videos and hackery

[solarbird]

Thanks to Zorp, who was in the audience at the Gypsy last month, I have a couple of live videos on my YouTube channel! If you’re reading this on the band site, you might notice a new videos tab, to match. Guess what it does! XD Here, have a video:

Live at the Gypsy Cafe; Video courtesy Zorp

That’s “Something’s Coming.” I’ve also posted the first recording – from the same performance – of “World Trapped in Amber,” which will appear on Din of Thieves.

I celebrated Seafair Weekend by rebuilding a 1978-era Pioneer power amp. I’ve had this thing kicking around for a while, and have used it as a monitor amp in the studio, but it’s always been noisy and kind of cruddy, and I was going to replace it until I found out that audio fidelity in my price range has actually been going downhill for the last 10-15 years as more and more money gets put into remote-control/iPod and iPhone interfacing/digital output/etc and less into basic sound quality.

I’ve never thought much of this amp, really; I picked it up used, for no money to speak of. Turns out replacing a whole fleet of really old capacitors makes it A GOD AMONGST AMPLIFIERS. Well, okay, not really. But – re-capped – it has one of the cleanest transistor preamps I’ve ever heard. Cranked all the way up to maximum output on all drivers, the preamp noise level in studio reference headphones is ZERO. You hear nothing. It’s fucking inaudible. And silence on speakers, too. It’s kind of shocking.

I still have some more work to do – I’ve got distortion on channel two on speakers only (headphones are pristine) caused by me trying to hack together the correct replacement cap value when I didn’t have it, and the tone control board is still a noise fountain and still needs the other half of its caps swapped. (Right now I’ve got it bypassed, and you shouldn’t be using that shit in a studio anyway, but I like having all the functionality of a piece of equipment available.) If finishing the rebuild doesn’t solve the tone board noise issues, I’ll leave it bypassed. Or maybe add a switch, to cut it in and out. ‘Cause this amp sounds great now. Seriously, I had no idea.

It’s no Dynaco ST70, don’t get me wrong. But I never knew it was capable of really sounding good. Turns out, in fact: fuck yeah! And that’s the kind of surprise I could use a lot more often. If you have some hackery in you, and see an old Pioneer (or similar) amp hanging out in a garage sale or thrift store or something, and it powers up at all – buy it and recap it, it’s probably worth the rebuild. This one was.

That’s what I did with my Seafair weekend. What about you?

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil.
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Comments

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

You rock! Glad the music is going so well, live, radio shows and all.
=)

I did nothing with my Seafair weekend because I wasn't having a seafair weekend. At least a good hundred miles from the ocean, about the same to the Salton Sea (which is very sadly dying; read up on sometime if you want a tragic story) and I dunno where the closest fair was.

So I had an entirely other sort of weekend.

[solarbird]

Yeah, hit counts and stuff are slowly rising - I do wish more people would buy the damn album, tho'. That's what shows are for, of course, but I could sure also use more shows! And and and. PROGRESS TOO SLOW!

I hope it was a nice relaxing weekend at home, at least!

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Congrats on amp repair! I think Pioneer used to make pretty good equipment. Actually, they probably still do now if you pay several arms and legs through the nose for it (and get one without an ipod dock), but seeing as you have the mad skillz, the self-upgraded 1978 model is probably a much smarter move. :)

(For instance - love my CDJ-800s - but not planning to upgrade to a newer model ever, partly because I don't use them often enough, and partly because... £1000 for ONE deck? The midrange one?)

[solarbird]

Pioneer used to make some great equipment, actually, yeah - I just didn't think this amp was in that category. Turns out: pretty f'in good, at least, bypassing the tone daughterboard. (I fixed the distortion problem today and all is well there - turned out my hackery was working fine, it was a bad ground lead elsewhere on the board.) Re-capping the tone board didn't do anything at all, sadly, so it's still bypassed for now.

[solarbird]

Actually so I went and did some more poking about, and it's more like 1973, not 1978. (SA-5200, if you're curious.) Surprise! And whatever is causing this tone board noise has been noted (but not solved) by several people. It was Pioneer's budget high-fidelity amplifier from 1973-1975, when it was replaced by a revised model. Not a lot of power (13 watts per channel), low on features - but super-clean and very precise, as I've discovered upon rebuilding it. If I can solve this tone board issue I'll have to post the fix, because apparently you can find this thing used for like us$40, and if you don't need acres of power and can swap out the caps (cost in low volume, about us$25, and that's being a completist) it's just nice.