California Sound Control

Allen-Heath Record Setup

2011-07-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

California Sound Control is the proud owner of a used Allen & Heath 16:2 MixWizard3. I got used to this fun little board running sound for the Fold at Silver Lake Lounge and HOME in Silver Lake (Los Angeles). I've mixed dozens of bands with this board, and, for me, it blows away the similarly priced Mackies and Yamahas.

When I was looking for more mic pre's/eq's for my rig, I thought- Jeez, why not try a little 16 channel number? That way, if I want to record a live band and do the FOH at the same time, I'm covered.

When I got it home, I was shocked to find out that the direct outs and aux sends are both pre-eq. The reason, according to the manual, is so that you can mix live while not affecting the record feeds. Since I need this board to be the front end to my protools rig, I want the direct outs and aux sends to have the eq's turned "on". (Call me crazy.)

So, I performed a lil impromptu surgery with some tweezers to get the eq's going on, and this is what that looked like:

Let me know what you think. I'd also love to hear any experiences or observations you may have had with a similar setup.

A Tale Of Two Muffs

2011-05-10T11:25:00.001-07:00

I fell in love with the original Big Muff Pi in the early nineties when I learned Nirvana used it on a few tracks to record Nevermind with Butch Vig. For whatever reason over the years I let that sound slip away until just recently when I saw Jack White use one plugged into a homemade one string guitar made out of a piece of wood, a pickup, and a coke bottle in the movie "It Might Get Loud". He played some slide guitar riff on that one string and made it look and sound so easy- It was then that I decided I had to get back to it.

Since then i've learned the Big Muff Pi has been around almost 40 years, used on Hendrix, Santana, Pink Floyd, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., NIN, Manson, and the list goes on and on- The Muff has many sisters and cousins as well such as the Metal Muff and Double Muff. I've tried these in stores but never really found the need-

For the past year i've been upgrading my sounds and found a used muff for $45. I love it as my lead channel distortion- it screams! A permanent fixture on my pedalboard it goes into channel 2 of my '65 Twin Reissue. It sustains for days and crunches all the way to hell-

When I heard about an upgraded version coming out it took me time to get around to it. I liked that the footprint was reduced with the Little Big Muff Pi, but that still wasn't enough to grab me. It needed to have something the old one did not do, enter the Big Muff with Tone Wicker. It has the smaller footprint, all the same controls as the original plus 2 tone shaping switches.

Got it home and plugged into my rig with a single coils strat first. I started with all knobs at noon on both pedals. When A/B'ed they sound pretty close to the same, when I started moving knobs around I noticed the original muff has a low mid sponginess that the wicker muff does not. How can this be? I thought they were the same circuit? Well it still sounded close so I kept playing around.

Next I tried the switches- When you flick off the left switch it cuts off the tone knob and boosts the gain like 10db! Kind a cool but honestly the level change was too drastic to be able to do anything with live. Next the wicker circuit, which is a super treble boost kind of like cranking only the highs on an eq pedal. This also did not work for me- way to drastic a change. On single coils the noise and hiss was crazy-

At this point I switched guitars over to my axe w/ dual humbuckers. It was then that I found what the wicker does more clearly. The tone off switch was still too drastic but the wicker was ok. I played around with settings and found the same issue with the low-mid sponginess it just sounds better to me on the original. The Wicker version is a close copy and the wicker switch does add a new Muff dimension, but I still like the original the best-

Pros- smaller footprint

Cons- tone and wicker switches too drastic- wicker no good on single coils-

I like having options and having the tone shapers is cool, but for me the original Big Muff Pi is the way to go-

Gotta Have It : Black Lion Audio modded 002r

2011-04-03T18:51:00.001-07:00

I finally took the plunge and sent my Digi002r to Black Lion Audio in Chicago for the Signature Series upgrade, and it was totally worth it.

As a guitar player, the first experiment I thought to try was to test several different mics on electric guitar thru only the mic preamps on the 002r, all of which was set to 3 0'clock, and guitar amp set fairly low at a practice room level. I used a Shure 57, a Sennheiser 421, a Bock U195, and a cheap ribbon from Shanghai, China to record a vintage 1977 Fender Starcaster, plugged thru Boss, Mxr, and EHX pedals and patched into a Fender 1965 Twin Reissue.

In terms of microphones… they were positioned about 3-4 inches off the grill, centered on the cone, and on axis. I've successfully used this setup for guitar overdubs in the past, but trying it out thru the Black Lion mod was kind of like hearing it for the first time.

Level wise, I chose to do a 3 o'clock position on the mic pre's as a starting point to see what they sounded like when fairly opened up. Still, the mic's output levels were obviously different and I compensated for this with the faders in my protools session. (Different trim settings on the mic pre gains will be another test another day.)

Over all, the Signature Series upgrades improved the results I was able to achieve above and beyond expectation, and I expect a lot. Upon playback, I immediately noticed that there is no more noise or hiss, and I was especially impressed with it's effect on the clean and dirty guitar sounds, as well as the reverb decays. Plus, I had a much higher impression of the ADs & DAs and of the mics themselves. Funny how an interface upgrade seems to upgrade everything else!

(pic source-)

California Sound Control - Coming Soon...

2010-12-20T21:21:00.000-08:00

“I'd like to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that everything is o.k. But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back. Until things are brighter, I'm the Man in Black.” -Johnny Cash