#mullard

The tubes.

Dynaco ST70.

Matched quad of vintage Japanese Raytheon EL34s, Mullard 5AR4 (Britain), Dynaco-branded 7199s.

Right so I played at Showa Techno April 29th. Some really neat acts this year (as every year). Personal favorites this time were Jin-Cromanyon (of course), T.S.P. (nice improv, 2P battle style techno), and Hidetaka Matsumae (fantastic). Lemme see if I can put a link up to my set from the show here...

Yeah so there ya go. Make sure to read the video description for all the gory details. Some stupid shenanigans went on that I wrote about there so do check it out. The video is just a slideshow of gear photos, and maybe a smidge of video from the event, but not a video of my performance (didn’t feel like bothering with shooting video this time). It was fun. I’ll do it again next year.

So, Soundcraft. Yeah. A while back I bought a used Spirit Folio Si 18-2, and used that for the show. I was running the Mix Inserts to a Focusrite Compounder, but the signal started getting scratchy and intermittent, and I had to fuck with the jacks to get it to stay stable. Aaaaargh. Two weeks ago, the left insert just totally shat itself, no signal unless I pushed super hard sideways on the cable and I knew that was definitely Not A Good Thing. So fine then time for some surgery.

Here’s the mixer. The Mix Inserts are in the back row of sockets at the upper right, middle row, second and third over from the right. The jacks Soundcraft went with on this mixer are a funky kind made by Neutrik. All plastic body, with a plastic retainer ‘nut’ that can be removed by inserting a coin into the + and gently rotating to the left. It’ll make a nice CLICK and then you can carefully pull the ‘nut’ off. I’m not so sure how I feel about these. For ease of disassembly, compared to metal threaded jacks with actual nuts and washers, these Neutriks are definitely the winner. But they’re plastic, and plastic is obviously not as robust as metal, so you have to wonder about the lifespan of the ‘nut’ part itself. In any case, opening the mixer wasn’t a huge pain in the ass.

Underside of the PCB. It’s all one gifuckingnormous PCB, which was a nice surprise. (Mackie I’m looking at you here). Pretty easy to navigate, and as these are Made In England the soldering and build was actually very, very good (sorry if I offend anyone but fuck made in china, end of brief rant, we now return to program in progress). I desoldered the L Mix Insert jack to see what there was to see. This is what I seed:

Well, the little metal part there had worked its way loose. It seems the ‘teeth’ that are used to hold these things in had worn away at the plastic after who knows how many times a cable was inserted and removed over how many years. Ok. At this point I had two questions. First, is this part still available, as the mixer is from the early 2000s? Second, is flattening the teeth out and snapping the metal piece back in going to work (or last)? The answer to the first question was yes. After some data sheet detective work, I found out that the currently available part (NJ5 FD-V) has the same footprint and is basically drop-in compatible. The only difference is that the ‘nut’ is no longer a + shaped weirdo, but looks like a nut. Here:

Anyway, I ordered two pairs from Mouser, but for the time being, finagled and Ghetto Engineered the metal piece back in, re-soldered it, and so far it’s been working fine. So the answer to the second question is a tentative yes. Here’s more fun photos:

In any case, I’m happy I got the thing working again. These mixers hit the spot in a way that no other fucking mixer on the market since has. Tons of stereo inputs, a minimal pair of mono inputs. I have shitloads of stereo stuff, be it synths themselves or synths being run through stereo effects units/pedals. I don’t need a half-dozen mono channels. WHY ARE THERE NO MIXERS LIKE THIS?!!?! 2 mono (with mic pre-amp), and 8 stereo channels. Nice EQs. Sweepable mid on the mono channels. Tape input. Monitor and Main outputs. Mix Inserts. The only thing I wish it had was a Mute button on every channel. Why they left that out bewilders me. Anyway, when the Insert shat itself I immediately jumped to the Worst Case Scenario Useless Mixer Dilemma Must Buy Replacement Immediately If Not Sooner Arrrgh, and bought another one off Digimart (an online amalgamate of new and used gear shops here in Japan). So, the latest incarnation of the Lab Of Machines Of Nefarious And Questionable Repute looks like this:

Under the pimped out MPC500 you can see a HHB Radius 3 Fat Man Stereo Tube Compressor (made by TL Audio). I tooled with a Presonus Bluetube DP for a bit but it wasn’t what I was after. This thing though, fucking hell. Or more like FUCKING HELL YES! I swapped the factory tube out with a Mullard tube and have the Spirit Folio Lite  Mix Inserts running to it. I’m using that little mixer as a sub-mixer for all my drum machines. Let me just say, I am fucking more than happy with this. Warms up and glues the drum mix together SO NICELY. I’m toying with the idea of picking up NOS tubes periodically to see how the character of the sound changes. Need a budget first... (sigh).

That’s about it for this time, kiddies. I’ll end with some shameless self-promotion and throw up some action photos from the show. Take care y’all!