Gigged this weekend with the new Les Paul. Extremely excited by this one! Its a 2001 Standard with 59' Burstbucker Pros w/nickle covers and Tone-Pro nickle bridge and block. Cherry burst with a bit of striping on the top a medium weight 9lbs and of course, the better case with the shroud. All of these parts are built to age. Sounded great!

As for the hi-gain amp....I don't need to do that but you're right, this git will sound deadly on something with deep harmonic distortion. I'll have to dig the VHT PittBull out of its roadcase and try it.

I'm going to try out an 1176 clone that gets great reviews and seems to have all the parts of the originals going for it...transformers, components etc.. Warm Audio WA76. Should be here at the end of the week. I have a couple of different options to compare it to. A hand-built 1176 clone, an older UA 1176, and an 1176 500 series clone. We'll see.

I have also found a very reasonably priced desk already finished. I'm not sure I can rebuild my racks into a desk at this price point but I'll need to go look at it first. It would allow me to work right up to the tear down as I wouldn't have to vacate the racks in order to reconfigure the racks.

Bought the desk used..Craigslist. And he's storing it for me till I clear my room. Nice!.. Still need a sidecar and have all the parts when I take apart my racks I built a couple of years ago.

Room is now officially partially torn down. I am still mixing a singer/songwriter project in order to make his release party deadline he has scheduled. I wish people would think these things through.....BEFORE you schedule a release, live with and listen to the mixes for a couple of weeks at least.....FIX anything then....LISTEN again for a few days and then go to mastering. THEN PRINT IT AND SCHEDULE THE PARTY!!!!

So all I have left is the 003, the mac and a pair of monitors.. Everything else is stacked in the drum room. Zerorez will here Tuesday late afternoon and will deep clean the carpet and the rugs....So the mix will be done By MONDAY night.

Have started the freestanding wall build-outs. OC703..MDF frameworks with primered pine bones....and pegboard. Like the old days. Pegboard sounds really good over a decent built wall full of 703 and air......

And you have an easy solution for cord storage.......

Cool stuff. Nice to see your making steady progress. Are those walls part of the internal shell? Is it one of those outside in type things where the drywall is on the outside of the wall and your using the exposed bays for absorbstion? There's some formulas for helmholtz resonators based on the diameter of the holes, and their relative spaceing, if that interests you. I don't have any links for a reliable source but I saw one in the master handbook of acoustics a couple years back.

I wish people would think these things through.....BEFORE you schedule a release, live with and listen to the mixes for a couple of weeks at least.....FIX anything then....LISTEN again for a few days and then go to mastering. THEN PRINT IT AND SCHEDULE THE PARTY!!!!

I guess if most musicians and artists had killer business and organization skills there wouldn't be so many of us working for beer and gas money :) maybe he/she is on to something though the PRE-Release party! Or was that what was cleverly called touring, practicing, and writing.

The build-out is purposely done to be removable at some time in the future since I dont own the house. So perfection in sound control will not be a high priority but it will sound very good with what I am employing. The room was built some time ago as a family room with an entertainment center as the focus. It already has a suspended acoustic ceiling. I'm not talking 2X4 drop-ins but actually 12" fiber interlocked acoustic squares that are suspended from the actual rafters. So its dead enough to make any control I add a bonus. I'm going to be a year more here and then Patty and I will have found a property with everything we need. THEN I'll purpose-build a room.

Unless you're building a permanent audio facility from the ground up, or are rebuilding a current structure for the same purpose, you should always make your treatment as easily removable as you can whenever possible. That's not to say that your next situation will require the same treatment, but you never know, and it seems a bit silly to me to be permanently adhering treatment devices to a structure that you don't own or aren't planning on being in for much longer.

Hell, I DO own my own home and I have no designs on moving, but I've still tried to implement these methods so that they can be easily taken down and moved if needed. While I don't have any plans to move right now, no one really knows what the future holds... At some point, I might decide to build a studio again, away from my house, and if I do, I'm a little bit further ahead, in that I already have these devices built.

IMHO of course.

d/

A couple of pics of the room right after the wall build. Desk is coming in a couple of days. and then WIRING....yay

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Heres the desk in its position in the room. I was going to center it 90degrees from this but it killed too much real estate for tracking. I still have the center section rebuild to complete for the Artist mix controllers and the desk top for the sidecar needs to be done. Theres the second patchbay on its way....my Phoenix Audio DRS-Q4 got rebuilt and is in transit....JJ Audio rebuilt and modified my old original ART VLA into a much better device and its not here yet...Mac gets an upgrade..10.8.3...ProTools needs installed...PT HD10...The storage area will get a major cleaning straightening and rearrangement...Theres a fireproof file cabinet going in under the top for the sidecar....Both of my ADK TT mics have gone to JJ Audio and one will be a U47 clone and the other a C12/ELAM 251 clone. With the U67, U87, SM7,and the Kel HM7 I should have most vocals covered. Und tven vee vire zee beastie

Onward we go.

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m/ m/

Rock on Bro. Drool!!

Have fun in patchbay hell...

I just rewired a good chunk of the mix patchbay... and I'm damn glad I actually separated tracking from mix patching.

Just something to think about... In my case, and the way I've been working for the last year-ish, I went ahead and committed to assigning "Mix" converter pairs of I/O to normalled gear... Mainly drum/bass/plank/vox right up the line...

If you remember, it was my original intent to make it much more fluid to purposely assign an I/O and then grab what you want on the patchbay.... because over the years, folks have mainly been tracking here and taking files elsewhere for mix. But the damned rat's nest of tt's finally got on my nerves mixing in here when I'm doing tracking sessions along side.

Tracking hasn't changed one bit though.

The 2 bays are right next to each other... tracking left, mix right... performed major surgery on the right ventricle of the studio... and never missed a beat with tracking sessions.

Patchbay hell starting last Thursday. The buildout for the desk's center section which formerly held a console is complete now. I decided not to recess the Artist controllers and it looks good as is. All of the parts for the wiring are still in transit so it looks like late this week will be the target for putting it all together. I'm a week behind but thats how it goes.

As for patchbay configuration, I'm pretty standard. I want guest engineer/producers to be able to come in and enjoy the Herman Miller while they work their magic for their clients. I get overflow now as it is from a couple of sources, with the PTHD10, and the real ergonomics of a bigger room as well as good sound, I'll be able to accommodate those in need of a sweetening track or additions to an already in progress project as well as my own clients. I have an 8X8 section in the upper bay for my guest racks. Since everything is D-sub, wiring will be a snap eventually.

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Patchbay Hell is indeed here. This is what its gonna look like for the next week or maybe more.

When I retired from active working for someone else I really wanted to stay busy. So I said to myself, "Dogg, you should really do the studio thing full time.......upgrade to a system all the big rooms are using...get some great mics....." Why oh why do I listen to me???????

I complain but it really is interesting and my clients (whom I am in the middle of their record with are cool to reschedule so the pressure of the deadline is off. BUT! It is a lot of tedious time consuming work work work hiya boys I miss'd ya last night kinda thing.......

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Tracking has begun. There are issues but there have been easy workarounds. I bought a great mic at an excellent price. I wanted a better FET LD Condenser for various tasks especially kick drum. I bought a Bock 195. Its pure.

I'm going to have to exchange the used patch bays. A couple dead holes and too much oxidation.

For those who don't use patchbays, maybe you'll get why this is important. For those that do, just nod....

The sound is 100% better. The new conversion and monitors and straightening up some of the room's problems have moved this to a new level. Tracking with plugs is interesting too. Still sorting out resource levels, but loving the complete lack of latency. Also loving what SSL Channel strip plugs do for drums. AHA! moments everywhere these days.

Adding a Rosetta 2 channel conveter. I wanted to be able to track and reamp through the Eleven rack. Clocking to the Omni. This will be the ticket. Firmware upgrade and the new programs also gives a very good likeness of an SVT on steroids bass cabinet sound.

I wanted a better FET LD Condenser for various tasks especially kick drum. I bought a [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.bockaudi…"]Bock[/]="http://www.bockaudi…"]Bock[/]195. Its pure.

. Awsome man, bet it's gonna sound killer.

The ssl strip is so cool for drums cuz it's got everything all in the one screen and instantiation. Been my go to plugs for drums for a little while, maybe something a ill extra for the kick or OHs.

I'm interested in overall system reliability after you get the settings Sussed out.

Tracking several songs last week has high-lighted some of the (fortunately) minor issues with the set-up. Its also confirmed my thoughts on the work flow and the overall sound being better in every way.

Being able to track and print with certain plugs is way cool and makes the job at mix SOOO much easier. Its more like the tape days when decisions had to be made and adhered to instead of everything being experimental in nature. Not that experimental is bad, its just that, sometimes, you already know what you want and then go do it.

As I said, patchbays must be quiet.

I don't know if I mentioned that the new headphone system is a Behringer P16 system. A main brain and four remotes. Ethernet connection and 16 channels on each mixer. It really sounds great and so far the clients really like their ability to customize their headphones to what they want to hear. The main problem has been the same one that Behringer has always had and that is build quality. Out of the box, brand spanking new, one of the ethernet ports passed power but no sound. The next day two more did the same thing. Its warrantied....no problems....they will gladly fix it but at the expense of my being without a headphone mix for no telling how long. They apparently don't care about servicing a pro room with clientele. So sending another brand-spanking-new one to exchange is out of the question. However, this system sounds better than the Axiom which I'm sure its modeled after. I haven't heard the HEAR system to compare. Its a great addition and one that I will have to sort through until I get a complete working system in place. I know of a couple of churches that have had these in service for several years with no problems so it can be done.

I have found that once I track with a TDM plug, I can mix with the same one as a native and my resource meter goes way down. I'm only on HD2 and its pretty easy to get things bogged down if you don't pay attention to how much the plugs are dragging down the cpu. But this is working fairly turn-key and drama free.

So far (knock on wood) All my existing projects and sessions have converted to ptx. seamlessly. A lot of work on changing the I/O settings but having the properly assigned default settings makes it simply busy work.

This is important because some of my work involves integrating sessions from people coming in for a single track or two. As long as I can work around their idea of a proper I/O then its good. Its kind of amazing what some people set up in their I/O and why.

The new Avid conversion is pretty damn good. No smearing with multiple tracks and multiple uses of similar or the same plug ins and dead solid accurate clocking. These arent your old 192's. No zzzzzzzzz........

Taking the monitoring out of the Toft master section and coming right off the Omni conversion to the Neumanns is a very good thing. I'm hearing things on the older sessions that is telling. And not all in a bad way.

The Waves Abbey Road collection is the shizzits. Now I get to track with either the SSL channel or through a Redd 37 or 51 channel. Its not Abbey Road simply because of the room dynamics but there's a small taste of what they got out of that gear in these emulations. Pair that up with the U47 clone and its kinda magical.

I sure am enjoying this stuff!

These arent your old 192's. No zzzzzzzzz........

Some of the new recordings I've heard this year seem to have lost that tendency. Even the new shakira album is a bit smoother darker and quieter, than what I usually hear on modern pop recordings.

This is kind of a stupid question, by why didn't you just return the headphone system to the dealer? Also just curious what you send out to the mixer and how you group it.

Also is there any sonic diff in the native plugs vs the tdm, that u have picked up on?

Here's the deal on the headphone master. I was buying gear while I was remodeling. So anything I could get a good price on went into storage. The 'dealer' is an on-line dealer and has a 30 day replacement warranty. I didn't even hook it up till well past that date. It IS covered by full warranty from the factory and thye would rather I simply sent it to their warranty repair service than just send me a new one. The 'dealer' in this case could have gone the extra mile and serviced this as a return and swap but they didnt want to. Buyer beware........

I send all 16 channels of my HD I/O analog directly to the headphone brain. The personal mixers are grouped like this ..1.CLIK 2.KIK 3.SNR 4.HAT 5-6. OVRHD GRP 7.GTR1 8.GTR2 9.AUX1 10.AUX2 11.VOX1 12.VOX2 13-14.KEYS 15.AUX3 16. BASS. In a basic tracking session not everything gets used But plenty of room to overdub and monitor with all the aux's and of course anything can be anything by selecting the outputs on the PT mixer.

I don't hear much difference in the plugs. You can print thru the tdm's which is what i want them for..... Changing things at the mix to native tends to lessen the cpu load. Plus I have a lot more native plugs than TDM.....theres a platinum bundle here.

I think that people are starting to get their conversion on the right path. And maybe the best thing that is happening with ProFools is that the 192's and all legacy hardware wont run PT11.

New patch bays installed and ALL of the little noises have disappeared. And the pretty colored labeling is great for old eyes.

A shout out to ProAudio LA for their fine work. Still waiting on an adapter cable for the Apogee 200. It has the X-HD card and it will be in service as the standalone converter for the Eleven Rack. Now it will be so easy to reamp through this device as well as still track if needed. The Eleven is still a viable rack unit. It feels like an amp which some modeling device do not. The biggest problem for my setup was having to make the Eleven the master clock in order to put it in the chain. Now I will just use it analog in/out and wordclock from the Omni. Guitar layers are just around the corner in an easy to set up format.

Almost done.

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Davedog, post: 419039, member: 4495 wrote: I think that people are starting to get their conversion on the right path. And maybe the best thing that is happening with ProFools is that the 192's and all legacy hardware wont run PT11

You've really got it going on, pal. :)

In this big, busy and exciting picture, I sure hope you don't neglect your own creativity; you should take advantage of your new studio from time to time and record your own music, too.

Now... if we could only get you away from Avid and PT... sigh...

d/

Davedog, post: 419470, member: 4495 wrote:

A shout out to ProAudio LA for their fine work.

+1
All my snakes from ProAudio LA are the best.

More of the "boring" stuff from my room.

I recently bought a used Joe Meek compressor. SC2 i think is the number. V1.07....so it has the features of this revision. Its really nice in a lot of ways.

Also "new " to my build out is a Tue Systems Analog P2 mic pre, an UA La 2A, and couple of new mics.

I'm always searching for audio nirvana.

New is a complete set of Nomad Plugs. Check these out. Incredible...... Abbey Road plugs are the bomb....Did I mention the Neumann monitors yet? LOVE LOVE LOVE THEM!!!!'