WRGKMC

Actually the reason for them is a historical event based on electrical wiring back in the day and yes it was there for safety and proper functionality. It was not put there to be something to hurt you, it was there to do the opposite and protect you from direct contact to live AC voltage carrying 15 amps. Today that we have grounded outlets but allot of people didn't grow up in the 40's ~ 60's when most buildings still had 2 prong outlets so they don't understand why those amps had those caps. Before they had two prong they even had screw in outlets like light bulb sockets. Over time, laws changed for the better making things safer, but you want to understand the reason why older amps had these features you have to understand the only options for safety back then. The manufacturers assumed people would run the amps back then safely too, make sure the polarity wasn't reversed, and make sure you didn't do something stupid like reverse the leads. That was taught to you as a kid growing up in a home. When I grew up then, my parents taught me the difference and I either did it the right way or I got kicked on my ass. When those tube amps were built back in the 50's and 60's most homes had two prong outlets. This didn't mean they were ungrounded outlets, its just one of the AC wires acted as AC and DC ground to the chassis. As new gear came out and much of it higher ampage stuff it would be sold with a grounded plug. The way you'd connect them to a 2 prong outlet was to use one of those ground adaptors and screw the third prong to the screw of the outlet box itself. The box of the outlet is hard wired to ground so you essentially had a 3 way ground available if you took the time to connect it right. This third prong on the plug is grounded the same as AC neutral is at the circuit breaker box. Building codes changed and people were first made to install outlets to except one large and one small prong plug. Its changed again and the third backup ground was added. Any new construction had to have it and any home being sold had to have the upgraded wiring. The home I grew up in was built in the 30's I think. My father eventually rewired the place during the 60's and 70's to meet building codes. (an important item if you have an electrical fire in a home and want to collect) This change over coincided with gear manufacturers selling gear with the proper wiring. 3 way plugs can only plug in one way with your neutral and hot always be on the right sides. This doesn't make it fail safe however. You can cheat a 3 way outlet in many different ways, its just less likely to happen if people do things right. Hopefully the electrician wired both the outlet and breaker box properly. The thing is without the cap, the amp is actually many times more dangerous if you do connect it up with the ground lifted and the polarity reversed. Having those caps go away wasn't the best thing to happen when you look at it from that perspective. During the change over from two prong to three prong you'd always find guys ripping the ground prong off of amp and extension cords or using ground lift adaptors. That's when things get dangerous because you now have an ungrounded chassis and if you get the polarity reversed, you don't have that ground cap in there to save you. The ground caps were there for 2 reasons. To ground AC hum and to prevent a full AC on the chassis. In other words it prevented direct contact of AC to the chassis. The hum is due to the circuit type. Most guitar amps are unbalanced high impedance circuit and you have to encapsulate all the amplifying components, beginning at the pickups, Guitar cord, and shielded chassis to act as a "Faraday cage" This cage is then grounded to prevent EMF from penetrating that barrier to get into the circuits and being amplified. The cap connects the entire faraday cage from the pickups to the chassis to earth ground and prevents stray EMF from getting inside the shielded barrier and being amplified by the components and producing a loud AC hum. Again this works fine so long as the neutral side of the amp is plugged in properly. The thing is what if you touch another amp, mic etc, that's reversed? If that cap isn't there you fry yourself with the full 15 amps right there between the two amplifiers. With the cap in place, the current that gets through the cap is fairly low. It will still bite you real good but unless you have a weak heart and a number of other factors are there you probably wont die. I've been zapped by mics on the lips hundreds of times but I didn't die. The voltage is still 120 but the current is very low. Of course a grounded plug is the best option, but, its still not going to protect you from other amps that have bad wiring. If your amp is dead ground and the other amp is seeking ground because its leads are reversed you can die. With the cap removed from the circuit, there is no safety device to separate you from the full amount of AC current and killing you. This is why you should buy one of those three prong AC testers to tell you is the outlet juice is good. (a absolute necessity for a gigging musician whose always dealing with beat up stage outlets.) You can still have ground loops but its still less lethal. Putting a ground cap in your guitar in series with the ground wire to the strings is essentially the best safety measure you can have fore preventing direct contact to AC. Its the exact same thing as having it mounted in the head except you put it in a different place. Always remember, Its not necessarily "your" amp that might be the problem, its the "other guys" gear that you have to watch out for.

Another idiot looking at it from the wrong perspective. Its not a death capacitor, its in fact it was put there for just the opposite reason. Its a ground capacitor which is where that video goes wrong from the start. Its a safety feature added so you don't feel the whole force of the AC voltage yet it grounds hum in the process. A chassis has to be grounded to prevent audible hum. The cap provides a path for that hum to get to ground while providing safety to the musician. There were many radio chassis back in the day that had the ground side of the AC lead connected directly to the chassis. When those were plugged in backwards the chassis was seeing 100% AC. The user was protected by not having access to the chassis. Knobs were plastic as was the front of the casing. They put lethal warnings on the back as well as a ground lug in many cases and people were supposed to ground them. Engineers knew the problem and they didn't have many options because the wiring was all 2 way in buildings. Industry switched to 3 prong before homes and most of your industrial stuff was designed to protect workers with grounded chassis. Building code changes eventually outlawed 2 way wiring in home so everything today is pretty much 3 pronged in order to pass UL inspection. The biggest issue with musical gear is, you may have several of these amps connected together. What if one chassis was hot wired without the cap to the ground side and plugged in backwards? You'd have the full 15 amps between to amp chassis or an amp and a PA instead of through the cap. Guitar in one hand, mic stand in the other is truly lethal. The Caps were the best solution to adding safety while having proper operation at the time. Each piece of gear had a cap so touching two chassis with one reversed meant you were protected by two caps. One on each piece of gear. There weren't put there to kill people, it was the complete opposite. The cap value is the key. Its passes hum to ground while preventing the full 15 amps from the socket from charging the chassis. A shock is still possible if the cord is plugged in backwards but its much less likely to kill you. The fix is simple. Remove the obsolete AC wiring and ground the chassis to the third prong on an AC cord.

~~and some kind of Gibson ES-175 thinline. That was a Gretch I believe. If you ignore the Hollywood hype you'll likely come closer to the truth. Studios were very rigid back then and unless you can dig up then actual facts, its probably not wise to guess who may have recorded the parts. Studios had all kinds of regular studio musicians who would record tracks. Holly was one of the exceptions who was allowed to do many of his own tracks. That too changed later when he found out how much better his songs could sound with added orchestration backup. I've never seen any actual live footage of Valens so I'm not sure what gear he used live. I know when he did his last tour, the guys in that show were all working for the same recording company and were all sharing the same amps. (You can only fit so much gear on a single tour bus) This was common when bands toured back then. The recording company was in charge of your tours and your recording sessions. They may have given you cash for guitars and such, but they sure got it back out of you making you work like a slave. He did get a 6120 Gretch, same kind Cochran owned when he did Ooh! My Head. They rode the same tour bus so I'm sure they were always trading instruments. But you got to remember, Valens really wasn't around very long. He went from High School in 57 to appear on Dick Clark's American Bandstand television show on October 6 of 57, then he died touring in February 1959. That gave him about one year of recording and performing on a professional level. That's like a wink of an eye. Not much time to accumulate gear. The record company was grooming him for big things but it just didn't happen. Holly was at it longer so he had more to show for his short career. The few songs Valens did record were good enough to stay on the radio. Few musicians get hits like he did and fail to get a hit spending a lifetime performing so I'd guess he was given a contract because he was, one of the better players of his time.

I have a 65W Sound City (Hiwatt) head that's too loud for gigging. Its got a switch that drops the wattage to around 45W but its still pretty darn loud for most situations. I have a Music Man 65w too but its got a Master Volume so I can run that at 50% and still get a good sound. My old Blackface Bassman 50w its always been a loud head for gigging. I used to run it with a 4X12 cab and even on 4 it blows chunks. I used to love my V2 head for gigs. It was a 50W head that was pretty ideal for loud rock stuff. The 50W Plexi I used to have was one of my favorites for gigging too. You could crank it to get those 100W Plexi tones at half the wattage. My buddy put a master volume in his and supped up the front end to get a driven tube sound. He could turn it down to match smaller amps. The 100W and 200W Solid state amps I have, you can cut in half for loudness compared to tube amps. So long as you have a master volume you can at least turn the power amp down. You wont get any output transformer saturation running it that way, but you should still be able to get some decent drive tones using stomp boxes and any preamp drive the head produces. You could get a power soak for the thing and crank it up but that is another piece of gear you have to haul around gigging. The price is good enough even in this weak economy. You can probably get your money back if it fails to meet your needs. I'd just carry ear plugs for the gigs you can open it up.

My buddy has a Egnater combo that sounded good to me when he performs. He pairs it up with a Bugera which is the better sounding of the two. That Vengeance is a monster at 120w and even at half power it will likely be too much for any place a musician would normally play. If you need a monster amp, go for it. If you play in some super loud metal band you'll have no problem being the loudest guy in the room. If you aren't playing out and just use it for practice, then its unlikely you'd be able to open the thing up and actually use it without drawing the cops to your doorstep.

There aren't many who post here but I'd say most are cool people. I don't mind that as much as a room full of trolls who have nothing worthwhile to say.

I'd spend $20 more and get something you can record any instrument or mic. This one comes with Cubase LE. http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Alpha?utm_source=none&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=none&gclid=CNufytnbr7ECFYOc7QodO2kAlA

I actually use 1/2" rebar instead of strings now, because I don't want people to think i'm a {censored} when i play. Just play bass, its the same thing. I can bend the hell out of bass strings, but it will impact my lead guitar playing if I put in too many hours. I Do allot of recording and may do bass tracks for 4~5 hours. next day I come back to do lead parts and my hands are all crampy and my fluidity for playing smooth leads just isnt there. The strings feel too flabby and it takes a major effort to focus on the thinner strings. I'm cursed because I'll give 100% with any instrument I play. If you want a role model of someone whose abused his hands over playing, I'm your guy.

Everyones finger sizes are different. Gauges have nothing to do with manhood as some jackasses suggest. You simply have to find the right gauges that are right for your hands so you can play well aerobically for long periods of time and not develop major joint damage trying to push strings for hours on end. This may not be a concern for players with less than 10~20 years of playing experience, but by the time you reach 40 and the joints arent so flexable, You'll know exactly what I'm talking about whan your hands swell up and ache for days after a hard 4 hour gig. You do have to strengthen the hands of course no matter what you use. You dont want to build them up like a weight lifter does though. Do it like a long distance runner aerobically. "Beware" Take the lessons from history from those who thought they could train their hands like machines and used the weight lifting techniques to strengthen them and wound up destroying their hands ability to play perminantly. Stick with an aerobic approach if you really love to play and want to still be able to play when you get old. Weight lifting ruined this great masters hands so he could no longer perform and had to change to composition only. http://sites.google.com/site/greatmusicleaders/home/robert_schumann String and fret height is a big issue for bending as well. You can use heavy guages with taller frets and bending is relatively simple. If you have frets that are worn flat, you'll have more friction, and if the strings are too low you wont be able get under them to push them sideways. When they are too low, you use too much downward pressure to keep the strings in contact with the frets bending and thay will tend to pop out from under your fingers more easily. You should always check relief, height and intonation changing string gauges too. Heavier strings means more lbs pull on a neck. Even the nut may need to be recut to accomodate the heavier strings. Look across the strings at the nut and make sure the tops are even. Its common to have the 3rd and 4th ride high in the slots going to heavy gauges. The strings may bind in the slots too making fro a tuning nightmare. If you tune to pitch with a tuner, bend a note, and it doesnt immediately come back to pitch, its a sign of string binding and the slote will need to be widened (not deepened) If you do allot of bending, 11's are about the limit for whole note bends. If you bend up three frets or do allot of doubble string bends, 11's may not be the best choice because the elasticity maxes out. This has nothing to do with finger strength either. You can bend the string up and you can feel the point where the string has no more elasticity.

One of the biggest factors in making a tele sound like a tele is the Tele neck. I did two builds recently, both had tele necks and the rest of the guitars were ratically different from a tele. One had an all maple body shaped like a Les Paul, TOM bridge and Tail piece, and mini humbuckers. The second had a tele shape but was a hollow body. Top was walnut, sides maple and back rosewood. All the wood was over 100 years old. It too had a Tom, floating Tailpiece and Mini humbuckers. Other than the fact my regular Tele has single coils that have allot more bite, the instruments do sound and play surprisingly simular in getting twang from them. The neck does connect to one end of the string after all so its going to be responsible for at least half the tone produced.

No, most humbuckers sound nothing like a tele pickup when tapped. Its got to he a realy hot wound pickup to sound even close to a strat pup, and a Tele pup is a hotter pup than that. The other factor is a tele pup has a plate in back of the coil that disperses the mahnetic field in a unique way "and" the steel bridge that surrounds the pickup influences sound. Its not to say a humbucker cant sound good too. Custome Teles have HB's specifically designed to have a good Tele tone with more beed and less hum than a stock tele. I have one tele I installed a new HB route bridge. I had to try about 8 different humbuckers till I found the exact tone to match that one. I tried Dimarzios, Gibson PAF's Seymour Duncans and others, and just couldnt get the right tone. I finally stuck a Mighty Mite cream colered HB in there and bang, it nailed the tone that was needed. I could turn down and get a nice clean bright Tele tone and when I turned up I'd get a clean driven tone without the mud. Unless a Humbucker is around 10K so you'll have maybe 5K when tapped and maybe have a strong enough single there to sound like something. I wouldnt bother with tapping though. I've only come across one HB that will do what you want and its a Kramer Quad Blade HB. Its more like two dual blade singles wrapped together in a HB package and its got enough bright end to sound like a tele pup. I'd try series/parallel in a cooler wound pup though. Most 10K HB's will undoubtly make a Tele sound like mud though. The more winds, the more trebble is lost. You need those highs and you cant get that with most overly hot pups. I'd say a cooler wound HB with maybe 5~6K max should be a goal depending on the manufacturer, magnet strength etc. That way you can get a good tele tone and a slightly driven tone turned up. You can do the rest with pedals and amp settings. I'd also suggest putting in a 4 way switch and wire up your single coils so you have the series position added. You do have to shield the body for hum because the hot wire is much longer, but the result is the singles take on a humbucker tone when wired in series and may give you some of those tones.

Just refret a neck with super jumbo frets. It has the exact same effect of your fingers not touching the fretboard. I've refretted maybe 10 of my necks with the largest frets I could buy and they are great for bending notes. You do need to get used to not relying on the fretboard for finger pressure though.

Two posts, two incorrect spellings of the word Theremin... I shall cease being a pompous ass now. We'll give you your gold pin for winning the Spelling Bee now.

The keys have the leslie and tape loop trick recording the playback heads to a new track to create the echo on them. Since a reel to reels only have a few speeds you play to the slap back of the tape heads and the speed of the motor/tape feed.

I havent listened to it in a long time but I believe its a spacial effect you're talking about that was done with tape or with tape in combination with panning.

You arent talking about the Therimin used on that song are you? Otherwise they used a hammond organ on alot of those old tunes.

Yea responding to a thread thats a year old is a littel late.

Contact the manufacturer. They may or may not want to provide a schematic. They dont have to, or they may charge you for it. manufacturers keep that kind of stuff proprietory and unless you're an authorised repair center, they may tell you to take a hike. Manufactures like to keep their patented designs to themselves and frown upon those modifying their circuits. Even if its a good mod, its still a patent infringement to them.

To add to it you have a fatigue/warm human factor to consider. Vocalists surely have a point where they are not going to perform as well or need a few songs to get up to peak performance. Same goes for most parts played. Being in the same groove can be most difficult capturing the same intensity of the music weather it be laid back or snappy. Dubbing parts into a live studio recording may also have a bleedover problems as steves mentioned. A certain amout of bass or guitars may creep into the drum mics. Redoing say a bass part can create wierd ghost sounds punching in parts over what was previously recorded. If the part wasnt previously recorded like guitar and drums and bass was added afterwards theres no problem or if you're luckey enough to have a drum booth/room that isolates the live parts being played. I have recorded over ghost bleeds like that many times and it requires alot more EQing to get rid of the ghost if its even possible to do so. The other thing might be the room resonance or tone might not be captured in the dub if all the settings both mics and amps arent the same. This is where you have to decide if playing the part back through makes sence or not. If the parts very up front and the dub changes are obvious or not and how much work is involved getting the splices to match with a natureal feel.

I'd say a good band that does know their material well enough to where they can play their parts through without having to dub anything in, know their music well enough to do it either way. I wouldnt limit myself to either technique simply use the best of both to achieve the best results possible. Both techniques have their plusses and minuses. I do both. When I play with the band we play the songs complete. When I'm doing my own stuff, I record separate tracks. The results are cleaner recorded separately because theres no bleedover. I rarely do punchins if my playing is in the groove. For keyboard or other instruments I dont play as much I may have to do some splicing of parts. But for the most part you're either in the pocket or you arent, Its just tougher to get an entire band in the pocket at the same time. I never expect to get more than 3 songs well recording live studio. If you rotate the song order each session you can hopefully get a decent take of each. If you can get a great rythum track happening, you can always go back and redo vocals and leads without changing the groove too much. You will learn that some things are a simple fix or really arent that noticable listening to it play back. Many times you actually sound great when you think your performance isnt so hot. The feeling factor can also go the other way, You think you're playing great but the playback lacks. If its a live session, and only one players part is weak, then I'd say just fix the one part. If two or more are off, it may just be easier to rerecord the whole thing. These are decisions you'll have to make for yourself by hearing the results, and if one technique is hitting a brick wall there are other options and ways of going about getting good results including the use of click tracks.

"Most troubling though, was a tendency for the knobs to "freeze" and "grab". If you didn't move them regularly, the knobs would practically lock up and require quite a bit of force to get them rotating again". Old Tapcos had the same issue, I got a few of those too I've restored. They used to pack the pots and sliders with conductive grease to give the sliders a plush feel vs using a dry pot/slider. If someone tries to clean those things with alcohol based cleaner it will lock them up like you explained. They used to make stuff called wep that made them work for awhile, but by that time they were usually history. To fix the smooth sliding issue properly you need to re-liquify the grease in there with a light petroleum machine oil or mineral oil. Sometimes it makes it fairly functional again. If not you need to soak them and completely remove all the old grease then repack them with conductive grease. A nasty job with questionable results. If the carbon contacts are worn its useless, replacing all the pots is the only option. (In the case of the tapcos, the pot shafts were plastic and snapped off when trying to remove the knobs, another great product from the 70s that didnt age well) This is why I give cautious advice about buying older stuff. Besides battel damage, some of the parts are difficult to find too. I'm an electronic tech by trade and I'm able to do the repairs myself including taking the pots appart to clean. Some mixers will cost more for the pot replacement these days than the things worth. I would say for new sliders your talking about $5~10 each, and a couple of hundred to replace them all, if they are not PC mounted. If they are PC mounted I wouldnt touch it for at least $400. Its an easy 8 hour job with no short cutting. If you're going to do it, you need to do them all. One may be bad to start but the others are sure to follow. This is why I say spend $300~500 and get something new. You have much lower noise, and at least 5~10 years troubble free running plus the newer options the old stuff didnt offer. Maybe try posting in the Live sound forum and see if you can get some more input on them. Alot of those guys have used all kinds of live mixers and can let you to know about them.

Well, I found a few simular consols made by them on Ebay. Most of its worn out live PA mixers. Depending on the quality, you could use it for some kind of recording application I suppose like mixing drums or something, but alot of junk made back then was pretty piss poor for quality. It may harm your stuff more than help. You also have possible issues with worn pots, weak channels, hum from old power supply caps, etc etc. You could wind up spending money on a piece of junk thet would remain a piece of junk even with a complete service done. For 300 or so you could get a decent 16~24 channel mixer with all kinds of recording busses and channel sends. I'd get something like a new behringer or good used mackie and get 10X the features and adaptability for recording.

I had a littel 4 and 6 channel radio shack mixer many moons ago and they werent that much different than those shure mixers. Sounded as good as any other high impediance mixer at the time.

Orchestras with a large dynamic range? Think thats a job for Compressors or Limiters. An expander can be used in mixing to restore the original dynamics but capturing good detail on either volume extreme is needed for good recording. If the music was too loud you'd have digital distortion, too low, noise so you either prevent the music from getting too loud with a limiter or prevent the sound from being too soft. These would be high quality Hardware units, not plugins. If you've ever listened to Live orchestra recordings you can tell how much the gain is increased during quiet passages. You can hear people clear their throught in the back seats. During loud passages or applause you can hear the compression cut in. This is in part from the compressors but its also the mics themselves. Something line PZM boundry mics, Condencers, Omni mics, can pick up long distances and cover a whole string section or woodwind for example without a proxcimity factor. Other mics designed for shorter distance for solo instruments can be used because there are usually less of them such as Piano, oboe, Flute etc.

BB is fairly tame on this site. I was trolling for some info and found he has nearly 13,000 posts over at Home Recording. Totally raw posts. He's got a fetish for putting people down. I scrolled a few and couldnt find a single positive comment. Must be hell going through life hating people.