Lounge Guy,

I think I pretty well agree with all of that. Infact Joe Malone of JLM gave me the same advice concerning the op-amp make up gain and start experimenting.

It can be interesting to look at a schematic and see some of the little additional sort of things.

Here at work just about everything we buy comes with a full service manual with parts list and parts numbers so we in the Engineering department can service things. Sometimes we may even look at something on behalf of the Manufacturer if they don't have representation down here. Professional Equipment and company/s come in all shapes and sizes.

kent, post: 326092 wrote: I've got a couple things from a friend who will remain nameless. Since the place I work are Manley dealers and the stuff they make is absolutely awesome and Evana is paranoid (and maybe rightly so) I won't post them. I would, however, email them to someone (or even two) who would swear on their mother's grave not to post them but compare them to the Gates Sta-level or the Universal Audio Vari-Mu's. This with the whole intent on making a new DIY project out of it. Cloning the Manley would be hard anyway since the output tranny is pretty wacky.

Any chance of a ....... u know what!!

Yeah, she had to work really hard to get into the business. Not. It must be tough being a millionaire's kid?? And David was obviously having a midlife crisis to marry a gal that much younger than him. Last I heard she and George Massenburg had combined efforts. Hmmm? Haven't heard much since? Maybe she was too wild for David? But heck, I'm wild and I ride a motorcycle too but I'm not a millionaire.

So, you guys all want to clone the Manley stuff eh? Modify it? Why even bother with it? Someone was upset because it had Op-Amps in the front end? Who's Op-Amp? There is nothing wrong with Op-Amps. API has the 2520. Neve has the BA 438/440, Hardy utilizes the Jensen 990 (lest I forget?). What's wrong with those?? Not good enough for you? Good enough for most of the Platinum & Gold hanging in a lot of people's homes/studios. You only need to worry about how to make good recordings before you need to learn about cloning other people's work. Not to be disloyal to my audio brothers and sisters here. I was shown the API 2520 schematic quite a while back. I had no intention of cloning it. Neve didn't hide his in abstention or proprietary blah blah. Of course he'll tell you his older discrete units like I own are not as good as his newer discrete units. Does this make me want to replace all of my old ones in my console with his new ones (if that were possible)? No! It doesn't. And almost all tube crap these days is not all tubes. Almost everything is a hybrid combining the best of the old with the best of the new or just trying to keep costs down. And that's what makes it sound good. It's not just old stuff and not just new stuff it's bringing it all together in a cohesive manner. Sort of like good recording and mixing. You think someone's cloned preamp/equalizer/limiter is going to make you a better engineer? I can most assuredly tell you it won't. It might save you some bucks, which I guess is the desired outcome. Of course when it comes down to economics I can understand perfectly well why people want to clone other people's circuitry. Besides, I'm relatively certain there is nothing that's terribly unique about the Manley stuff. I mean if you want a good microphone preamp it doesn't make any difference if you clone API, Neve, Manley, etc., if you don't start off with a quality transformer. And no matter how you slice it, while it's inexpensive to clone simple circuits, it ain't simple to clone unique old-school Transformers. Inductors might be an off-the-shelf component from that manufacturer or it could have been custom specified and ordered from them that wasn't something off the shelf. For instance, when I spoke to Rupert Neve at the AES about my old console and those "Marinaire Radar" output transformers, I was laughing about. I asked him if they were originally a stock, off the shelf transformer utilized for Marine & Aircraft radar applications? The name would/could certainly implied that. To which he responded "no, I custom specified what I wanted and they wound them for me". So while you talented and educated electronic wunderkind's wonder just what those people were thinking, now you know. So if you are in the manufacturing business and there is a part that you cannot effectively manufacture, you go to somebody who knows how and specify what you want, for a price. I worked for Scully at the end of the 1970s and lived 3 blocks from MCI in Fort Lauderdale previously to that, I can tell you that these tape recorder manufacturers, didn't make their own heads. Why not? Isn't that one of the reasons to buy an analog recorder? The sound isn't just from the electronics but is in combination with the characteristics of the other manufacturers head as well. And with all of this esoteric professional audio equipment it is these nuance differences that gives those products their pedigree & unique character. So all you really need to know how to do is make better recordings which really has nothing to do with your equipment, if it works well. Some people like Ford's. Some people like Toyotas. A few people still like Duesenberg's and when was the last time you saw one of those? Those are supposed to be much better than any Ford or Toyota so why hasn't somebody cloned one lately??

I'm really not here to rain on anybody's party. I do however want to stress that Recording.org is here to help you make better recordings with professional equipment already at hand. And there are plenty of sponsors here that make quality components & re-creations of quality equipment manufacturers who have since passed. I've used a Manley vari-mu limiter and it had a similar quality to the Gates Sta Level, RCA limiters, etc., as in old school. Not my favorite. I still love my 1176's. So there's no reason for me to desire a variable-mu limiter. Of course it's another flavor and if I had the budget?...

I'll send you a schematic to my old Neve stuff. Rupert never hid his schematics from the many television networks that ordered his products. Because they would have never purchased them if they had made it that difficult to repair his products like some of these other manufacturers do today with all of this "proprietary" blah blah crap. For instance, like Digidesign whose microphone preamp is "proprietary" and is so proprietary it's not terribly good sounding. And they don't want to supply you and won't, with a schematic. You just have to look at the circuit board and trace it all out yourselves. Which the people at Black Lion Audio obviously had to do to improve the crappy proprietary Digidesign microphone preamps. This proprietary crap isn't anything that they didn't learn in school to begin with and there is no new technology that we don't already know about. I wanted to be an Electrical Engineer when I was younger but I realized that my mathematics aptitude wasn't up to the task. I realized this was quite all right as all of the good sounding stuff I liked had already been created by someone else. It was just a matter of combining the right components together along with my superb talents that allowed me to custom-design & build custom audio consoles. Think about it. So is it going to be API microphone preamps with Neve equalizer? Or, Neve microphone preamps with API equalizers? It's your decision to make. It depends what kind of sound you want. Do you really know what you want? Maybe you do? Especially if you've heard the piece of equipment you are drooling over. When I was a lot younger, 12, I heard the then brand-new JBL 4310 from a Crown D 150 amplifier. Well, I already knew what I wanted. Couldn't afford that. So I had to settle for building my own DYNACO amplifier and having to also suffer through a pair of AR2ax's along with my AR turntable. It was many years later when I finally got my 4311's & Crown DC 300 A which I still own and use to this day. I know how to get the sound I want from those crappy old items. It's because we've been intimate together. Just don't tell my boyfriend that.

No problem making decisions when purchasing equipment because I've heard it.
Mx. Remy Ann David

You do realize that you're talking to a topic that's been dead for 8 years. Most of those people are long gone.
Some poor soul resurrected it from the grave.
Lot's of things have changed in 8 years.

A little history from the archives.

I remember when this topic was started. Shortly after this post, I shut down Tech Talk because piracy and copy protected schematics were being circulated via our PM system and the public forum. A percentage of [[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.groupdiy…"]groupdiy.com/[/]="http://www.groupdiy…"]groupdiy.com/[/] members don't like paying for something they can copy so they needed to be redirected out the door and my forum shut down. This BS is still going on but thankfully not here anymore. They move over to http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/ Which is now shut down.

Before I new about the piracy I wanted to put a private section up that would have user fee of $20 a year... ( so we could preserve and backup all legit content under one roof but that didn't go over well.

Trying to help keep the integrity of the Tech Talk forum and preserve things didn't go over well either. It all got, forcefully spun out of proportion by a few key people trying to download RO content and start up their own forum. Once again, stealing proves to be how this group operates.

You might want to visit their new digs. http://www.groupdiy.com/

Hey? Sometimes, I forget to look at the dates when I look at the subject matters. And that kind of stuff does heat me up. This is why we save our $ up for the toys we want. We've all worked to get what we want. Be it the cheapest stuff or the best stuff. It's just stuff in hands that don't know how to utilize it. There is a reason why I preach old-school basics. My mom and dad were always old-school musician/performers. So there still is this desire for many of us to continue with older traditions and a lot of DIY.

Getting older
Mx. Remy Ann David

Mas Pas Schematics

I know Ive got some somewhere from when I used to work at a place that fixed them-please PM me

Yeah, tahts a better idea than just blindly copying a circuit-find out what makes different EQ's tick, and why some are are used in certain situations, where others are less suited.-anyway on second thoughts, you'll learn more!!

lounge, post: 326129 wrote: There are enough schematics on the net to design a knockoff of any EQ. Having a Schematic of the Massive Passive will not really do anyone any real good. Just pick the freq. points desired and start building filters.

Did you guys know that you can pull filter sections out of the EQP1A and MEQ5 and change termination loads there buy allowing manipulation of inductor/cap values and just sum the filters back togeather with a traditional summing node.

Start small on proto boards with op-amps to make things easy. Then after the filters start sounding good just replace the op-amps with tubes or transistors as personal taste directs. Heaven forebid you just may find yourself actually learning some real electronics rather than just copying someone elses sweat.

Don't get me worng! I am all for learning from other designs BUT There IS ENOUGH ON THE NET NOW!

Lounge Guy