#electrodyne

“Talked about worms or something”: Time Runner

Today’s review is inspired by one of the most tantalizing tales of technological terror and twisted time travel ever filmed, James Cameron’s 1984 science fiction masterpiece The Terminator. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the franchise that just released its sixth theatrical installment, Terminator: Dark Fate, this month so I wanted to take a look at a particularly strange Terminatorknock…

I’ve been using FuzzMeasure to tune the monitoring setup here, which has predictably led to me starting to obsessively run frequency sweeps on everything. The other night I stayed late and ran sweeps on all our microphone preamplifiers.  It was very interesting. When I talk with all the engineers we spend a lot of time talking about the gear (shockingly), and its always like, “well that one’s more creamy in the top end, but I love the thickness of that one.” Me I like statistics, its great to finally have data on one aspect of the pres sound. Check it out.

We have 5 API 312 cards. The first 2 have always been described as “dark”, and lo and behold they have a rolloff in the highs. I should check the component values in the zobel network.

API 1, Roll off starting at 6k, maybe 3-6 db/octave

In contrast API 3 and 4 have a much more extended high end. I left out the zobel network knowing the complaints about the first two

API 3, No roll-off

And API 5 has a slightly different response, I used a different transformer than for 3 and 4.

API 5, a little less high-end

The Altec 1566s were very similar, except for #4 which had some low-end roll-off.

Altec 1566 #1

Altec 1566 #4

1567 A has a bump in the low mids, B doesn’t. B has more high-end roll-off.

Altec 1567a A-1

Altec 1567a B-3

The RCAs are way different despite having the same circuit (theoretically)

RCA BA12

RCA BA13 (converted to BA12 circuit)

Electrodyne 1-4 have a different response then 5-12

Electrodyne Ch1

Electrodyne Ch 5

and Electrodyne #4 is broken.

Electrodyne Ch4

The more you know…the more work there is.

Sam

After the the tumult of the move last month, it was nice to swing back into production here at the studio with a whole mess of sessions gracing our space.

Davey Jones came all the way from Maryland to record a whopping 13 tracks in 3 days. And he performed all the instruments himself. Wowza! Recorded by Bob Schwenkler and then passed on to Ephriam Nagler for analog mixes through the venerable Electrodyne ACC1204, these catchy songs were stuck in my head for days. Rumor has it Calvin even contributed a guest vocal to a track. Dave told me he’ll be releasing the album under the title The Kraken Cometh. Looking forward to it.

The Pro-Nouns took up residence for a weekend to finish up a new EP with Bob. I came by the studio and it looked like they had pulled out every mic and cable in the whole joint. Read their own thoughts on the session here. And look the EP is already out and rather awesome.

The Shivas came in to work on the final track for their soon to be released full-length. I’ve been hearing snippets of this opus for a year now and I know for damn sure its going to make me want to dance. A nearly impossible task I might add.

Then just when we getting a breather the Hive Dwellers swooped in to record a track for an upcoming compilation being but together by illustrator Willem Kolvoort. Every song in the comp is based off a series of illustrations by Kolvoort. Calvin got #4, and titled it, “Candy Beetle Bug.” You can see glimpses of the Dwellers getting to it in this here vidyo promoting their latest album Moanin’ (available for preorder in the K webstore):

 And this past weekend Cookie Tongue was in the studio. Haven’t even gotten a chance to listen to this yet but I was digging their demos hard.

This month also witnessed the reanimation of our beloved Otari MX5050 MKIII 8-track machine. This guy has been out commission for more than a year with worn out tape heads. After several seasons of lurking on Ebay I managed to snag a lightly used headstack. I finally had a chance to install and calibrate them this month (curiously the new ones had been installed backwards). Calvin wasted no time in putting this machine back into use, utilizing it for the previously mentioned Shivas and Hive Dwellers sessions. I love this tape deck, it just runs so smooth.

Also in march, the studio blog has swung back into action, featuring a lengthy interview with Bob spilling all the secrets of recording ABCDEFGHIJKickball, and Session Survival Tips from Ben Hargett. Expect weekly entries/entrees into perpetuity covering everything relevant to you, dear reader. Let us know if there’s something you want to hear about.

Well thats a glimpse into the happenings this month. As always don’t hesitate to get in touch about making your music here! Email us at [email protected].

-Sam Gray, Studio Manager