(hat tip: Peter McLennan)

UPDATED:

A few people have asked how this mixer operates and sounds so here’s a wee video:

As you can see there’s a scratchy pot or two to clean and I still need to make some knobs, but so far so good.

Since I posted here about my fancy new plate reverb I’ve made a few adjustments and tweaks.

I’ve chopped the frame down closer to the size of the plate (about 600mm x 1800mm) and stuck a couple more piezos on it, but more significantly I’ve just about finished building a fancy new mixer for it. And when I say “fancy” I really mean “it’s the first mixer I’ve built and it works!”

The piezos seem to give the best results nearer to the edges of the plate (don’t know why) so I’ve got one centred at each end and one centred at each side like cross, and the inputs on the mixer are arranged to correspond to the placement of the piezos like so:

• left long
• left short
• right short
• right long

The switch on each channel is for determining stereo/mono. The two left channels can be switched LEFT or MONO and the two right channels RIGHT or MONO (e.g. in the picture above the channels are assigned to left, mono, mono, right). This simple arrangement allows for a surprisingly wide range of possibilities.

The mixer itself is insanely simple. It’s completely passive (no amplification) so it needs no power source. The circuit consists entirely of:

• the 4 input jacks,
• the 4 faders,
• the 4 switches,
• 2 sets of 4 resistors in parallel,
• and the 2 output jacks. In that order.

I used 4.7 k ohm resistors which seems pretty low according to what I’ve read and heard, but frankly I struggle with the theory of a lot of this stuff so I just tried a bunch of different resistors of different values until I found some which seemed to make everything work ok. The tin it’s all mounted in is mostly empty, so I should be able to fit plenty of other stuff (like preamps) inside without too much trouble if I ever want to.

Do let me know in the comments if you have any ideas or questions. I’ll post some audio clips here soon, probably after the weekend.

For now though, I’d just like to find some more screws and some fader knobs to finish it off. I’m sure there were some around here somewhere…

Secondly, vote for Lani. Details below.

Adventure in Soundland

Sean makes all sorts of stuff involving (but not limited to) electronics, musical devices and instruments, art, and engineering. He’s started documenting some of it here:

site: http://artyone.blogtown.co.nz/
feed: http://artyone.blogtown.co.nz/feed/

Travelling Tales

AJ is a well known storyteller who has started posting recordings of her stories on her site, kids of all ages can find them here:

site: http://travellingtales.co.nz/
feed: http://travellingtales.co.nz/?feed=rss2

The Idiot Winds

Vincent has begun blogging about “music, film, arts, literature, politics and a fine scotch.” And well worth reading it is:

site: http://theidiotwinds.blogspot.com/
feed: http://theidiotwinds.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Vote for Lani

Finally, Lani needs your votes this week at sellaband.com which is kind of an online competition and fund-raising site for musicians. It only takes a minute and costs nothing to sign up and cast a vote. Lani will buy lollies for anyone who votes for her. Probably.

Righto.

Today it stopped raining for long enough for me to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while - build a stereo plate reverb unit. It took a couple of hours, was made mostly from stuff I found at the tip, cost about $10 and it sounds awesome. If you want to make one of these you can do so with some very basic tools, parts and skills.

The horizontal wires are unrelated. More pics below.

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The shack I live in is pretty tight so for now the unit is hanging up on the porch. The plate is attached to the frame by springs at either end. I haven’t tried adjusting the tension on the plate or the placement of the springs yet, this is just as it happened to go together.

enlarge

The speaker is an old New Zealand made Plessey, suspended on wires (to keep the weight down) and positioned at roughly the centre of the plate.

enlarge

As you can see, the front of the speaker cone is about 10mm - 15mm from the surface of the plate. This is just where it happened to land but it seems to work pretty well.

enlarge

The piezo transducers are glued to the plate at each end - one for the left channel and one for the right. It sounds great in mono too but if you have a stereo return or a couple of spare channels you might as well give yourself the option.

Dj Danger Mouse (one half of Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz producer, and creator of the legendary Beatles/Jay z mashup “The Grey Album”) is dropping a new record, a collaboration with Sparklehorse and filmmaker David Lynch.

However due to ongoing legal disputes they can’t actually release the album without being sued by EMI, so instead they’re releasing a 100 page book of David Lynch photographs inspired by the music and a blank CDr, leaving it up to the customer to find the music themselves on the net.

The whole album can be heard at npr and it’s pretty, pretty good. Guests include Black Francis, the Flaming Lips, and Iggy Pop.

This Friday Auckland sees a rare appearance of the Robot Monkey Orchestra, which is the latest vehicle of head headless chicken Chris Matthews at Cassette Number Nine in Vulcan Lane, 9pm, $10.

Also playing: Charlie Ash, Bang! Bang! Eche!, DJ A.D.A.M.

Ok so I’m a bit late to this but every Saturday over at bFM, Dubhead has been running a very interesting documentary series on the history of the station.

Called The bFM Historical Society it’s a series of interviews with people who’ve worked in and around the b over the years, starting in the mid 80s which is about when I started tuning in.

It’s already up to episode 9 but you can easily catch up by downloading them all or listening to them online here.

Download audio file (whitecollardub09.mp3)

download mp3

I usually get this done a bit earlier in the year but meh - here’s the 2009 version.

Actually here’s the first 2009 version - expect remixes.

p.s. earlier versions here.

So I haven’t posted anything over the holidays but I’ve been getting a few projects wrapped up which I’ll post about soon.

Until I do, here’s something that Saul Williams released today. It’s a cool new track, a free download to celebrate President Obama’s inauguration and it’s called The Government.

I’m linking directly to the file because his site can get a bit janky to navigate but if you prefer it’s www.saulwilliams.com

The release also states

“The full composition as well as the isolated ‘stems’ are available for download below. Send us your remixes and we’ll post them for listening on saulwilliams.com..or just enjoy the composition!”

but I haven’t found the stems on his site yet. Maybe they’re on itunes? If you find them let me know, I’d love to remix this.