Studio – reVamp!!!!

I had a friend call me the other day about a PA system. He was in the middle of assisting a new cafe/club owner setup a new system. To make a short story out of it, I sold him my 16 channel Carvin setup. I was using this as a rehearsal/kareoke setup at the house, and had it as standby incase I needed a PA system for a gig. It was over-kill for me and heavy to load in and out. I wanted something smaller.

We took the system up to the establishment and set it up. We did a quick sound check, played a few songs each for the patrons, and discussed songwriter nights and open mic nights with the owner. I received my check, and went home happy.

So, I took the money I made and had to get a new smaller PA system, and some stuff for the studio. Here is what I went with.

I will say this first. I was really wanting to try out the Groove Tubes Spacestation MKII, but I could not find anyone who had one in stock. Most of them said it would be the end of December before they could get one. After some discussion about the 200 watt powered monitor, I decided it would not fit the use I had in mind for it and went with plan B.

For a PA system I went with this setup, to which Behringer ( a cheaper company) has always held up good on the road and sounded fine for us in the past.

Behringer EUROPOWER PMP860M

2 x EUROLIVE S1220 12″ 2-Way Speaker

2 x Behringer XM8500 Microphone

2 x 20-ft. Lo-Z Microphone Cables

2 x 10-ft. Speakon to 1/4″ Male Speaker Cables

I don’t really need the microphones, but they were in the package, and it won’t hurt to have those around the house when everyone wants to sing. It will keep my better, more pricey mics from being damaged. 

I am anxious to play with this little PA system. I want to see how well the “Voice Cancellation” works. Seems we always sing along with my iTunes collection when everyone comes over….so this might make it more entertaining. LOL It also has several pitch effects – here are some of the ones I want to play with:

Pitch Shift Detune = 2-3-times detune for a wider solo voice sound

Pitch Shift, which will do the following intervals, Minor third, major third, Quint above, Fourth down, 1 octave down, all of these being “added voices”. So it will be like a harmony added in. These would definitely call for the footswitch, but might be fun.

I bought another Furman HR-6 Headphone mixing station. This will bring me up to three for the home studio. I really like these units since it allows the musician to mix his/her own monitor mix and has two headphone out on each one, so they can share their mix. This takes a little pressure off the engineer, which is usually me. LOL

I picked up the Audix Fusion Series 6-Piece Drum Microphone Pack. These are pretty decent mics and since I use Drum-a-gog to resample the sounds normally, I think they will work out great. When ever it comes to recording, I never had dedicated drum mics. I always had to borrow, or pray that the drummer already had his own. Now I can place these on my drums and just call a drummer. Done – simple – hit record and lets rock!

I picked up a Monster Power Pro3500 PRO 3500 Power Conditioner. I actually sat down with a friend at work one day and we discussed how using a PLC and other components, I could build my own. When it came down to price and connivence though – it was a no brainer. Besides it taking noise out of the AC lines, it has a timed power up, and timed power down that will be great. Keeps those big power on pops out of those studio monitors.

I also picked up a Solid State Logic Duende Mini. I wanted something that would take some of the load off the Mac, and let me use some quality plugins. I am hoping it is all it says it is. We’ll see. Here is a link to give more details on the SSL Duende mini – Will open a separate window. 

On the next purchase I am about to mention, it took some long self debate. Yes, my little people and I got together and made a decission. I am talking about the Antares Auto-Tune evo plugin. You can hear, read, and see mixed reviews on Auto-Tune if you are around the music industry very much. While it is a very powerful tool, it is sometimes abused. It is my hope that I only use it to speed up the recording time and eliminate endless retakes by a vocalist. I have seen many vocalists who get rather fatigued in a recording session and this is where Auto-Tune comes in. I will admit we used the Anatres outboard unit on some of the New Son Band CD. We used it sparingly, but it was very handy. Here is a short video explaining what it does. This will open a separate window. (Welcome to Auto-Tune Evo)

So, I’ll be off to Guitar Center today to pick up a few mic cables, and patch cables I’ll need. This will be all the studio gets for a long time, but I’ll be able to record the budgeting blues and they’ll sound great. LOL