ALLEN WRENCH wrote on Wed, 16 November 2005 22:49 |
Hey Eric, having had recently gone through the USED CONSOLE thing… spending a shit load of money on mods and repairs, just to find out the thing is a $10,000 waste of time and money… that’ll probably sell on EBAY for $ 1,800
You should check out Paul Wolf’s Tonelux console:
http://www.tonelux.com/
You can get it into any configuration you want, and the thing’s raging! Hopefully I’ll be in a Tonelux within the next year.
As far as I know, I’m pretty sure Paul was running API in the late ‘80s – Early 90’s and is behind a of the kick ass API tricks. No doubt people will be throwing some comments RE: Paul and Tonelux after this.
One of the things I heard while buying older consoles were things like… “Do this mod and it’ll be just like a _____!” or “All it needs is to be recapped.” But much to my surprise after doing all these costly things is that I had a noisy hunk of crap. Well at least it matches my hunk o’crap MCI machine.
There seems to be a market glut of consoles out there right now, but BE WARE some of those great prices are for fucked up gear that need work and will take a great deal of money and heartache to get happening.
Get the ToneLux that fucking thing’s solid.
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Thanks Allen,
This is always a concern with vintage gear, and the stakes naturally get a lot higher with something as complex as a console.
Tonelux looks like the deal, solid build and definitely has the design credentials behind it. Haven't seen any in Canada yet, but sure they must be around somewhere.
There is a certain confidence that goes with the purchase of new gear, and if the design is good, it'll sound great.
On the otherhand, I also do love to take the occasional risk (though I haven't at the console level) on something vintage and possibly mysterious, which has been known at times to lead to some serious voodoo.
A few weeks ago I picked up an old 1955 Pilot Radio hifi mono tube preamp. The thing looks like a small golden toaster oven with a handle on top. Five tubes, mic pre and LP/NAB/AES/FOR phono EQ curve settings with variable impedance, line in, high and low EQ. Unbalanced RCA in/out, but can take quite a bit of input voltage an puts out +4dB nominal no prob. Found it on tour in a pawn shop in Vernon B.C. and definitely spent more on the recap than the purchase price.
Just hooked it up today, ran some bass, vocals, acoustic guitar through the various inputs. Smooooooth, (with lots and lots of O's). The bass knob is fantastic. I can say is that this thing certainly knows what it's doing, and that's the kind of thing that's going to make it on a record. I'm about as happy with this as I am with another recent buy at nearly ten times the price, which was a Millennia TD-1 DI/Pre/EQ box (albeit for different reasons; the two are very different beasts indeed!!)
One of the guys I was with that day in the pawn shop dug up a 60's Ludwig snare for 100 bucks or something, with the original skins and strainer still on... all the while saying that it's not "buying" gear, but more like "rescuing" it. He tuned it up and played it that night at the concert. The drummer for the headliners kept jokingly trying to steal it after the show.
Anyway, not to get too OT, but with the Q8 stuff it looks like that it would be worth a stab, at least to try and find a few channels and give them a try. Seems like the early stuff was very cutting edge. A lot of good ears here like the sound, and a lot of good records were made on Q8's. Thanks Again.
Best,
Eric