SamuelBLupowitz

I'd never heard the SRV cover before -- what a stellar tribute to Hendrix's playing (and Mitch Mitchell's, as well). I see you, and I raise you the Derek and the Dominoes version! [video:youtube] I guess this version on YouTube is the "remastered" version -- sounds like a different mix to me, too? I don't remember the bass being panned left like that, or the two vocals panned so far apart, on the version of the record that I have. Anyway, I always feel Clapton is at his best when he has collaborators who push him, and it's hard to get better than Duane Allman trading guitar licks and Bobby Whitlock sharing the vocal.

If you're trying to get good video with audio input for not too much $$, does anyone in the band have a reasonably new iPhone? The cameras on the last few versions have been excellent, and you could connect any USB class-compliant audio interface to input a balanced PA feed. Most digital cameras that accept an audio in would require some sort of adapter or mounted audio box to get XLR to the 1/8th inch inputs anyway. I'm not an Android guy but I'm sure they've been doing their best to keep up with Apple as well.

I was expecting the article to be an informative story of a close call. But it's more than that -- I teared up. He's an important artist and I'm glad he made it. But god, this time we're living through.

Glad to know the last surgery went so well; here's hoping it's smooth the second time around. If not, I hear great advances have been made in the field of bionic limbs. Could spice up your left hand technique.

I agree 100%. Eric'Mixerman' Serafin talks about the difference between (and I"m paraphrasing) the end of the day playback and the next morning playback, and the before lunch and after lunch playback. Our mood does affect how we hear material that"s meant to make us feel things, which is why trusting our ears is so damn hard, and such a refined skill!

Interesting. That's sort of the modular approach that Roli's Blocks line have tried to implement, though they can't quite seem to nail down who their demographic is (is it bedroom producers? People who don't know how to play the piano but want to learn to express themselves? Gigging musicians? I mean, right now it's defintiely not gigging musicians, even though the early adopters of the Grand seemed to be people like Cory Henry). Anyway, this is the first I'm seeing this; seems like a really cool idea, if the implementation is smooth and the action is acceptable for practicing the kind of rep that 88 keys lends itself to.

Oh man that was funny. Made my day.

I thought it went on top of your A 100? It might, though the A 100 has the nice music desk unlike some I've seen. I could fold it down, I know. yet. this is OT to the thread, but I removed my music desk and bought the Ken Rich straddlers for the A 100 which hold my Hohner E clav. I wanted to leave it on (the music desk) but the clearance wasn't enough. It's only a few screws and can be easily re attached. Now, back on topic, carry on. This is even more OT to the thread, but I assume you've had no problem with fabric hanging over the back of the A100? I don't have a back panel for mine, and while it's really cool to see the motors whirring and the tubes glowing, I'm toying with the idea of some kind of tapestry to cover it... but my wife said "I'm worried it would catch on fire," which is not a thing I considered. Dave, how far back is your Wurli from the edge of the A100? The increased height of the Hammond compared to the drum throne I had been using is making it tricky to get my legs under the Wurlitzer without bumping my knees, and I don't have a lot of room to maneuver the bench because it's straddling the bass pedals. I swear I'm not trying to turn every thread on every forum into an "I got a new Hammond" announcement, but since it came up on a thread I was active on...

Amazingly, I really don't have that issue. I can listen to material I did as far back as 2012 and I'm still happy with it. I can get into that space, but usually the album or track needs to be out for awhile and I need to have some space from it before I can listen and just appreciate it for what it is. Mix and master time comes around, and at a certain point I have to identify when I"m making tiny improvements and when I"ve started to chase my tail. I definitely start to lose objectivity after working in something for too long, and it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. I have to find the sweet spot to take my hands off the wheel, and trust that it"s good enough to be appreciated for what it is, and not all the versions of what it could be that cloud my judgment.

Got a new interface for our home studio! Wanted something with a lot of I/O for full-band tracking and rehearsing (and personal monitoring), and wifi mix control for musicians engineering for themselves... this was the only unit I found that could do all that AND record at high sample rates. Got a lot of figuring out to do, but my simple one-mic tests already have me psyched about how clean the preamps sound, and how handy the wifi mixer is (it can run either/both as an interface or a standalone DSP mixer with onboard effects, with lots of routing options, which is perfect for my projected use case). Oh, I also got a Hammond A100 and a Leslie 147, but I posted about that elsewhere on the forum. Sorry to bury the lede. :wink:

Definitely still getting used to it. Both of the video clips were taken before I figured out the knee trick, and I'm not used to changing speeds with my left hand (I'm a footswitch guy too). And while being able to use my leg to change speeds is great, the placement of the switch does make it harder to grab quickly if you are using your hand than if it were positioned like a regular half-moon. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it, and like I said, I'm sure I can figure out a footswitch situation at some point if I want. I used my left foot to change speeds for the longest time, but once I started using bass pedals more often with the Mojo, I reprogrammed my brain to do it with the heel of my expression pedal foot (which is my right foot when I'm just playing organ, but my left if I'm playing organ with my left hand and Wurlitzer or piano with my right). Since my last post, I've cleaned up and attached the bass pedals (ohhhh my gaaawwwwwwwd) and stacked the Clavinet on top of the Hammond. Having a blast here. Every now and then I hear some weird low-volume crackly noises through the Leslie, but they go in and out -- not sure if it's speaker weirdness, phone/radio interference, or electrical noise. Lots of outlets in my studio room, and we're still getting a handle on where the weird buzzes and noises and ground loops come from. At some point we'll get an electrician in there to fine-tune some things, but for now, I'll just pay attention to what I'm hearing and when. Do you folks do anything special for your Hammonds' AC power, other than a solid surge protector? I pulled out an ungrounded AC cable from my stash because the power cable that was plugged into the Hammond when I rescued it looked like it was supposed to plug into somebody's living room lamp... didn't inspire a lot of confidence!

Well, friends, today was the day. My pal hooked up the trailer around 10am, and despite some slight delays (the tech lives on a narrow street in a rural neighborhood, and some state troopers were dealing with an accident about 50 feet from his front door... we killed some time until they were gone so they wouldn't be able to give us a hard time for blocking a lane while we loaded up), we had the Hammond and the Leslie in my studio shortly after noon. I can't tell you how amazing this thing is. It's like seeing the Grand Canyon in person after years of being impressed by high definition video. The tech really went to bat for me -- "I wound up cleaning it up a little more than I planned," he said, and while my wife is planning to really dig in and get the wood shining like it's new, it's night and day from those first pictures I posted. The action feels incredible (he fixed the couple of droopy keys), he got the preamp and the motors on the Leslie so it swirls and overdrives just how I like it, and he even did me a solid and gave me a new Leslie cable ("the pins on the one that came with it were shot, and I thought about repairing them, but I figured instead I'd just swap you for one of my good ones"). Sounds like a lot of elbow grease to get all the dirt and grime out of there and get everything running again, but he said he's seen way worse, and it wound up being a real winner in his eyes. "Welcome to the club," he said before we got back in the van and drove off. Thrilled to now call myself a proud member. Oh, and did I mention that he charged me a grand total of six hundred friggin' dollars?! Here are a couple short videos my wife took of me noodling: Clonk Clink Still gotta clean some dust out of the bass pedals and put them on, and I'll be setting up the rest of the keyboards there this afternoon, too... gotta sidle the Wurli up next to it, and (joy of joys) stack the Clavinet on top. Also need to put on the Leslie back panel that Jason scored for me; need to get my hands on some screws for that. Also, I'm really appreciating the Leslie speed switch that Neal mounted under (rather than on the front edge of) the lower manual, with the switch pointing at the floor -- it's a clever move, because you can change the Leslie speed with your left knee instead of taking a hand off the keys! Future mods I'd consider would include a footswitch mounted next to the expression pedal, and an in-line reverb or other effects chain pre-Leslie, but I think as-is it will keep me happy for quite some time. I can't thank all of you enough for your advice, encouragement, assistance, and fun old Hammond stories. If it hadn't been for you, I would have settled for taking just the Leslie and letting the A100 keep rotting in that filthy attic. Now, instead, I've had a little dream come true, thanks to all y'all (and several strong and generous friends). Expect more photos and videos of the rig as the studio comes together (we got a new interface yesterday, just in time to track some organ) and I use it with my bands and on my sessions. I'm a happy, happy boy today.

Awful. An artist and an inspiration, taken from us far too soon. There was a producing wunderkind in the old days of Hollywood named Irving Thalberg â he produced Ben Hur, Mutiny on the Bounty, and a host of other classics; he also revitalized the career of the Marx Brothers with A Night at the Opera before dying of pneumonia at 37. On hearing of Thalberg"s passing, Groucho Marx is said to have despaired that good people so often die young, while 'the schlemiels live to be a hundred.' It"s not so neat and tidy as all that, but man, sometimes it really feels that way. What a punch in the gut.

I can't remember whether it's in his memoir or elsewhere I've read that he's really unhappy with how the album sounds compared to what he wanted to achieve. Yeah, well, it definitely has a lot more of that typical dry 70s production, rather than the huge reverby drums he would go for on Born in the USA and such. I feel like Darkness still sounds very live relative to, say, Elton John records from the same period, but it makes sense that Bruce would be disappointed that it didn't have that huge roomy sound. A good example of how sometimes our expectations prevent us from appreciating things for what they are!

Just another update for those of you who were getting into it about spacers: So it sounds like the Altec will live to woof another day after all. And if it goes kaput, I can replace it down the line and all y'all can tell me how. :wink: Or, you know, the Leslie will fit in my car, at least.

That's Jimmy Page, by most accounts. Shh, don't say that too loud -- Pete Townshend might hear you, and he gets real surly about it.

Yeah, like I said earlier in the thread, I don't know if it's just that he won't/can't charge more in his location, or if he just likes me a lot, or if he's just eccentric... but he's a real gem to have 45 minutes away from me in rural New York State (which The Real MC has and will attest to). He's part of a small contingent in the area with some connection to the Deep Purple organization going back a few decades, and if he is to be believed, he was one of the players who they tapped to audition when Jon Lord retired. He didn't have very nice things to say about certain members of the band though. Thank you. I'm trying not to lose my cool until it's moved in and starts up and makes sound in the house... but I will be celebrating for sure. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the realization of a dream I've had since I was 13.

All right, a very happy e-mail from the tech this morning! Uh, yeah, I can live with $600 for a cleanout and overhaul of a Hammond A100 and Leslie 147 that I acquired for free (I mean, the labor of moving it was not insignificant, but it would be just as hard to move if I'd spent four times as much money, and I have definitely seen these things for four times as much money). Barring some unexpected event, looks like I'll be moving them into my studio this weekend!

That's a funny thing to think about -- in all the dozens of times I've listened to that record, it's never struck me as being a bad recording by any stretch. I know Bruce struggled with the mix of Born to Run, and I know making Darkness was an agonizing slog because of the battles with the old management company, but I'd be very satisfied to have made a record that sounds like Darkness... so there it is!

I was just about to pull the trigger for a Mac Mini to replace my Snow Leopard-bound dual Xeon. But with ARM coming up, no way. For me, a Mac update is at least two years off; meanwhile I'll use my 2013 MacBook Pro, which can still run Catalina...for what that's worth That was my thought... then my 2014 MacBook Pro bit the dust. Fortunately, I"m in a very lucky position where my university job requires that I have a Mac, and so I get to spec what I want and the department buys it (the one that died belonged to my predecessor before I had it, so I"m actually impressed it lasted as long as it did, since he had some mental health issues and his equipment tended to show signs of, um, physical abuse). Anyway, souped-up new MacBook and Catalina for me. Won"t get to check out ARM for a couple of years, probably. I love my day job for a lot of reasons, but never having to worry about having to shell out for a computer that can do heavy lifting for audio and video work is huge.

I love and cherish my musical toys, but I really torture myself about spending money on things. I don't like to let go of stuff once I have it... so I better really want/need it, because I'll get attached. I've never had a gear purchase I've hated so much that I've thought "I will never use this again." My instinct tends to be much more "that could come in handy for something someday," much to my wife's chagrin -- she's also a musician, but she doesn't bat an eye to say something like "well, if I want a better Tele or a Strat, I can just trade in the Gretsch." In the meantime she's been trying to get us to unload the purple Squier Strat my brother got for Christmas in 2002. It's far and away the worst instrument we own, she has much better guitars, I do not play the guitar, and my brother lives in another state and hasn't played the guitar since, oh, 2004. But it has family history and what if I want a beater instrument to mess around with open tunings on? God, it's a sickness. So this means that while there are a few basses I've lusted after over the years, my starter Beatle bass knockoff from Musician's Friend and my Mexi Fender Jazz are all I have, because I can do everything I really need to with them. The keyboards have come a lot more fast and furious, but they all do something different -- the Mojo "replaced" the Nord Electro, but now that I have a home studio it's great to have the Electro for playing sampled non-organ sounds, particularly Mellotron. When we get the A100 in the studio, the Mojo will be packed up and ready to go to gigs at all times (like my stage piano has been since we got the acoustic upright). I mostly use my Seaboard for synth stuff these days, but it's not the same thing as my Novation Ultranova, so they both stay. Obviously the Clavinet and the Wurlitzer stay. But as much as I've beat my Privia PX-3 stage piano to hell, and as sexy as a CP88 looks, the former still works, and the latter sounds like a lot of bread right now, so I won't be crossing that bridge until I have a really compelling reason. Since we're getting the home studio together, that's where most of my gear purchases will be headed in the near future, I think, and I try to think in practical terms there, too -- you can never have too many SM57s, I suppose, but I try to think about different use cases for various condenser mic pairs and the kinds of colors I need for a simple home studio setup. Bang for buck without selling myself short. It's a balancing act. And hey... sometimes I splurge. We do the best we can. :wink:

Ooh, okay, here's something I could use some advice on (though my tech doesn't seem to think it makes a huge difference one way or the other): I'm not exactly sure what he means when he says it "has a helmet" but I assume since he was hearing a nasty buzz from that low-end speaker, I just need to know if I should replace it, or have the speaker reconed. Any thoughts there? Positive, exciting news!

What else would one expect? Reminds me of when I was shopping around for a talkbox. I saw that the MXR unit that I ultimately wound up buying had a three-star review on one of the music sales sites, and I decided to read the user reviews to see what was up. The first review: five stars. The title: "It does exactly what it's supposed to do." The body text: "It does exactly what it's supposed to do." There was only one other review, so of course, it was one star. The title (and the full body text): "It blows." The free market at work!

All good thoughts! Thus far, my tech's "this might be more work and money than I thought" quote was $400-$500, which is still well below what I was worried I might have to spend. Granted, if he continues running into issues, I won't be surprised if that number goes up, but thus far it's been well within what I'm willing to spend on getting an A100 and 147, and I know and trust my tech (and he likes me a lot, which may or may not have something to do with his affordable labor -- certainly it's why he's been keeping me updated on every step of the process). That said, I know that the more I can learn about how to maintain these things, the better off I'll be, and I'm very happy to know I have all y'all as a resource -- it's one of the reasons I'm sharing every step of my journey here, aside from just being excited about it. Yup, he was able to get the Leslie running without too much issue, and he's already made some adjustments to the motors and replaced the tubes. He's pretty well stocked with parts, but again, it's good to know I have some other resources if anything comes up that he's not able to handle in his shop. His place is like a museum, though, and while he works on all kinds of keyboards, I think Hammonds and Leslies are really his speciality, so I'm not too concerned by anything he's said thus far. But again, great that I have all of you to reach out to!

Update from the tech! Organ is running and he's starting to deal with its various mechanical issues. Per his most recent e-mail: When I saw the internal speakers had been removed, I figured I might not be able to use the spring reverb, since my understanding was that in A100s the reverb goes to the internal speakers rather than through to the Leslie. Sounds like the reverb tank itself is shot, too. One day I'd love to be able to get spring reverb pre-Leslie, but I told him it's low priority. We'll see how much work (and expense) getting the rest of the Hammond in shape takes, and I can decide if it's worth dealing with the reverb now, or letting it go for awhile. It's a fun sound that I enjoy, but not essential. Hope nobody's bothered by my frequent updates. I'm very excited about this, obviously, and I'm also enjoying the thoughts, stories, and reminiscences that my updates prompt. I guess if you're annoyed by hearing about Hammond repairs, you're reading the wrong thread... or maybe the wrong forum!