Tuesday 12 April 2011

Analogue Delay


Another slightly off-topic post this evening. I have recieved in the post today a Behringer VM1 Vintage Time Machine. Essentially its an analogue delay unit similar to the Electroharmonix Memory Man.

I was put off buying Behringer gear a few years ago after a rather nasty encounter with one of their mixing desks. After stumbling across the VM1 online a few weeks ago I was willing to give them another try, partly due to the price of the unit, and partly due to what it will offer. I doubt I could build a clone for much less money.

The package comes complete with a DC power supply and full instruction manual. The unit itself is larger than I first assumed and appears to be very well built with all components seemingly high quality. LEDs are included for power and overload - a useful addition.

I plugged the unit directly into my mixing desk on an AUX and immediately got to work testing this delight. I'm really pleased with how it sounds. Totally different from my trusty Ibanez DD1000, the VM1 has a very warm tone which degrades beautifully when the delay kicks in. Increasing the feedback and varying the delay time creates some rather tasty self ocillations. First impressions are generally good, i've noticed it can sound a little muddy, but i'm yet to play around with sweeping my EQ and feeding back sound on sound delay. I'm really looking forward to putting this to task in future dubs.

If you are after a cheap introduction to analogue delay I recommend this unit highly. It may lack the finesse of a vintage machine, but it clearly has found a nice home in my attic studio.

I'll upload some sound clips asap to give you the feel of the unit. More posts to come in the next few weeks as i've started building and documenting a vero board dub siren.

Friday 4 February 2011

Rebirth - Sound Experiments

First musings taking samples from the MPC Percussion Synth outlined in November, pictures to follow. Samples are sequenced in FL Studio and the mix is raw. More to follow.

Rebirth (Dubstep Mix) First Mix by isistowersmusic

 

Sunday 30 January 2011

Cheap Dub Siren Part 3

Been puting my cheap and cheerful siren to the test tonight. See the sample below. With a little tape delay it sounds quite splendid and the extra control using a push to make switch makes the unit rather playable.

I'm pretty happy with overall build of the unit and have learned a lot from my experiences customising the enclosure. On reflection, fitting the unit into a small space requires a lot of preplanning, preparation and thought. I'll put down some words on this another time, in the mean time however ... Junior Delgado in fine voice.

Dub siren jnr delgado by isistowersmusic

Building a Cheap Dub Siren Part 2

This is my first enclosure design. I'd had a couple of attenpts over the years which generally ended in sadness. I spent a long time looking at the guts of the siren next to the empty enclosure. The tricky thing was making sure the battery and jack socket had room to breathe.

Step 1: Screw in knobs and buttons and solder connecting leads to the board.

 Solder the cables from the  pots, switches and triggers to the board. I've stengthened the join in places with wire and extra solder. Not so neat but very effective.

Tone pots, switches and trigger mounted (from the inside) I had to countersink the drill holes to push enough of the component through to attach the mounting nut.


Step 2: Trim excess from tone pot control with hacksaw and attach control knobs



Saturday 29 January 2011

Building a Cheap Dub Siren Part 1

My first proper post of the new year. For christmas my loving lady gave me some money to build myself a little dub siren. The project outlined in this tutorial is a great beginners project and was the first kit I crudely made years ago.

Parts:

Velleman MK113 Siren Sound Generator Kit : available here

1 x 220k linear potentiometer
3 x Toggle Switch SPST
Push To Make Switch
1/4” Mono Chassis Socket



 The kit contains all necessary components to create a simple build, those listed will allow you to make full use of this siren, controlling the oscillator and tones easily, as the onboard switches provided are a little fiddly to use creatively. I've decided to repalce them with switches and knobs, using a simple push switch to trigger the siren, and will house it all in a little wooden box I picked up from ebay.

Included are a full set of well designed instructions. See below
.

 

Step1: Add the resistors


Step 2: Add the IC holder and diode


Step 3: Add the capacitors


Step 4: strip and tin the ends of 3 pieces of wire 5-7 cm in length. Solder on to the ends of the switches, leaving the other ends free to solder onto the board where the blue threeway switch would have sat.


Step 5: solder the switches in place on the board


Step 6: Prepare the 220k variable resisitor by soldering wire to the terminal ends. Solder in place to replace the onboard surface mounted mini pot included in the kit.


Step 7: Insert the IC chip.



Now its time to prepare the case.

Create a scale drawing of the holes that will be needed on the case on a sheet of paper. Use masking tape to hold in place.


Drill mounting holes for the trigger (13mm dia), 3x mini switches (8mm dia), pitch pot (11mm)


Sand off as necessary and check the components will easily push through. Join me in part 2 where i'll put it all together. Thanks for looking

Friday 21 January 2011

A Productive Time

I'll be posting on 2 new cheap n cheerful dub sirens very soon. Whole projects and samples. In the mean time I need to drop an output to line level. Heres a link to a tutorial on building a 40dB attenuator pad.

Wednesday 5 January 2011

Contact Mics

Happy new year, here's a link to help you build your own contact microphone.

This documentary on Radio 4 regarding recording the sound of wind passing through wires is fascinating and most inspiring.