what is the story/history with the Joe Meek gear?

[supafuzz]

amen lobstman!!

I forgot to mention Chandler Abbey road gear where they actually attempt to recreate something that relates to it's name sake.
Going as far as getting the technical file from EMI to work with..

[New Orleans Steve]

Ted,
THANKS so much for joining us here. Your comments seem to stick to a real discussion in the spirit of this forum.

So Ted, what?s up? Are you shipping gear now? We would love to hear what you have going on. I hope this old bitter business has not kept you down.

Steve

[New Orleans Steve]

Hay Alan,

Can you please save some of those ?Old? Meeks for me? I for one, would be much more interested in trying some of that line (the ones that I have not) than the ?New? stuff.
I?ve used the ?MeekQ? and want 1 or 2. It would be interesting to run one of these against any new design you are likely to come up with.
I tried a comparison of the EQ section of a new unit vs. the old VC 1q. Despite being hammered by someone in the booth about how much better the new one was, I didn't think so.

Steve

[alanhyatt]

Hay Alan,

Can you please save some of those ?Old? Meeks for me? I for one, would be much more interested in trying some of that line (the ones that I have not) than the ?New? stuff.
I?ve used the ?MeekQ? and want 1 or 2. It would be interesting to run one of these against any new design you are likely to come up with.
I tried a comparison of the EQ section of a new unit vs. the old VC 1q. Despite being hammered by someone in the booth about how much better the new one was, I didn't think so.

Steve

Well Steve,

Since you asked...Steve Murphy, an old Joemeek fan at PAR just did a complete review between the old and new. I expect it will be out in a couple of months as reviews do take time. I am not sure what new unit you tried against the old. The twinQ is just now starting to ship so no one has them yet. The only unit we have been shipping is the threeQ, and I must say, we have sold quite a bit of them already. In the case of the new threeQ, 100% of the "reporting" users and beta testers have so far liked the new unit by a large margin, as did Steve Murphy. So I do not know what units you compared. Steve works in studios around the world, but then it is his opinion. There will always be someone who likes old corvettes better than the new ones no matter how much more the new ones outperform the old ones, and the same applies with Joemeek.

As for old Meeks, I do not have many now, but with our new Joemeek trade-in program, I suspect we will be getting a good deal of old units that we will fix and then sell. So when this happens, we will put a list of old goods we have for sale on the web. I may have an MQ3 or two now.

[mrufino1]

Hi, I just boiught a threeq a few weeks ago, have had a chance to try it several times (see my post earlier in the thread I guess). There are two things I am finding so far that are making me not dig this as much as I thought I would, but maybe IO am using it wrong. Since both Alan Hyatt and Ted FLetcher are on here maybe you could answer this question, because I really want to like this and don't want to sell it if it's my technique makiong it sound bad (all those years of buying the "right" bass to help me accomplish what I wanted, instead of practicing, and now I just wen tback to my p-bass wihtno bells and whistles and combined wiht some practice I sound much better!). Anyway, two things I've noticed. The compressor pops in and out noticeably, no matter where the controls are set. I followed the manual as far as setting it up, but it really sucks the sound down when it comes in. Basically, if I want to use it at all, it's so subtle it hasn't made much difference (maybe 1 db of reduction is all I can get before it pops in and sucks the soudn down). I notice that the release time has a lot to do with it, but unless I have it near the max, this happens, Also, I can't have the attack set quickly at all. I understand this is not a limiter or used to catch quick peaks for level control, but more an effect, which is why I bought this unit. Also, when I go to touch the box itself, there is an audible hum. I recorded a vocal track wiht it last week, a guy playing acoustic at the same time, and the compressor issue was rough because no matter how we tried to separate the two sources, the guitar was triggering the compressor. Again, I'm still relatively new to recording and production, and learning a ton every time I do more, but if any tips can be offered that would be great. Thanks and I look forward to a reply from anyone about this, always tryign to get better.

[mrufino1]

Oh, also, I noticed a fair amount of hiss when I went to mix, could be my mic (ADK A-51 hopefully soon to be upgraded with the Mojave kit), but I hadn't noticed that much hiss before. Gain was not set extremely high, pre was about halfway up, compressor was barely in, eq was just in a little (very small low and high boost, might have used mids too, don't remember), and output was just a little below halfway. It went into a MOTU 896 at line level, recorded in Sonar, then transferred to protools to mix (needed 1 more inout than my M-Box has!). This is the first time I had a chance to try the three q on a quiet recording (just acoustic and voice). Thanks.

[nestle]

I really want to thank Ted and Alan for answering my original question beyond thoroughly...I got way more information than expected, I was illuminated indeed. Fascinating really, thanks again for taking the time-

Since my original post I did recieve my second hand VC3 from ebay-
I need to work with it a little more before I pass a "IMO" judgement but right away I'm very confused by the "enhance" knob and the "drive" knob. They seem to introduce a large amount of hissy noise. I was originally looking for that extreme meek-qulizer EQ and might have bought the wrong unit for that application. The EQ seems pretty limited, though I kind of like the compressor at first glance- who is the developer of the Plug-in algorithum Ted or Alan?, I love that EQ plug and want the hardware!

So folks, what in the world does the enhancer do besides enhance the noise?
any tips here?

[Ted Fletcher]

The 'enhancer' creates a whole load of harmonics of the original musical signal, and adds them back, mixing them with the original signal. We dropped the 'enhancer' on the VC3 after 1999 because it's not an easy facility to use and it can add noise. The original concept came from Aphex who developed it in the late 60s. Its main use is to add 'glassy' sounds to voices.

[tonewoods]

Thanks to all for an interesting thread...

Ted (or anyone)...
Can you tell me about my Joe Meek "SC rev. 1.07" box, dated 1/7/98, serial #100640?

Is this indeed an early SC2 or ?...

Love the thing, by the way....

Thanks in advance...

[Ted Fletcher]

The SC2.2rev 1.07 was the same circuit design as the earlier SC2 with the exception of the output line amplifier. The earlier ones used monolithic amplifiers (SSM2142) which were very good, but were not bombproof and we did have one or two failures. The rev 1.07 used an electronically balanced array of op-amps which is equally good for most loads. For connections into other gear less than 20ft away its fine. for very long lines it can affect the sound, making it slightly lacking in 'depth', but I have to say, this is very subtle, and I'm happy using them in my own studio.