WesG

For me, it matters most how I feel when I am playing the instrument. It is really tough to play your best on an instrument you can't bond with. I know full well that most of the audience can't hear the difference between a VR-09 and furniture, but I schlep furniture all the time......because it just feels great, and inspiring, to play it.

Hold the female connector in your hand with the dot at noon. Jam your multimeter probes into 9 and 3 o'clock. Use the 200VAC range. Click the switch. What happens?

To be pedantic, Hammonds do not suffer from dendrite problems, they suffer from whisker problems. Whiskering occurs spontaneously on electro-plated metals, and is thought to be the result of residual stresses from the electroplating process. Our hammonds contain parts which are zinc or cadmium plated, for corrosion-resistance. https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/background/ Gary, if you have the manuals out already, you'd be foolish to skip cleaning the busbars at this point IMO.

Yep! That seems to be how it will work. It's small and not too nasty to hook up (three cords), so it shouldn't impact my setup/teardown time much. I talked to the developer, it's available now in a fully-built assembled case for $145 US plus shipping. Seems like a no-brainer. The RD800 has a 'popcorn' style voice in it that I can probably use to get pretty close to the attacky square wave Nick Rhodes used. It should be convincing enough if I play around with it. RD800 is a ROMpler, but it lets me tweak ADSR as well as filter and cutoff. If I'm not happy with that, I'll probably look toward Marimba patches or something. Or even square wave patches, if the MidiArp can set the note length to be shorter than the arpegiation time. Wes

Well, THIS is interesting -- https://midisizer.com/midigal/midiarp/ I'd have to make a case of some sort for it...but it might do exactly what I want out of the box.

I have a set of Audio Technica ATH-M50x headphones. They aren't as good at isolation, probably, as some of the drummer-specific models....but there is a fair bit there, and they sound great. I use them for mixing, when I need to have a listen to a particular channel, for example, when trying to troubleshoot a flapping gate, or EQing out specific bleed.

The nice thing about being really sick is you have lots of time to google. I think I see an Akai MPK Mini mk2 in my future. Edit: No MIDI port! Back to drawing board.

Well, my slicer idea is a bust. The individual key voicing only works on pianos, and can only drop the output level by 6 or 8 dB. Looks like I gotta buy or make something. Man, there must be something out there.

Interesting idea, Dan. The RD800 doesn't have an arpeggiator at all, but I think combined with your voicing ideas, perhaps I can slice four layers (in 16 slices each) differently enough to sound alright. ||: D E :|| C | G | F | Bb | C | G | F | layer 1 100100110010101 layer 2 010010001100010 layer 3 001001000001000 layer 4 011011001101010 x x x "1" means that the layer sounds during that slice, "0" means it doesn't. Only two chords, C and G, have conflicting (overlapping) notes between two layers. I rigged it thinking that I would be playing mostly D and E major. If I can use the same trick I postulated above for Baba O'Riley, I could probably pull this off... enter the slices as shown above in binary, and then use individual note voicing to make the following notes sound only on the following layers layer 1: C D Eb G# layer 2: E F# layer 3: A Bb B layer 4: G ....add the multi-octave thing like you allude to....this has promise...

"Teenage Waste Can", Oh LOL Hey, I just figured out how to play that on an RD-800 (in my head). The slicer, it slices in 16 parts, and you can pick which "1/16th note" your note sounds on. So you use two layers, on different 1/16th notes of the slicer, to get the marimba repeat effect. Each layer has the same patch, but different individual note voicing, to prevent the "wrong" notes from sounding with a given slicer. Holy shit, I gotta get home to try this. Still struggling trying to find an arpeggiator solution to satisfy my inner Nick Rhodes who doesn't have roadies. I was >< this close to buying a Boutique JP-08 just now, until I looked at it really carefully and noticed there are no arpeggiator buttons. Stupid Roland.

PPS - still thinking of building one, since I could also incorporate Lowrey's Marimba Repeat feature into it....then I could play Baba O'Reilly, too

Hey, folks - Does anybody understand the algorithm used by the arpeggiator on the old Jupiter synths? Like, what happens if I pick "random" and play a 1-5-8 chord? Does it randomly pick notes? Pick octaves? Both? Is it completely random, or is just random whether it goes up or down? What happens if it's down all the way, does it wrap to the top? etc. Reason for asking - my band wants to play "Hungry Like the Wolf". I don't want to add a new a board. Was thinking I could build the arpeggiator into a Raspberry PI or something and just hook it up to a zone with local control turned off or something....pick a sound on the RD800 that's close enough and let the Raspberry PI play the notes. EDIT - I just found this: https://www.tindie.com/products/hotchk155/arpie-midi-arpeggiator-kit/ -- anybody ever used it? Do you think it would work for me?

Nice! You got a reverb speaker and like an AO-35. That's not 100% "all stock", that was a dealer upgrade to help the old-stock organs compete with the new M100s.

If that diagnosis is correct, the suggestion is right on the money. Working inside the manuals of any Hammond is an arduous task. M/M2/M3 organs even more so.

My hosting company changed my avatar. Now I'm a big yellow frowning pacman thing.

GregC - clearly you are familiar with neither Lursa nor B'Etor!

As usually, J Dan is on the money. As a sound guy, I hate 0layers who don"t turn up for their solos...that always means I am late! In my dead band, I pushed my guitar and bass players to get wireless rigs. They can give feedback on keys now. It really makes a difference when they remember. I can"t wait to hear last Sunday"s show.,

And here's a less flattering version of that song -- -- tempo is a snoozer IMO. This is a later version; I've gone digitial; again, recorded out front with a Zoom recorder. This time, the mix is alright but my vocals are too loud. If I hadn't been stuck on stage, that would have never happened. PS - two things to notice in that video: 1) I turn up the piano for the solo. Remember, mixing is a team sport! 2) I can tell from how I'm playing that I was struggling with my right hand that day. Protruding disc in my neck, cut me some slack. Wes PPS - I think the takeaway here, sadly, is that while my mixes show off the keys better, the pro's mix is overall better and more polished. Sometimes we gotta take one for the team. Although I wish that fella were more familiar with Dead music: Keith was quite prominent --

I do this all the time. It sucks ass. I can do a much, much better job mixing when I am not in the band. My strategy, roughly, is to send myself a post-fader mix. Everything at unity, except bass, guitars -10, my vox +5, keys +3, Leslie horn +3. Set lists are planned so that I am not needed for at least the first 1.5 songs of the night, and during the first 30 seconds of a song where the singer is singing for the first time that night. That lets me grab my iPad and mix out front. Otherwise, I make adjustments with the faders on the console, which is on top of the Leslie, at my left. The console has a soft key programmed to kill the effects bus, so that the vocals are intelligible between songs. The biggest problem is that my vocals and the keyboards are often not balanced well out front. Vocals aren't TOO bad if I use a wireless mic, since I can walk out front, sing harmony on a tune and mix myself. But keyboard levels tend to be hit and miss. If there are musicians or band wives in the audience, I get them to tell me if I'm too loud. That said, I prefer my mixes to a lot of other sound guys' in the area. *sigh* This was recorded multitrack and mixed by a pro with actual industry recognition: Here is the same track recorded with a Zoom recorder, my stage mix: Watch through in particular to the piano solo. Assuming you like The Grateful Dead anyhow, LOL. My stage mixes are better now, too, that one was before I went X32, but I wanted to compare apples with apples. One recommendation I can make is: if you are mixing from stage, either go digital or only mix one band. And then record shows with a Zoom. Tweak your starting point mix at home to address any glaring problems.

He"s half right. Most stage monitors have the bass carved out, nothing above 10K, and a bunch of notches in the graph to compensate for room modes. You could ask for a post-fader mix and try to set your levels to the vocals, but that won"t work. You"ll either be too loud or play insufficient dynamic range etc. The key is that mixing is a team sport. It starts with a good stage blend that lets each performer play their best. Then one person worries about the overall blend out front. If that person refuses to do a good job, there is nothing you can do but fire him.

Moron. Probably also thinks the moon landings were faked.

PigMeat - yes, order from the website. If you're ever near Kingston, ON, you can try mine.

Do you still have yours? Perhaps we could A/B the UC1A and the LBB-D next time you're up here.

Booker Lab is producing a series of products which do everything but be a pedal -- i.e. you need to supply either a half-moon switch or a latching pedal to use them. I have one which outputs either 147 or 122, and it has a fantastic internal amplifier. I believe mine is the LBB model D. https://bookerlab.com/product/lbb-breakout-box/ Disclosure - I consult for Booker Lab on these products