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joel hamilton
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Post by joel hamilton » Thu May 08, 2008 6:10 am

It will be cool to have NS10's 43 feet apart...;)

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Post by weatherbox » Thu May 08, 2008 10:22 am

joel hamilton wrote:It will be cool to have NS10's 43 feet apart...;)
It is a critical step towards knowing how your mixes will sound coming from two early '90s Hondas stopped at opposite sides of an intersection with their windows down tuned to the same radio station, after all.

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Post by drumsound » Thu May 08, 2008 5:37 pm

weatherbox wrote:
joel hamilton wrote:It will be cool to have NS10's 43 feet apart...;)
It is a critical step towards knowing how your mixes will sound coming from two early '90s Hondas stopped at opposite sides of an intersection with their windows down tuned to the same radio station, after all.
:rofl:

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Post by joel hamilton » Thu May 08, 2008 5:46 pm

weatherbox wrote:
joel hamilton wrote:It will be cool to have NS10's 43 feet apart...;)
It is a critical step towards knowing how your mixes will sound coming from two early '90s Hondas stopped at opposite sides of an intersection with their windows down tuned to the same radio station, after all.
Awesome.

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Post by b3groover » Thu May 08, 2008 8:02 pm

cgarges wrote: Did my last session on the old console tonight.
What's the old console?
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Post by cgarges » Thu May 08, 2008 10:13 pm

b3groover wrote:What's the old console?
Soundcraft Ghost with Optofile automation. It's for sale, by the way.

So, by the time I got to the shop today, Rob had fixed all the issues we'd found so far except for the dead VU meter. I got into some more wiring stuff and we talked about a simple improvement on each channel for being able to remove individual modules without pulling on the knobs, similar to the modern Neve and SSL scheme. We also decided it would be best to check out reconfiguring the modules in the bucket at this point, which is something I wanted to do. The console is ten feet long and that puts the majority of the work area WAY left of the center of the room. The aux and master modules pretty much need to stay in place (after channel 24), unless we get into the major hassle of moving motherboards around, which we're NOT going to do.

After taking some measurements and considering a couple of different layouts, I decided to skip the first 8 channels, drop modules 1-16 into place starting at #9, then the master section, then the rest of the channels. This will require a little bit of patchbay re-wiring (basically to get the tape machine outputs to show up normalled to the line ins of what used to be channels 9-32) and then just a re-labeling of the channels in the bay.

We swapped modules around and dropped them into place. (I actually have blank filler panels that cover the empty channels, too.) Here's the new channel configuration with the work area in the center of the console and writing areas on either side of the 36 channels:
Image

We started testing stuff and found that there was no routing to busses 1-8 happening because the buss assigns all route back to the corresponding channels in the bucket for amplification. That's a real bummer because 1-8 are the busses that give you access to the subgroups. Hmmmmmmmmm...

So Rob and I spent a good while trying to figure out the easiest solution. While not easy, we decided to open up the bottom of the console and make buss wire extensions that we could resolder to the new channel positions. I found a few feet of spare Mogami 24-pair, so that we could number the extensions appropriately. We also had to drop some buss bar wire into a couple of spots on the master section motherboard to solder the extensions to those channels, as it was never intended to accept buss routing on channels 25-28. It can now.

Here's the bottom of the console, opened:
Image

Here's Rob double-checking a few things up-top:
Image

We did two channels and tested them before I had to go to my gig tonight. They worked perfectly. It's going to be a ton of work, but I'm excited that we got it happening.

The Channel 24 LED meter isn't working, so we'll have to see what's up with that. I'm still impressed that out of 36 channels in an 18 year-old console, we only found like five or six faults.

So, finishing up those buss extensions is on-tap for tomorrow and will probably take up the majority of the day. I'll probably do some cable prep at home over the weekend and I should have a big box from Redco showing up on Saturday, along with some extra ELCO connectors and a tons of extra pins. (Thanks, Tony!)

It's starting to shape up.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC
Last edited by cgarges on Mon May 12, 2008 7:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by heylow » Fri May 09, 2008 2:49 am

Man, Chris.....

That's a really great looking piece of hardware! It's still so unbelievable that so little was wrong with that thing. I dig the blow by blow updates, btw!

The best part of something like this is knowing you could totally get wiped out, own nothing but that bucket, and you'd still totally be able to park that thing on the curb and live in it.

Awesome.


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Post by drumsound » Fri May 09, 2008 11:05 am

Looks good Chris!!

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Post by cgarges » Fri May 09, 2008 9:13 pm

heylow wrote:The best part of something like this is knowing you could totally get wiped out, own nothing but that bucket, and you'd still totally be able to park that thing on the curb and live in it.
Well, that would be the case if it were officially mine and not the studio's, but you do have a good point.


Today, the plan was to finish up the buss re-wiring, but Rob was feeling a bit "less than good" and didn't want to spend all day under the console (I don't blame him) so he did channels one and two to check the subgroup routing on that mod and everything worked just fine. I finished prepping all the extension cables to finish that project, though, so at least that much is done.

Here's the existing buss wiring:
Image

Here are the extensions we're doing (they'll get neatened-up, of course):
Image


I also did a bit more patchbay planning and discovered that with one change I made a couple of days ago, it was freeing up some of the patchbay wiring I thought I was going to have to do. We're still installing a bunch of extra XLR jacks on the bottom panel (mostly for AES I/Os for a few pieces of gear), so I figured all that out and did most of the wiring for those, prior to riveting them into the bottom of the bucket. We thought it would be easier to solder the cables to them before riveting them into the bucket, then soldering the cables to the various patchbay points later, as opposed to riveting them in place, THEN having to solder inside the bucket, amongst the existing patchbay cables down inside there.

I'll do some outboard cable prep this weekend at home and Rob might finish up the buss wiring this weekend. If he doesn't, we'll get to it Monday. If he does, we'll be riveting XLR connectors to the bottom panel.

Here's the basic layout of the new channel configuration:
Channels 1-16:
Image

Channels 17-36:
Image

The whole thing:
Image

I couldn't be happier with how this is going.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC
Last edited by cgarges on Sat May 10, 2008 11:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by KennyLusk » Sat May 10, 2008 8:25 am

Chris, what kind of oscillators do I see on the shelf in the background there?
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Post by drumsound » Sat May 10, 2008 10:31 am

KennyLusk wrote:Chris, what kind of oscillators do I see on the shelf in the background there?
Those pictures are fromthe tech shop. They are probably osciliscopes.

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Post by KennyLusk » Sat May 10, 2008 12:15 pm

drumsound wrote:
KennyLusk wrote:Chris, what kind of oscillators do I see on the shelf in the background there?
Those pictures are fromthe tech shop. They are probably osciliscopes.
My bad, I meant "oscilloscopes", what models are they?
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Post by cgarges » Sat May 10, 2008 11:14 pm

KennyLusk wrote:
drumsound wrote:
KennyLusk wrote:Chris, what kind of oscillators do I see on the shelf in the background there?
Those pictures are fromthe tech shop. They are probably osciliscopes.
My bad, I meant "oscilloscopes", what models are they?
Yeah, those are at Rob's shop, which incidentally, is in the same building as Dave Harris' Studio B Mastering facility. Dave's an excellent mastering engineer and there's another great instrument and amp repair tech named Steve Stoeckel who has a shop in there. Engineer Mark Williams also has an office in there (and he's currently doing some overdubs and mixing for a project on which he hired me to play drums), so there's always a lot of cool activity happening in that building.

If I remember on Monday, I'll try to see what kind of scopes those are. Rob's got all kinds of stuff like that back in the back as well as in his office/shop in the front of the building.

Spent most of today hanging out with my wife, but still managed to get a bunch of soldering done while watching cooking shows on PBS. Ran out of solder, so went to Lowes and bought some (and some additional cable ties, 'cause I can see that coming, too). Then came home and cooked some rock shrimp with a habenero marinade, jasmine rice, and margaritas for dinner. Soldered some more. My fingers hurt.

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Post by drumsound » Sun May 11, 2008 2:54 am

Damn that sounds like a great dinner. YUMMM

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Post by trodden » Sun May 11, 2008 11:59 am

cgarges wrote:
Spent most of today hanging out with my wife, but still managed to get a bunch of soldering done while watching cooking shows on PBS
HA! yeah that was the one time i didn't feel bad sitting in front of the tv for a weekend when my girl and I sat around and prepped and shrink wrapped a dozen snakes for the new patchbays... total finger hurty by sunday evening.

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