Suburban Man

On an active preamp the battery connection is usually made across the earth side - in other words when you put the jack plug into the bass its the ground/earth part of the connector (not the tip) that joins battery negative to preamp negative. You can just cut the hot/signal connection if you want, but it leaves a nice little RF antenna in place of your neatly grounded pickup. That may or may not cause a noise problem, but grounding the hot/signal connection definitely stops any cr@p getting into the nice high-gain front end of you amp as well as muting the pickup.

Andrew at Richmond Guitar Workshop - ex Chandlers Guitars I believe [email protected]

Apart from the 'Producer Switch' option, which is always a good one 🙂 I'm a big fan of a 'mute' switch. Just a 2 pole on/off that shorts live and earth on the outgoing jack socket. It won't save battery, but it sure will mute.

I recorded Mike Pender's Searchers ('we split for musical reasons') at a live gig about 30 years ago and the band members all seemed to be 'getting-on' then, but I guess if you can still sing and play a bit its not a bad back catalogue to run through and they absolutely hit the button on every song. I particularly remember the recording because I naively asked when they were going to do a run through so that I could sort out the levels and was told that the band and their PA engineer didn't need to do a run through - so I just had to sort out the mix during the first number - straight down to stereo in those days.

Well if you got it from a guitar spares shop then the chances are that its the right value. 47k would be 47,000pf which is correct. If it was 474,000pf then its ten times too large a value.

If you remove the capacitor altogether you should find that the tone control ceases to work. If it is still acting like a volume control then the spare tag has got earthed, or the wiper is being earthed somehow. You could try swapping the tone control connections so that the wire to the tip goes from one of the outer tags and the capacitor that goes to earth is soldered to the centre tag. If the capacitor was the wrong value then that would also 'mute' the output, like say if it was 0.47 instead of 0.047

Apologies to all those of you for whom I'm stating the bleedin' obvious, but having seen comments on other threads about online sound quality there is a major difference between what works as a live sound and what works in an online feed - with or without video. Apart from any number-crunching that your application may do which renders your in-house mix somewhat restricted in dynamics you also need to mix in the magic of 'Atmos'. In other words if you take a PA feed directly off your mixing desk and use it online with no alteration, it will sound very flat. The additional ingredient that you need is to add in a couple of 'Atmos' mics. Ideally these are omni's set up in the rafters of your venue. They will only go into the online mix where they will add in the sound of your adoring crowd applauding and singing along to your songs (aka congregation if you are a worship band). They also add in the room reverb of the venue - which is what makes it sound as if you are playing live in a particular place, rather than in a studio somewhere. They may also pick up a few comments that you didn't want the world to hear, so that's why you want to put your atmos mics up high, or at least as far away as is humanly possible. Annoyingly, although a bit is vital, too much atmos will muddy up the sound something rotten - so play carefully folks.

If the length of the cable is less than half a metre then the core size is likely to be fine, its more about finding a nice robust outer and connector, so a mains-rated cable in a circular jacket is a good choice and should fit easily into the DC connector. For 0.5mm core wire the resistance per metre is something like 0.035 ohms so it isn't going to affect your PSU voltage until you start using a few hundred metres of cable.

If your mixer is a Behringer Eurodesk then there are lots of options for picking up a feed from a 1/4" jack output. Main outs Control room outs Aux sends (4) Sub-group outputs (4) I think that the 1/8" jack on the Tascam DR07 is actually a line input so any of the above should give about the right recording level. If you're just wanting to record the rehearsal for reference then main outs are easiest and don't forget to add lots of reverb to the mix, otherwise it'll sound like you were all singing straight into each other's ears from about 2" away... good luck!

Like DAD says about listening while 'not standing just in front', tweeters are very directional, unlike your 12" speaker, so if you switch the tweeter on you may end up focussing a lot of HF sound somewhere you can't hear it, but other people can. Step away from the speaker a bit and listen at wherever the tweeter is pointing to appreciate what it may be doing. PS This is why some cabs can be tilted - you won't hear the output of your tweeter if it is pointing at your knees

I know that I'm entering the world of 'shutting the door after the horse has bolted' here, but I loved reading through this thread. Great to see all the pictures as the project developed. I've built a number of studios professionally, so if anyone is interested the key to getting really solid walls is different thicknesses of board - ideally plasterboard, fixed back to back. So something like one 12.5mm sheet directly attached to a 9mm sheet. Double that up each side of a batten wall, take care not to have co-incident joins and you can get quite impressive insulation. The weak point is always the door (or window if you have one). Almost impossible to get better than 20db isolation with a single leaf door. Double doors are the answer if you have enough space, or a neat 'bung' as used in the above design!

Pretty much anything that is streamed has been reduced to a minimum number of bits to squeeze it down the pipes of the internet. Ditto if you listen to DAB radio, or Internet radio. I would suggest that its fine to browse, but not so great to 'listen' - you just won't ever get wide dynamic range because of the delivery format. If you want a good listening experience then its CD, vinyl or an FM radio station that hasn't been Optimoded to destruction.

Phantom power boxes are fairly easy to come by on ebay if you don't want to have to use batteries. Its just like using an external PSU - but a bit neater. One like this : ARTcessories Phantom III is up for sale at the moment