Studio maintenance

It's that time again - clean off the collected grime, service the bad parts, refresh the plugs and inserts.
Allen & Heath System 8 - I like the brown scheme. It reminds me of those early EMI consoles from Abbey Road. It is a warm colour, in tune with the warm sound this console has.

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Knob colour scheme

Knob Colour Scheme

While sorting out what knobs and caps are missing I can summarise the colour coding as follows:

• Green = EQ

• Brown = Aux send

• Red = Level/Pan/Gain

Meters

To the VU meters. The SQ-10 meter is still being made by Anders, and is stocked by both RS (code 220-368) and Farnell (code 7758219).

Each one has an incandescent bulb to provide illumination. And they blow. And they're fiddly to replace. Channel 3 and 4 are bad but in view of the effort to change them I have decided that I can live with that.

Faders

Original Alps audio-taper K faders are available from Audio Maintenance.

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Knobs, Buttons, Fader Caps

The knobs are non-standard parts it seems these days. So your best bet is either find someone who is parting out an old System 8, or get a similar vintage AHB mixer yourself as a parts donor. Same for the button caps and switch caps.

The faders have 8mm tabs, and you can still find supplies of suitable fader caps (see above).

Some history

The System 8 mixers have been around for many years, and were there at a critical time in British pop. Some artists that have or still use System 8's in their studios and productions.

• Mungo Jerry apparently used a System 8 on the classic In The SummerTime hit

• Martyn Ware of Human League and Heaven 17

• Both The Devil and The Oscillation: From Tomorrow were recorded on a System 8 (in 128 formation).

Tone2 updates FireBird to V2.1 and sets it free

FireBird 2 is now being offered for free by Tone2 the German company based in Munich.

FireBird is not just a subtractive synthesizer but also uses Harmonic Content Morphing synthesis (HCM) which lets you load waveforms from a library and transpose it to bring out different harmonics. The release also contains 70 additional sounds.

Features

• Very easy to program and easy to use 

• A unique sounding synthesis: Harmonic content morphing (HCM) 

• High sound quality: Warm, transparent 

• 437 hand picked presets included, over 1000 sounds available 

• 84 oscillator types containing 18,000 morphable waveforms 

• 38 different filter types 

• True stereo mode, 4x unison mode, and up to 8 oscillators per voice 

• Can sound like other synthesis methods - additive, subtractive, AM, FM, phase distortion, supersaw, vocoder, sync 

• Can sound like natural instruments like piano, brass, organs... 

• 23 spectral manipulations or “modifiers” can be applied to the oscillators 

• 21 arpeggiator types 

• 13 effect typesSkinable user interface 

You can download from Tone2 here:
https://tone2.com/html/firebird%20vsti%20vst%20synthesizer%20plugin.html

Meet Twin Sister

This is Mr Twin Sister, an American band from Long Island. The band formed in 2008 when the five members of Twin Sister came together to work on Vampires With Dreaming Kids. They relocated to Brooklyn where they built a small following. Their EP ‘Color Your Life’ was released on Domino Records in the UK and Infinite Best in the USA. You can find more about the band on their website here.

A bit of trivia – the lead singer, Andrea Estella replaced Leighton Meester as Carrie Bishop in the Kickstarter funded Veronica Mars Movie (2014)

I’m really excited to tell you that I have just started work on a remix of their April 2011 work ‘Meet the Frownies’. I’ll let you know how that works out sometime soon.

Slick EQ

Here is another wonderful free (hard to believe because this one is so smooth) filtering/saturation plugin. It comes from Tokyo Dawn Records.

Three (and a half) filter-bands arranged in a classic Low/Mid/High semi-parametric layout offer fast and intuitive access to four distinct EQ modes, each representing a set of distinct EQ curves and behaviours. An elaborate auto gain option automatically compensates for changes of perceived loudness during EQ operation. Optionally, SlickEQ allows to exclusively process either the stereo sum or stereo difference (i.e. “stereo width”) without additional sum/difference encoding.

In order to warm up the material with additional harmonic content, SlickEQ offers a switchable EQ non-linearity and an output stage with 3 different saturation models. These options are meant to offer subtle and interesting textures, rather than obvious distortion. The effect is made to add the typical “mojo” often associated with classy audio gear.

You get to choose from four different EQ models – American, British, German or Soviet EQ. In use SlickEQ is very smooth and gives a real warmness to your sound. Absolutely recommended.

Download for free from Tokyo Dawn Records here

Band with no name

During the month of October 2013 I met with the members of a band from Hamburg in Germany and was excited to be invited to one of their rehearsals. As was fairly typical for Hamburg, the evening of the rehearsal we had heavy snowfall and getting to the rehearsal was quite an adventure.

Band members are currently Stephie who is the band vocalist, Stefan on bass and lead guitar, Lazlo on lead guitar and Dirk on drums.

The band produce a tight sound in the classic rock genre with many of the pieces being written by the lead guitarist, Lazlo. The sound they produce is well balanced although there is sometimes a tendency to push Stephie’s vocals to the limit when she is placed in competition with the lead guitar; however, we were in a rehearsal situation with no final microphone placement or balancing being done.

The whole group work very hard and I look forward to hearing the progress at some future date.