Fifteen feet tall and filled with a blinding, scarring poison? With pretty little flowers on top?

Did someone here draw this one up?

Well, that's me never going outside exploring new fields/woods again.

First day at Sam Ash today. Already sold a mandolin and a 7-string.

Hopefully, to the same person?

Yes, I have been interested in mandolins lately, and felt like getting a backup seven string.

Also, stay tuned for my NGD/NMD thread!

Alas, no.

But the mandolin was the guy's first instrument. The ibanez was a cheap $99 one but I actually didn't do much selling with him. He was with his "teacher".

Just accidentally stumbled onto an old ass thread on here from forever ago. Sweet fuck man, it is painful to read the way I phrased things then. Waaayyyy too much confused, attention seeking teenager vibes going on. Clearly, these confused, slightly more reserved semi-adult vibes are much more preferable.

hmmm I think you are covering up here... this seems right up your alley. Although with pretty flowers on top may be the work of our dear Eric.

'Like'ing Kurt Ballou on Facebook means seeing photos of all his micing choices, placements, etc

While I appreciate the six-meter blinding scarring plant with the prettypretty flowers on top, I am not in any way responsible for its construction. It is quality work, whatever deity is responsible for it.

Knoted about the Kurt Ballou. I liked the TapeOp interview with him about three years ago. Gave that one to a friend, because that was too good to not pass on.

I was particularly interested by his ample use of baffles. The big round one meant for a singer's mic hugging the hi hat, I suppose to minimize its spilling out into the room. Little baffles between the Josephson tom mics and cymbals.

Also he really likes the Heil PR30 on snare. His snares do rule too. I don't think I'll ever mic a snare with a 57 again, unless I have to.

I have a tool buying problem.

ok... what did you buy now?

Aslo, K. Ballou has gotten pretty solid drumsounds for years now. That new hihat baffle is so much classier than the big red trashcan with foams stuffed in it that he used to use(IIRC, the tape op interview showed a pictar of it?). I am a little disappointed in this class increase.

He records so much metalcore stuff, it makes sense that he is trying to keep it all separated, like for edits and shit. It works for him. I don't know that i would really say he has a lot of "natural" drum sounds on his recordings, but they are generally very good sounding anyhow. They for instance, sound MUCH better than what a lot of the other Sneap-like metaldudes are cranking out. I mean, maybe the Ballou stuff doesn't sound "natural" or "real", but they do sound like drums usually, and they don't sound too glossy, or fake, usually at all.

Big-ass chisel/slick,
giant-ass handplane,
scrub plane,
riving froe,
big-ass drawknife,
a woodvise...



And a couple other things i intend to get soonish, but that i have to hold off on for a bit, so i don't feel silly for making myself too broke too soon.

Basically, i have a couple/few things i need to build that i am going to try to do in an olde waye.

I have to build myself a workbench downstairs(i haven't had one, like ever, usually just work clamping shit to sketchy not-designed-for-it small tables and random sawhorses. That is going to be mostly ghetto though, because i already have random bits of wood down there to press into service. And i intend to attempt to do the rest of the lumber sourcing via pallets collected from work. So it will be a patchwork of experiments really.

Then i need to resolve my kitchen island situation(the situation being, that there isn't one, and the kitchen table is kind of too low to work on, and i need more places to put things and machines, than i currently have). I am thinking something biggish and i might try to do some mortise/tenon/drawbore joining to put it together.

Then, if all of that goes well, i am kicking around the idea of replacing the toolshed in the yard (that got flattened in the blizzard of a couple years ago, but that remains the only place i can keep my lawnmower, though the place mostly lacks a roof, and blue tarps are required for said mower storage there). And my intent is to build something stout-ish and timbery for it.

Kind of a few learning curve projects that would ramp up from one to the next.

ahh, I will admit a few of those... I have no idea wtf they are... although I do unnerstan' the big-ass chisel/stick well. I have no idea what a froe is.... Can it take off body parts?

Sounds like you have a summer of awesome building ahead of you. I am luck my house had a workbench complete with pegboard when I moved in. And not one of thos fancy buy it from Sears things. This bitch was built here by the previous owner. It's not going to move around.

The riving froe is sometimes also called a shingle knife. It is kind of like a sickle, but with a medium length handle and a shorter and much thicker blade, that is also angled 90º from what a sickle would be. It is usually kept kind of dull. You use it usually on freshly cut wood, as a precision splitter. You hit the back of the blade with a huge hunk of tree they call a froe mallet, and then twist the handle to pop off whatever needs popping off.

It can be used for cutting shingles, or for sectioning logs, or if the grain is amenable, for split hewing down the length of a timber, or for splitting boards out of it.

Use-wise, it would go somewhere after an axe, but before a chisel or handplane. For rough dimensioning more than finishing.

ahhh, ok. Olde Tyme fashioning shit. Fookin' Noice.

I've been meaning to baffle hats more. I sent Chris some Hideous Yellow Foam just for that purpose. The hat/snare thing is always a dick. Even if the drummer has good dynamics and has the hats up high.

I've actually started using the 57 again myself on the snare, but I'm micing the side of the shell. And it's a very specific and odd snare. I've tended to prefer big condensers and pretty far back, too, comparatively. 6 inches to a foot, to get the thing in the room and capture the whole sound, not just top head bonk, so I suppose it's not surprising I've taken to the side shell.

If only the Josephsons were more common; I'd love to actually hear one in person. Especially now that I have a better frame of reference for stuff having used a lot of things now, from shitty to $$$.

That would be an SE Reflexion Filter he has on the hats. It's basically meant as a portable vocal booth kinda thing. I'd rather have one on the hats than vox!

Also, looks like a Beyer M88 on the outside kick? I have Heard Good Things about those.

I really do like the sound of a 57 on a snare, it's just my personal experience with them has been tainted with horrid hi hat bleed. Vesication's full length in particular. Great snare, can't turn it up as high as I want to though! Ass. Baffles indeed. Even with baffles, I think I'll stick to mics with better isolation on the snare. The less spill the better, in this specific case, IMO.

I feel like Ballou took a cue from Albini in going with Josephsons. I feel like Ballou is to metal as Albini is to rock in terms of production sense, and intentionally so. Like I can picture Kurt going to Steve's website and being all like "ooh! Look at that. GAS indeed,"