Fucking HELL yeah. Room looks absolutely brilliant. So there's the FOK mic and then also the Blue Baby Bottle way back in the room? Fuckin' stoked to hear them drums. LDCs on toms are a kickass choice when one can get away with it, IMO. As for the 414s specifically, John Stanier (and Battles' engineer) gets some fucking gnarly tom sounds so I think you're in good company.

Very excited to hear what that room mic sounds like, mutilated..

Anything hitting processing from the get-go?

Oooh, I have just clarified for myself that the MK-319 is not an outside kick mic, but out in front of the kick. Could have just used my eyeballs the first time, I suppose.

Well, the Oktava was originally intended to be an outside kick mic, but Jim moved it back a few feet. It sounds a lot better that way than right up a few inches from the head. A lot better.

Re: processing, that was the original intent, but we didn't count on two things: one, setup was a giant pain in the junk as the Audient wasn't playing nicely with the MOTU, and we lost a lot of time due to equipment and routing hassles at the beginning. Two, we didn't have long enough patch cables to connect the inserts on the board with the hardware. (The board will need at least two patchbays of its own for all the I/O eventually.) We were gonna at least hit the snare with some '76 going in, but in the end, in the interest of expedience, we just moved the mics and did it dry. Alas.

The sessions are completed now. By the end, we were spending about half an hour per song, which isn't bad at all for drum tracking. It helps that the drummer knows what he's doing.

Here's the Blue in relation to the kit:


And here's a shot from close to the far end of the room, for perspective.


The close mics. Note the gaffer tape on the 421s. If you know anything about the infamous 421 mic clip...


Sweet, sweet gaffer tape:

I was unemployed there for a bit, but I have found employment again, which is nice.

My band is recording another short EP again. At least four tracks, maybe five. We are taking some time to just lock ourselves in the practice space and workshop the songs, then spending a few days recording. I am considering sending them off to someone for mastering. The studio where we record usually handles it, and they are solid. But to be fair the guys who run it just sent their band's last EP out to the guys from Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! to get mastered, so theres that. Should be interesting.

Then we are going to go play shows in Ohio for a week, go play our drummer's stomping grounds. Should also be interesting. It is the first multi-day trip for our new tour van, which we purchased from another band for $1300. Thank god our bassist is a mechanic.

Telemaster is finally done! I love it. The tele bridge pickup with tone bypassed may be my new favourite guitar tone. With this Oil City Wapping Wharf it's not too harsh like I thought it may be. I'm finding the eldred mod wiring largely useless so I think I may bin it and get a control plate with just the 1 volume pot with push/pull on it for the pickup tap. And maybe a mini toggle kill switch. The hipshot staggered locking tuners are great but I'm still finding I need a string tree which is a shame. I'll probably get graphtech ones.



I tried to take a nicer photo but the lighting makes the finish look horrible and rough haha, it's dead smooth in person!

The finish on the Telemaster looks excellent. I'm not surprised at all that a Tele pickup, tone bypassed, would make for fine rawk toans. They have a considerable quantity of balls.

I have the GraphTech string trees on one of my Strats. They seem to do the trick. The GraphTech stuff, in general, seems to be quite good quality.

If I may ask: I haven't used the Hipshot locking tuners. Are you familiar enough with other locking tuner designs to compare them to something?

'Fraid not, these are the first locking tuners I've used so I can't compare them to anything. The work great though and we're easy to fit. I may consider them for my other guitars as it made stringing up so much easier.

That looks madhot, Tom.

Thank you sir The neck/profile is giving me hand cramps I dunno if it's too thin or wide what. It's a cheap old Squier affinity. I don't remember other fender necks giving me a problem. I got a piccature that shows the finish a bit more accurately

too thin usually give me hand cramps... I need a baseball bat now. Gone are my days of Ibanez Wizard necks....

Great job on the tele-thing mayne.

And Snax... ooh, those drum session pics. God I wish I could record drums somewhere else than my parents' cramped basement!

I think this may be even thinner than a modern C the tinkerer in me is wanting to put a neck pickup in already though haha. I don't miss it but I do love a strat neck pickup tone. Especially as this will probably be my Eb guitar now.

I had a productive jam with another band last night (though the drummer wasn't present due to work) but the guitarist/singer and bassist seemed pretty good. They're playing originals and like my original stuff. They have a cool punk rock kinda sound to them that I like, makes me feel nostalgic. Hopefully I'll get a call back!

The guitarist reckoned that a subtle always-on compression pedal was the most important thing on his board - what say you guys? I've never used one but I'm wondering whether I could use one to achieve the feel and sustain I like but at lower gain levels? I often find I play with too much gain at times to get the right feel. It's not like I ever get my amp loud enough for power amp compression (that I can tell).

I always liked a soft compressor at the front of a rig running single-coils and everything just right into the front of the amp. I never had luck with the ross-style 2-knob compressors, but the 4-knob stuff (keeley, walrus audio deep six) always worked for me. I had an old japanese boss cs-3? (Three knob compressor) and honestly that was my favorite.

Does it fuck your shit up if you use the guitar volume knob to control gain? I was just looking at maybe trying the Mooer yellow comp. It's a clone of some diamond compressor that people seem to love

I honestly wouldn't know. I don't use my volume knob. Despite having two knobs, a switch, and two pickups, my guitar is just a bridge pickup wired to killswitch

That said, it would make sense. It's adding gain to your signal. Actually that's one reason I preferred the 4-knob over the 2-knob designs, less noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBOR3isdIOg <- that video sounds good. It's pretty squishy, but you can hear the added gain when he takes it off bypass.

Just bought these badboys today. Word on the street is they got the same compression circuit as the Dyna-Mite but with fixed settings. Hella slow attack, hella fast release. So basically, it'll just do pumpy shit, which is cool cause I like pumpy rooms and other things. Ain't fired it up yet though, should be fun..

I need a another dang rack case though. Can't fit the ART in there as it is.

Ah, and I dig the DBX from what I can tell so far. Has some thickass low end response.

Gat damn. I played with a metal/metalcore band last night and it was so much fun. Their current songs are kinda basic, they want to make things a bit more technical but I had a lot of fun despite it not really being the kinda thing I'd usually play. The Laney sounded absolutely savage for that kinda tone set mid gain and boosted with a tubescreamer.

Vaguely related to reviewing my X1r and vaguely related to "what's going in my life", here is me singing on this here Slow Leak track. Not my band but I might end up singing in it, my homeboy Ian wrote all these songs and we tracked like 15 months and months ago but he/we kinda realized he is really not quite up to the task of singing.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/137 ... 20TIME.wav

He's being all wishywashy, so I'm trying to guilt trip his ass into just letting me do it.


On the topic of the microphone, this is obviously getting completely fucking smashed (via Waves 1176) but I am way into what it does for my voice. Quite dark (I'm also removing some top via the EQ on one of these VP 400s) and plenty of room. Granted, I've also some vintage Space Echo convolution reverb courtest of Mr. Kurt Ballou on that shit.

OR, actually update: looks like I will be singing for this band

Finally got internet at the new house! In other news, my left hand feels a bit heavy

cONGRATULATIO0NS Mr KNope!