ironbut

Great point Dan! I'm sure you have waaay more practical experience tracking drums than me. I think we can all agree that getting good drum tracks takes practice and patience. And while we'd all love to jump in there and make professional sounding recordings right off the bat, it isn't likely. On the plus side, I always learn a lot more from bad sounding results than from good ones (the good ones just feel a shit load better!). Another word of advice for acidbasement; Recording is much more of a left brain activity than playing an instrument. So when you sit down to play, do your best to put recording levels, microphones and such out of your head. You might try playing a few bars to get focused before the real stuff. You can always cut that crap out later.

If you have the mic's, I'd suggest adding a room mic. From a mixing point of view, the overheads (mono or stereo) are the sound of the kit. The spot mic's add the punch and whack. And the room mic adds the space. If you have some buddies who have mic's you can borrow, try and recruit at least one other person that can move them around as you "tune" your positioning. After a couple of takes, switch who does the monitoring and who does the moving. Just put the takes on different tracks for now and label them well (you can learn about doing single track takes and punch ins latter). Then mix them without any fx and see how the different setups work together. Never let "limits" stop you. They are great for getting the creative juices flowing! The old ,.. mother of invention thing.

Free Good! IMHO, when you're recording and doing production, the tools/gear always take a back seat to the care you take in mic placement, trusting your ears and creativity. You have everything you need to make great music! Have fun!

I'm wondering why XP? I've been using Reaper 64bit on osX 6.8 for over 4 years now. I love it! I also have PT10 and Pyramix (Pyramix on XP and win7). The strength of Reaper is that you can configure it to fit your needs and work flow. Be sure and take advantage of the floating toolbars and toolbar docker. Until you learn the gazillion key commands, creating a button for stuff (with tooltips) will help you get things done in the beginning. http://forum.cockos.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20

Yup! I bet there's some suits breathing a sign of relief, stacks of cash are being exchanged and the calender with all those red X's is being taken down as we speak!

Bought my first cell phone today! I need one this Sunday to hook up with a guy at USF to get a bunch of free shit. I resisted for all these years and it took the allure of "free" to finally get me. Now if I can just replace my lumpy mattress!

Happy B day Todd! If you could just figure out a way to serve beer in this place, I'd never leave!

There's actually just one system. Been doing some tweaking this week and I think it's gonna sound pretty cool. Just so any attendees know, the vendors will be in the Sequoia/Redwood ballroom while the Headmasters meet will be across the hall. The meet is on Saturday only while the vendors will be there Friday-Sunday. Oops, guess I should say that I'll be running the booth for Justin at this event.

I agree. I seriously doubt that Kimi will be the final choice to replace Mark. I can see how the decision is a difficult one though,.. Kimi has always been one of those drivers who takes a very active part in the development of the car and every team he's driven for has been the better for it. And fans (including myself) love him! One the other hand, can you imagine him as a mentor for Vettel? What a PR disaster that could be! Not saying it would happen, but it certainly could. Red Bull is a new type of team that was born out of the modern marketing. I think if the 'racing" decision was obvious, they would already know who their new driver will be. At this point, I would imagine that it's become a board room decision. Just trying to point out that there's a lot more in play here than how the two drivers are going to work together.

Looks awesome Ed! 14 lbs! The first time I bought a big brisket, I was at the butchers counter and pointed at the one I thought looked good. When the guy unrolled it, I was totally freaking at the size of the thing. It reminded me of when the aliens unfolded themselves off the walls of the reactor in "Aliens". But I had to keep my "cool" demeanor and told him to wrap it up. That one was just 8lbs IIIRC. Thank god it turned out pretty good!

Hope you feel better soon Lloyd. I guess if I was stuck in bed sick, Becky would be in my top ten to nurse me back to health!

One of my fav's was his role in "Big Trouble". I have a hard time not watching that endless cluster fuck when it comes on! Maybe it's the Fritos?

Nicely done Mikey! That is super cool Steve! Maybe I should look into something like that.

Just thought I'd post this link to the announcement that WE will once again produce more 300B's and perhaps some more tubes at a new facility in Georgia. If anything else, it should keep scalpers from driving up the prices of the ones on the market now. http://timesfreepress.com/news/2013/jun/23/western-electric-plugs-into-rossville/

Thanks for sharing that video Mikey! Great stuff. And Claire look stunning (and you clean up real nice Al)!

Welcome back to the land of milk and honey(s) Steve! I hope it's all smooth sailing from here on out!

My evil twin was wishing that Ferrari would hire Webber for the #2 drivers spot! Talk about incentive to develop a machine that would beat RBR! They could promise to pay any fines that Webber incurred for breaking "non disclosure" info about the details of Red Bull designs. But seriously, I do think that there's a bit of heart involved with keeping Massa. After all, he came so close to winning the championship in Brazil and then to have that spring come close to killing him! And even though Fiat is majority shareholder, all the decisions come from a family that's used to taking things like loyalty seriously.

This race I took advantage of the delayed presentation on NBCSN and just watched qualifying live. I didn't notice any editing of the race like ESPN and Speed used to do with their "encore" showings so that was cool. It used to really bug me when they'd cut to commercial then come back with 15 laps run! I was worried that Ferrari had made a terrible mistake with their whole tire strategy but it wasn't too bad. I don't like to see a team making big decisions as a "reaction" . I guess that the "new" tires is almost like starting the season over for some teams. I hope it's settled by the next race. Seems like Webber made the right choice. The reshuffling of drivers should be very interesting.

Happy B day Mike! Enjoy the travels.

Regarding the life of 6c45pi tubes. I haven't gotten to the point where one dies but I have had a couple get noisy. I'm guessing it was well over 1500 hours (maybe twice that). I suggest polishing the pins. A number of Russian tubes don't have the best pin construction and they get kinda dull sounding after a while. The noise floor will also rise. I take some metal polish paste (my fav is Mothers Aluminum and Mag polish), put it on a half q-tip and put it in my Dremel tool. I slowly work my way around the pins, then clean it off and put a tiny bit of Caig Pro Gold on them. Sometimes I'm positively shocked how much of a difference it makes to tubes I haven't treated this way before. Think of it as a poor mans gold pins.

Geeze Nate! Congratulations for giving birth to a finish nail!

Happy belated B day Greg! Enjoy!

You might want to check out Analog Tube Audio's site. They have a bronze baseplate that might be better for a 401. The pictures illustrate where the hight adjustment might be right for your arm/table. http://www.analogtubeaudio.de/132-1-bronze-groundplate.html

Bummer Jeff! Nothing worse than airport Purgatory! Kinda reminds me of what a brilliant idea Albert Brooks had in "Defending Your Life" where he was waiting to get into heaven/hell. Great pics Dan! Love the "blow by blow" of your trip.

Congrats!