Recent Acquisitions

[Stephen]

Considering there's been a few bits of tech posted in 'recent purchases' of late, I wondered if we should have a similar thread in here, where it might spark some discussion, also thought it would be good as a place of closure for all the "what mixer/speaker/microphone/recorder should I buy" type threads.

Guidelines: Anything goes as long as you're intending to make music with it: bought, borrowed, found, stolen, instrument, gadget, object, score and so on.

To kick it off, my most recent grab has been a pair of these:


which seems to finally have solved the problem of transducer availability on this side of the atlantic. They're littler than the rolen star model, but a good deal cheaper too. Just fixed them beneath the piano this afternoon...

[horaflora]

Is no picture ok? I've no camera, and roomate's asleep.

Last night at a CD assembly party (you guys do that? get yr friends to build your releases for you with promise of beer and 'za?) I recieved a pretty sweet cassette tape case that holds 20 tapes... it's got a strap, is red fabric of some sort on the outside and will likely be a game changer for me... as I've written before, I use tapes in my performances.. -4 or 5 at a time- and until recently, have just been putting new work over the older works, utilizing the same 5 tapes for about 7 shows in a row... I had hoped that a side effect of this practice, other than saving space (by reusing it), would be that the older works would sort of "ghost" themselves through the newer ones, and I'd end up with some weird collage tapes that I could then use for a recorded work, or something...

But recently, as the tapes aren't wearing out and ghosting the way I had thought (hoped) they might (and why the hell not? so weird...), I've been thinking out loud that the time may be right to start an archive of available 'sets' of 4/5 tapes per piece... available to myself for re-use at different gigs, or at least for my archives sake, but either way needed a safe and easy way of storing them... and this case is perfect!

I know there must be a ton of cases like these out there waiting to be found for cheap, but I'm glad this one found it's way to me. we're buddies.

[orangettecoleman]

Yeah, I'm waiting for a good tape case to show up at the thrift store. There's one there now but it's all hard plastic and looks like a drill case. Anyway, this is a great idea for a thread. My latest acquisition is a Guyatone MD-3 delay:

Which sounds good but I'd like to get the delay repeats looping indefinitely which it won't do really. Still more than worth the 50 bucks I spent on it.
Also got an IEC function generator which is just awesome, and a Tascam Porta 07 which was DOA
And I've been picking up piles of knockoff portable cassette players at Goodwill for about 3 bucks apiece.

[RFKorp]

Yeah, I'm waiting for a good tape case to show up at the thrift store. There's one there now but it's all hard plastic and looks like a drill case.

I wish everything I own looked like a drill case.

meanwhile.





obviously audio fidelity wasn't my objective this round.

[cheapmachines]

To kick it off, my most recent grab has been a pair of these:


which seems to finally have solved the problem of transducer availability on this side of the atlantic. They're littler than the rolen star model, but a good deal cheaper too. Just fixed them beneath the piano this afternoon...

They're pretty good, although I managed to burn mine out during that Rainforest IV event in London during the summer. I wasn't running it at high volume particularly, but it seemed to suffer from being on for long periods of time. The Rolen Stars that other people were using didn't fare much better. After about an hour or so, they got so hot you could cook an egg on them

After it burnt out, I went with an emergency pair of these from Argos as Heath Robinson transducers:



Surprisingly good for a bodge-job

If you find you need a transducer with more bass end transmission, these worked very well and were much more robust all round:

http://www.conrad-uk.com/goto.php?artikel=378284

[Stephen]

^
Thanks Phil, I'd been meaning to ask your advice on these since I saw the shots of the Rainforest setup. Yeah I've burned a pair of rolen stars as-well, thanks to my own idiocy, that was an expensive fuck-up. The Vidsonix ones do seem pretty thin on bass - what amp were you using with them?

Maybe I'll add one of those bass-ducers as well and wire it in mono.

[cheapmachines]

The Vidsonix ones do seem pretty thin on bass - what amp were you using with them?

Maybe I'll add one of those bass-ducers as well and wire it in mono.

I was using an old Carlsboro power amp which was rather overpowered for the Vidsonix transducers. Just had to keep a careful eye on the volume... it could be I was running them too high, but I doubt if the amp was feeding much more than 20 /30 watts output. Just seemed the heat got to them, plus I had some vibration problems which no doubt created more heat than was sensible...

Well worth a look, those bass-ducers. There was one mounted to a metal security door at the show and the sound was pretty awesome in the stairwell behind it.

[barry]

NOS preamp tube for V1 in my Princeton

[jkudler]

huh, i just got a guyatone md3 also. OC - did you win the ebay auction that just ended? mine way buy it now. played with a friend's recently, and i really liked the sound and features. also got this:

[mshiflet]

Got a 3-pedal USB HID footswitch as there is now a cheap Hong Kong manufacturer. $22 + $15 postage is pretty unbeatable price.



http://cgi.ebay.com/HID-usb-Foot-switch ... 3356740891

Think I'll mostly be using it to punch in and out of buffers/loops but have a few other ideas for implementing it as well.

[Moon]

Got a 3-pedal USB HID footswitch as there is now a cheap Hong Kong manufacturer. $22 + $15 postage is pretty unbeatable price.

http://cgi.ebay.com/HID-usb-Foot-switch ... 3356740891

Think I'll mostly be using it to punch in and out of buffers/loops but have a few other ideas for implementing it as well.

Aren't Arduino's about 20us$ on ebay? (found a few for even less just now)
You could take contact mics and wire them up to do the same thing through that quite easily. Even use them to measure pressure instead of just on/off. Might need a resistor for that, I read, and it's not very exact. Apparently, two coins wired in the same way (one to analog, one to ground) with a little foam in between works as well. Crazy electronics!
Not to spoil your fun, I can completely understand wanting to have a real piece of equipment instead of something shoddy you made yourself, hahaha.
Just felt the need to mention it in case someone without a pc came around wanting the same thing.

[mshiflet]

You're not spoiling my fun. You have no idea how horrible my wiring/soldering/electronics skills are.

That said, I got this guy home and unlike other PC-based devices I've bought, it's giving me quite a headache on the Mac. Can't get it to remap as I'd like and one of the switches is acting as a space bar which is pretty annoying.

Worst case scenario I can resell it to a PC user, get a decent portion of the money back, and a couple valuable tinkering hours out of it.

[snailed]

You're not spoiling my fun. You have no idea how horrible my wiring/soldering/electronics skills are.

That said, I got this guy home and unlike other PC-based devices I've bought, it's giving me quite a headache on the Mac. Can't get it to remap as I'd like and one of the switches is acting as a space bar which is pretty annoying.

Worst case scenario I can resell it to a PC user, get a decent portion of the money back, and a couple valuable tinkering hours out of it.

There's got to be some kind of software to allow you to remap the keys... Hmm. I'll take a look around. So is it outputting it as HID (I believe that's the term)? Like, as a regular typing keyboard would, or a mouse? I know in Max/MSP you can take the HID input and map it to anything. What software are you working with? There should be some sort of other software you can put before anything else that will remap the keystrokes coming from the foot pedal to any other keystrokes. Could have sworn I had some freeware like that once for the mac...

This won't allow you to change it, but it's a neat little program that lets you see what HID devices are saying: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/30159/ihid

some other links to check out:
sharpkeys: http://www.randyrants.com/2006/07/sharpkeys%5F211.html
ukelele: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page ... id=ukelele

[mshiflet]

I've used the internal HID interface in Bidule and tried two different external programs, one called ControllerMate and another so useless I trashed it as quick as I downloaded it. The problem with remapping it is that it seems to be programed to operate as a keyboard, but as it is only a three-switch device I have no clue what keys it is internally defaulting to. The 'space' thing only happens on occasion and recognition of the device itself is spotty. Much buggier than I figured it'd be. Might be heading back on the auction block sooner than expected.

Thanks for the link too. I'll see if that helps.

[snailed]

I've used the internal HID interface in Bidule and tried two different external programs, one called ControllerMate and another so useless I trashed it as quick as I downloaded it. The problem with remapping it is that it seems to be programed to operate as a keyboard, but as it is only a three-switch device I have no clue what keys it is internally defaulting to. The 'space' thing only happens on occasion and recognition of the device itself is spotty. Much buggier than I figured it'd be. Might be heading back on the auction block sooner than expected.

Thanks for the link too. I'll see if that helps.

Hmm, yeah that is odd. I just installed the iHID program, and maybe it will help you diagnose which key it is actually internally mapped to; that seems to be what it's for. Then perhaps it might be easier... that's a shame though, I might have bought one otherwise Let us know if you get it working, good luck!

[David]

Worst case scenario I can resell it to a PC user

maybe a stupid question, but why would it work better on a pc?

[AlecSchueler]

Worst case scenario I can resell it to a PC user

maybe a stupid question, but why would it work better on a pc?

I'm guessing the drivers it comes with are more likely to have been tested on that platform.

[mshiflet]

maybe a stupid question, but why would it work better on a pc?

It's designed for a PC (if you look closely at the image you can see it even has stickers listing the various versions of Windows is is compatible with) and has a CD with some Windows software/drivers that I have to assume do all the things I'm trying to do on my Mac.

edit: what AlecSchueler said

[orangettecoleman]

Student loan just came in as well so I may end up picking some more stuff up soon... Also I think I'm going to order a BYOC rat clone kit. I miss my rat pedal.

[cheapmachines]

Shoddy build but I have one or two others in the Dano mini range so was prepared for that.

Fairly harsh sounding (in a good way...) 60's ish fuzz with an octave-up switch and a reasonably high output. Low price too.

Used it live recently and was impressed with the racket it produced