trebor_zaid wrote on Fri, 16 September 2005 14:11 |
So what the hell? How in the world did they record with this thing back in the 70's? Or was this more of a live board or PA? Since modding it was a pain in the arss, how did they use this board in studio?
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These were primarily sound reinforcement or PA, boards back in the 70's, and that's one of the reasons for the monitor matrix above each master. However, they're built so well you would swear they could take a direct hit from heavy munitions. They also sound good, and, in my opinion, it's worth the small amount of effort it takes to make them a good recording console.
You can solve the monitoring volume problem fairly easily. Get a small mixer to sum the four outputs together, and use that as a gain control for the control room speakers. I took another route, and built a passive gain knob using a ganged potentiometer. I also inserted a six position rotary switch ahead of the pot so I could switch to other inputs, if I so desired. Minimal cost, and no active circuitry added to the monitoring chain.
I was happy with the performance of the PM-1000 amplifier stages, and saw no need to modify them. I still don't, but everyone is different. I spent my effort into re-routing some signal flow, and building a sidecar to handle extra inputs and efx returns. The next time-consuming project (for me) is individual on/off switches for each channel's phantom power. Not hard to do -- just a lot of holes to be drilled and switches to be wired. Oh, and of course one simply must install yellow LED's as phantom power indicators on each channel.
Another easy mod is moving the power supply out of the frame and mounting it underneath, fastened to the pedestal, away from the audio. Power supply noise is not really a problem, but moving it opens up a lot of room inside the board's frame for all sorts of fun and games.
Phil