international, selling tens of thousands of loudspeaker systems to households who are re-discovering decent quality sound. At 74 years old I don’t have quite the stamina to run several businesses at once; the professional equipment business is reduced to just a few die-hards who still value the special qualities of good analogue gear. Orbitsound is dynamic, growing fast and occupies all my time in my basement laboratory, developing, measuring, improving and dreaming spatial sounding loudspeakers. So that’s it, there will be no more new TFPRO equipment from me. I shall continue to honour and service guarantees of course…. As I have done for so many years, but unless there is an enthusiastic manufacturer wanting to carry on building P38 series compressors, then there are just a few left. Analogue gear will still be used for many years to come..... but the digits will get it right in the end."

Well I emailed PMI Audio, which now owns JoeMeek, and their repair chap was very nice and told me to contact Fletchers (TFPro), so I did, and Ted Fletcher, who designed the unit back in the day, got back to me and said it sounds like there is a problem with the internal power supply, and to send it to him to fix up, for 30 quid. What a great guy.

I love their Teenage Dirtbag. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw8ZDwdyHJQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpU0ZfXZ_g

Thanks 51m0n. I'd tried all manner of things, and then last night tried again but in very dim lighting, and feeding various signals into it I was able to see the gain-reduction LED flickering very dimly as compression was applied. The effect is very subtle, though; I wonder what sort of signal the unit expects to receive. I was putting a drum machine through it at full volume, a VA synth arpeggion at full tilt, and it still gave only very polite and certainly-not-pumping compression. Maybe I'm expecting it to behave like other compressors, of which I have two, and I need to discover its quirks or the difference between 'normal' compression and optical compression, or whatever it's called. Or maybe it's a bit bust.

Does anyone here own and use the VC3Q? I just bought a second-hand one and I can't work out if the compressor is working or not. No matter what I feed in to it (bass, drum machine, vocals), the green compression LED never lights up. Twiddling the compressor knobs doesn't seem to do anything, except that when I swtich the compressor's red button off, the signal gets a little quieter (or louder, I can't remember which). I can't work out if it's working really subtly or if it has a problem. Has anyone had anything repaired by JoeMeek/Fletcher Electronics? How did it go? The rest seems okay, a bit noisy if you don't get the right settings, but that seems to be all about using the thing properly, as the manual suggests. Thanks.

Aye, there's also a Digitech Studio S100 multi FX unit as well, which plugs in, lights up, all the dials and buttons work, used to work beautifully, and which I can no longer get to process any sound. That's for free too.

[quote name='CamdenRob' timestamp='1384174971' post='2273501'] 100's[/quote] I see what you did there...

This is still available if anyone wants it. Sorry jonannlou, I only just saw your reply! Get back to me if you're still interested.

The photo was taken in St John the Evangelist's Church, Leeds, in 2009. By me. Followed by absolutely loads of phuckery-phoo in Photoshop.

Thanks everyone. It's a funny thing, really, because of the following, which I hope will encourage others to think about having a go: 1. Apart from the drums, [b]I can't actually play [/b][b]an instrument[/b]. Seriously. I have various synths and keyboards (and a bass, which I can't play), and I know a few chords, but that really is it. No formal music education, training, knowledge of theory, nothing. I can't sit at the piano (or bass, or guitar, or anything else) and play a tune. 2. My track doesn't really have a tune. It just about has two chords, I think (D and G, old favourites), but that's it. Wishy-washy non-committal nonsense, really. 3. It doesn't have a bassline. Well it didn't until about two hours before the deadline, when I realised I should make a stab at something, so I recorded a couple of bits and buried them deep within the mix, as I didn't like them. Any bassiness is from a piano. 4. It was produced and mastered (or engineered, or whatever the word is) on very cheap headphones. I bought them for a tenner from someone on here. Though I was checking the mix every now and then on fancy-dancy B&W speakers and some small, cheap, old Yamaha MSP3 monitors, which stopped me overdoing some major compression and reverb boo-boos. Just about, anyway. So, er, there you go; it can be done, with not much equipment and even less knowledge and talent. For the technically minded, I produced the track entirely in Reason 7, and eventually processed everything so much I actually ground my crappy PC to a halt (the only thing I could do was export to wav to listen to it!). On the various sound sources (samplers, synths, etc.) I used 5 filters/gates, 4 EQs, 11 dirt/distortion units, 4 reverbs, 8 delays, a fair bit of pitch-shifting and time-stretching on the vocal samples and, oddly, only one compressor, but I took a lot of care in automating the volume and EQ of almost all tracks, so I suppose it didn't need much. Then I exported one main file into Reaper to apply some more EQ, some more volume automation and some mastering compression (just a preset from a plug-in), which I paired with another file of the vocal bit at the end that sat outside the mastered mix to give it a bit of life. That's what I can remember doing, anyway. Thanks again. I've chosen a pic for the next one, which will appear in a thread at some point, I'm told.

Orchid are a lovely company/bloke. His cables are absolutely fantastic as well, if you need any, and so reasonably priced. Everything is quality.

http://www.orchid-electronics.co.uk/classic_DI.htm

[quote name='Badass' timestamp='1382708931' post='2255732'] Works great in software[/quote] What software are you using for this?

Behringer FM600?

Moogerfooger MF-101, maybe?

This will have to do: https://soundcloud.com/gingerosity/kanyosdemeka

I might need an extension of a few hours. If that's not acceptable, I have a version as it is now that I can use, but it's not quite complete.