Here is a great thread on myths in home recording. It was started by Fletcher of Mercenary Audio.

If you do know who Flectcher is you must not have been paying attention in the class about who’s who on the internet and recording. This man know his stuff and is not afraid to use it.

My friend Jon B is celebrating the 12th year of operation of the little record label that could, Kelp Records with a weekend of fun, music and gourmet sausages.  Sadly this year there won’t be a parade.

I have played and recorded for Kelp Records and have attended the previous anniversary parties and I can say without a doubt that Jon and Kelp are what good music are all about. 

So a new search of the internet has turned up a few new possibility for my repair work for the Otari MX-70.  

Rick Turcic of Ontario Audio/Video Service and Ike Zimbel of Zimbel Audio Productions.

Both are in the Toronto area.  Ontario Audio/Video offer a great estimate system (chargeable if you decline the work but non-chargeable if you do the work.  But, Ontario A/V don’t actually specialize in multi-tracks where as the other fellow is more special zed in studio related matters but doesn’t offer the same robust estimate system as he is a much smaller, specialized shop….

If I could only combine them all or get the beast down to Chicago economically.

Sort of neat website.  Lots of guitar/bass/drum/etc info, but certain links have neat info on the recording end of things.  Not really super technical, but a really good time waster if your a geek like me.  Plus they do a great interview with the Soledad Brothers, who generally rock my world. 

Well I think I’m going to send the Otari MX-70 down to Toronto to this place. 

I would love to be able to send the machine down to Chicago and have Soren Wittrup fix it up as he has lots of experience with these particular machine, but getting to beast down to Chicago seems out of the question at this point.

I’m going to have to the tech at Tele-Tech (Patrick Holden) do some exploratory work, at his hourly bench rate, to determine the scope of the repairs.  It is very hard to have these machines repaired - you are kind of at the mercy of the technician.  If I was to say ‘just fix it’, it could end up costing more money then you would be able to buy a fully warrantied, 100 % functioning multitrack from a used dealer….  or it might just be a fuse…..  I just don’t know.

All I know is that I have recorded on tape machines for the past 15 years and if you get all the inputs right (micing, acoustic environment, performances, etc) the output is the sound of rock and roll.  And that is my ultimate goal.

Well I got my I/O cards back from Soren Wittrup…..  The cards look really nice and the work on the parts that he replaced looks top notch.

But, when I put the cards back in the deck…… silence……. not good.

Before I sent the cards away we had what I thought was a minor incident.  The machine was in play mode and it wouldn’t respond to any button presses.  To get it to stop I turned the MX-70 off.  Well when I turned it back on the machine wouldn’t play back.

Just to recap - the Otari MX-70 had been able to playback recorded sounds no problem.  When you recorded something to tape a ‘wind’ sound would be recorded also.  Found out that the ‘wind’ sound was a common problem with these machines.  The night before I was to send 2 cards for repair as a test run we had a runaway tape issue, causing me to turn the machine off and on.  This seemed to have a detrimental effect on the machine and now nothing plays back.

PAS/CAL have finally updated their recording blog! 

It was worth the wait, as several different sessions are covered (guitar, keyboard and drum overdubs), and they link to a great picture of Sterling Morrison from the Velvet Underground (my favorite all-time guitard player).

Here is a great site.  I have found much information about some of the microphones I use like the Electro-Voice 635 and Electro-Voice 664.

The site offers great descriptions of the microphones, sound clips of the microphones, technical specs and even sales-type sheets.

The creator of the site (S. O. Coutant) has put alot of effort into it and it shows.  

Another vote of confidence for Mr. Joly’s mods.  Now if i could just get that tax return back from the Revenue Canada….

So it seems that the Ribbon Microphone - gate has come to a peaceful conclusion……

The writer Lynn Fuston emailed John Nady (and EQ magazines sales dept) a concise defence of his article that pointed out several facts including that others were already self-importing, his story would actualy generate interest (i.e. sales) in ribbon microphones, and Lynn just happened to be the first person to widely write about it.

John Nady responded:

“Paraphrasing here, he said he appreciated the goodwill spirit in which my letter was presented, and did not agree with all my conclusions. He did agree, however, that there might be some ancillary benefits from the story. He also said that he hoped I would try out their new tube ribbon mic when it starts shipping.”

I think the important part here is “there might be some ancillary benefits from the story” - Oh yeah this story might get people to buy ribbon microphones - Nady ribbon microphones. That realization (increased $$) always gets to the heart of the matter.

One thing that was brought up during the online debate was the ‘Wal-Mart’ effect / the race to the bottom when it comes to manufacturing goods. I’m gonna make a political comment here… the effects of outsourcing manufacturing to China has many significant effects, not just lowering the price of goods. This debate has high-lighted just one of these not so great effects. There are many more not so great effects with this race to the bottom and I hope we as a society can find the right balance. … end political commentary.