Pink Pound Experience - Mr Happy Chappy

I had the Pink Pound Experience here again recording another Demo "Mr Happy Chappy" they recently got an NZ On Air Grant to make a video for one of the songs I recorded "Easy Come Easy Go" in November last year, so expect to see them on your television in the not so distant future!

This time they came with new drummer Dan. Those more observant may notice I used a hi-hat mic in this instance, which I hardly ever do, this was due to the drum beat revolving mainly around kick and Hi-Hat and occasionaly a cross hit on the snare. I opted for an SM57 on the Hi-Hat, I could've used one of my other pencil condensers but I wanted less of the tops and more body from it and I've been seeing quite a few SM57s on Hi Hats recently, worked ok but as I say I am not a big Hi-Hat mic fan and I am still not sure if I'll use it, but its there if I need it!

I am pretty envious of Simon's new SIB Mr Echo, its very nice peice of gear. (I do enjoy a good peice of gear) The other week I put some heavier guage strings on my Musicmaster and adjusted the action of it etc, it sounded so great today that we used it for all of Simon's parts while Stu went tele for his guitar parts.

I (somewhat begrudgingly) ended up showing them how my new telephone mic sounds and it inspired a vocal part over the bridge. I don't like using tricks or gimmicks just because I have them and at first I was really not very keen to use the phone. However, when I thought about how I would effect the vocal in the part it was used if we didn't use the phone I knew I'd be striving to get back that sound. So I let it past.

(I am just wary of the fact that I often get very excited about new peices of equipment and try and use them on everything!)

New Toy - Phone Microphone

I just made myself a new toy for the studio. I had seen an easy way to turn an old carbon button phone in to a microphone and stumbled across this phone in a junk store for $7.50 and found the parts (an AA batery clip, XLR panel mount socket and some cable) in an electrical store for $10.00.

Total Cost - $17.50 (I don't mean to belittle your maths abilities, I just wanted to make sure you realised that this was a bargain!)

I put it together today in about 20 minutes. I couldn't fit the battery in the reciever so put it in the base unit. I had planned to wire in the switch to turn off the battery when you put the handset down, but after scratching my head as to why it was making so much noise I realised the circuit would only close when you plug a cable in anyway and cut the switch idea out of the equation.

Anyway here it is, great for when you need that authentic vintage phone sound. It sounds really horrible and looks really cool. Perfect.

Where I fitted the XLR socket