Shure SM57 no-transformer mod
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011Peterson from DIY Recording Equipment and SoundHow sent me this video explaining how to remove the transformer from an SM57 to improve the sound.
Archive for the ‘DIY’ Category
Guitar Tone Capacitors Compared
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011Ryan Canestro linked me to these cool videos from Planetz.com where John Cooper wires up and compares a variety of capacitors in his electric guitar. The capacitor value and material can make a big difference in the sound and it’s one of those mods that only costs a few dollars. Definitely worth trying! I know I will.
Here’s the link to the blogpost: Crazy Tone Thing
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Fixing Small Studio Acoustics Problems
Monday, August 15th, 2011This weekend I moved my home studio from one room to another. From a nearly 200 square foot living room to a 100 square foot bedroom. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about room acoustics and because this is a common situation for home studios, I thought I’d share my experience.
This article will help you understand and overcome the challenges of a dedicated studio in a small room. It will be most helpful to those with symmetrical rooms (no weird angles) and to those that don’t need all the usual bedroom stuff, at the very least it will be a starting point to making the best of the situation.
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| Corner bass trap and broadband absorbers plus foam above. |
The Problems
Small rooms are more likely to have acoustic problems than larger ones, primarily flutter echo, room modes and early reflections that are too short. In my room, I knew there was a very bad flutter echo problem and room modes may be a problem but were predictable. The room is symmetrical which was an advantage the old room didn’t have. The measurements are approximately 11ft long x 9ft wide x 8ft tall. There is a door and a closet on the back wall and 6 x 4 window on the front wall.
Headphone comfort mod
Saturday, March 12th, 2011One thing that always bothered me about my Shure SRH440 headphones any many others is that the earpads aren’t thick enough to keep my ears from touching the hard plastic surrounding the speaker. I know I don’t have abnormally large ears that stick out but my ears get really sore after only a few minutes of wearing them. Yesterday I came across this forum post that addressed the same issue for different headphones. One of the comments suggested a simple mod that involves inserting some thick wire under the ear pads to make them thicker. I gave it a shot and was pleasantly surprised at how well it solved the problem. Minimal effort, excellent results.
[Click to enlarge photos]
The first photo shows the earpads of the SRH440 before the mod. These have a circumaural design (around the ears) but the padding isn’t thick enough to keep from squishing your ears.
For this mod you’ll need a couple short pieces of wire/cable. I used a broken guitar cable. You’ll need two 10″ pieces.
Insert the cable under and around the earpad. Trim the cable if too long.
As you can see the padding is now raised giving you much more ear room.
I highly recommend taking a few minutes to try this on your headphones. You’ll like it.
Thanks for checking reading!
DIY Subkick microphone
Sunday, September 16th, 2007This is an old, but very effective trick for miking kick drums. Take a Yamaha NS10 speaker cone and use that to capture the extra low frequencies of the drum. Without going into too much theory about this, a dynamic microphone and a speaker are essentially the same thing, they are both transducers. They take acoustical energy and convert it into electrical energy or vice versa.
Yamaha Subkick microphone
So what you do is take the speaker out of the box, solder a male XLR plug on a short cable to the speaker terminals. Pin 2 goes to (+) and Pin 1 goes to (-) pin 3 is not used. The matter of mounting this speaker to a stand is a different matter, this is the main reason to go buy the Yamaha Subkick microphone, because of it’s great, easy to use mounting system, that and its also more durable likely than the home version. One way to do it is to take a standard mic clip apart and fitting the slotted part securely to the corner mounting holes of the speaker, that is if the speaker you are using has the 4 corners and not just holes drilled just around the cone [square not a circle]. Or you can attach it to a microphone boom or goose-neck permanently.
The output of the subkick is very hot, meaning you are going to have to attenuate the signal for it to be of any use to you. An inline -20dB pad, a pad at the mic pre, or one built into the mic will need to be used. This guy used a 10k Ohm in series with pin 2 and a 1k Ohm resister across pins 1 and 2 to drop the output about 20dB.
Mic placement: These work really well at the edge of the drum parallel to the skin. Try it under a floor tom too.
Why the NS10? Most time you see these in a studio it will be with an NS10 cone, but why? From what I’ve been told it is because there are usually extra NS10s lying around a studio, all studios had NS10s, you could predict how it would sound, and they have a frequency response that works well. Don’t know how much truth there is to that. You can use any speaker you want, it will obviously make a difference in the sound.
Finally, here is a picture I took of one of the two diy subkicks at Metalworks Studios. Note mounting, placement, and inline pad.
DIY Subkick with NS10 woofer and inline pad
DIY Recording Gear – Pop Filters
Sunday, July 1st, 2007What is a Pop Filter or Screen? It is used to reduce plosives the B and P sounds that will make a popping sound on the microphone and just sound horrible. They are usually made of thin netting like pantyhose or more recently a thin sheet of metal, attached a few inches in front of a microphone.
My pop filter looks like crap. I made it myself for a dollar and it works, but it doesn’t look as elegant as a professional pop filter. I just can’t bring myself to pay $20-45 for something I can easily make for a few dollars.
It does work, however it is not durable, sturdy, or good looking. But it cost me a $1 to make. The main issue with DIY screens is that mounting them never works as well as a store bought one.
Here are two examples of well made DIY pop screens.
I think I need to make a $5 pop filter next.
