naxos10 Posted March 28, 2023 Share Posted March 28, 2023 16 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said: Youse lot were all proper lucky! Me and my mates Swamp and Sgav attempted to record our "band" live (me on terrible sounding Farfisa copy organ, Swamp on Kays Cataloge bass through Winfield 25w amp and Sgav hitting Swamp's mum's pots'n'pans) using one of these: Results were poor... But then that's not surprising with the lyrics of one song beginning: I wish I was a paramecium Life would be so very eacium (nick it if you want 😁) I am not suprised the results were poor if your 'drummer' kept hitting the pots and pans with one of those (the tape recorder)😁 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaggy Posted March 28, 2023 Share Posted March 28, 2023 20 hours ago, stewblack said: My old man made my first combo from an old lo-fi record player. Very similar indeed to mine! My first amp - in 1977 - was built by my brother (who was pretty good at that stuff, went on to be an electrical engineer at Marconi), he even built in a fuzz circuit. I made the cab from the wooden carcass of an old TV, with the 2 speakers from my Dad’s old Pye radiogram. Needless to say, the speakers completely blew the first time I hit low E at band practice 🙁 Like most at the time, we recorded ourselves on one of those crappy little cassette recorders with piano key buttons. 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassTractor Posted March 28, 2023 Share Posted March 28, 2023 Oh, the memories! You guys reminded me of the first record-player-with-built-in-speaker amp, and as we of course were advanced electronics designers at age 12, we understood that we'd better put a resistance on both plus and minus sides of the mono lead, as ... ... one could never tell from which side the sound really came! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Franticsmurf Posted March 28, 2023 Share Posted March 28, 2023 1 hour ago, Shaggy said: Needless to say, the speakers completely blew the first time I hit low E at band practice That reminds me of my first band, in which I was the guitarist. I had a decent amp (A Peavey Bandit) but as we were doing more proggy stuff, I decided to experiment with stereo. I had a Yamaha FX500 half rack multi effects unit and reasoned that I could plug the lot into my Pioneer hifi amp and speakers, which were about 50w per side. Testing it at home at low volume, it sounded quite good. At rehearsal there was a moment of stereo echo and chorus bliss followed by many more moments of silence. Both speakers went at the same time and the hifi amp was never quite the same. 😃 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nilorius Posted March 28, 2023 Share Posted March 28, 2023 6 minutes ago, Franticsmurf said: That reminds me of my first band, in which I was the guitarist. I had a decent amp (A Peavey Bandit) but as we were doing more proggy stuff, I decided to experiment with stereo. I had a Yamaha FX500 half rack multi effects unit and reasoned that I could plug the lot into my Pioneer hifi amp and speakers, which were about 50w per side. Testing it at home at low volume, it sounded quite good. At rehearsal there was a moment of stereo echo and chorus bliss followed by many more moments of silence. Both speakers went at the same time and the hifi amp was never quite the same. 😃 Quite a sad story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velarian Posted April 20, 2023 Share Posted April 20, 2023 On 27/03/2023 at 05:31, Velarian said: I used to use a Teac A-108 cassette deck which allowed you record left and right channels separately. I would have loved a 4-track portastudio but they were outside of my budget. My mate from back in the day recently sent me this photo, which was taken just a couple of years or so after the Teac cassette days. This would have been around ‘85/86. By that time we’d pooled our resources and invested in this setup with a Tascam 38, which was a considerable upgrade from Teac cassette deck (which was still in use for producing cassette copies and is on top of the outboard rack). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacDaddy Posted April 20, 2023 Share Posted April 20, 2023 On 27/03/2023 at 16:49, Leonard Smalls said: Youse lot were all proper lucky! Me and my mates Swamp and Sgav attempted to record our "band" live (me on terrible sounding Farfisa copy organ, Swamp on Kays Cataloge bass through Winfield 25w amp and Sgav hitting Swamp's mum's pots'n'pans) using one of these: Results were poor... But then that's not surprising with the lyrics of one song beginning: I wish I was a paramecium Life would be so very eacium (nick it if you want 😁) Thanks for the offer, but if it's all the same... 😜 🤣 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snorkie635 Posted April 20, 2023 Share Posted April 20, 2023 26 minutes ago, MacDaddy said: Thanks for the offer, but if it's all the same... 😜 🤣 You were all lucky. I never had electricity until '75 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bassace Posted April 20, 2023 Share Posted April 20, 2023 I started out in the fifties. Money was still tight post war so we didn’t have anything like the goodies we take for granted today. We all still owe a lot to Lonnie Donegan who kicked off the skiffle movement and with it the ability to play music on the most rudimentary materials, such as tea chest bass and washboard which was my starter instrument. It wasn’t long before I graduated to double bass which I bought new for £45. Recording was single track, unsophisticated, but we had a very nice reel to reel Ferrograph. I met up with Guy and Ted Fletcher and recording time was curtailed because we had plenty of gigs coming in. But I remember Ted made me a simple compressor - the first TFPro model? - soldered together which didn’t seem to have many components apart from a 2v light bulb that glowed dimly or brightly according to the strength of my amped signal. Amp was a 50 watt Leak with KT 88 outputs. At the same time my younger brother cobbled a bass guitar together, with a body made from two sheets of blockboard glued together and a hand crafted fretless neck - a very early fretless indeed - because he didn’t have the skills to put the frets in. The pickup was canibalised from a moving coil headphone earpiece. The Fletchers went on to do very well in the business but I kept music as a hobby. Happy days 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waddo Soqable Posted April 20, 2023 Share Posted April 20, 2023 2 hours ago, snorkie635 said: You were all lucky. I never had electricity until '75 You're 75 then?.. blimey gramps, I didn't think you were that old 🤣 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snorkie635 Posted April 20, 2023 Share Posted April 20, 2023 20 minutes ago, Waddo Soqable said: You're 75 then?.. blimey gramps, I didn't think you were that old 🤣 1875 that was Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waddo Soqable Posted April 21, 2023 Share Posted April 21, 2023 14 hours ago, snorkie635 said: 1875 that was So 'ang on, you were 75 in 1875? ... You are a vampire and I claim my £5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Edge Posted April 21, 2023 Share Posted April 21, 2023 My first amp/speaker rig was a cheapo valve HiFi thing of no more than 20 watts. Tripletone comes to mind but I could be wrong. My father built a separate cabinet for me with a 15” Fane speaker. The whole thing was far too big. I didn’t do many gigs with it due to not being able to move the damn thing easily. Non driving schoolboy I was. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buddster Posted April 22, 2023 Share Posted April 22, 2023 Like the OP, i bounced between a cassette player and a reel to reel back in 84. I made a reverb unit from a metal tool box with a speaker one end and a mic the other. To change the sound, I'd turn the mic around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimR Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 A friend of mine was an electronics whiz and built a '16' track mixer. Although it may have been 8 or something, no EQ, everything was mic'ed up and the electronics were rotary dials, all housed in a biscuit tin. All recorded live, in mono, and sounded pretty good. I bounced the tape into a WAV file on my PC a few years ago with the intention to try and master it. About 1987. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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