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Cool Guitar Amp Build – Mojotone 18Watt TMB
The finished Chassis on the bench Editor’s Note: Since building this kit, the DIY shop has turned attention to microphone mods and rebuilds. As a bonus, my mics sound wonderful on amps like this! Click here to visit the mic mod service page.
I’ve had my eye on this Mojotone Amp Kit for a while. I normally do my guitar parts with various modeling gizmos and plugins and I don’t play live with anyone at the moment. So spending 900 bucks on a guitar amp seemed like a bit of a splurge (especially when I also want to buy a new camera). But, I finally bit the bullet and bought the kit. Due to Covid19, they expected to not actually ship it for up to six weeks. It really showed up after about three.
While you’re here, check out our custom microphone modifications and rebuilds. If you have a neglected MXL 990, MXL 910 or similar mic in your locker, we can very affordably turn it into a “go-to”.
Unwrapping the cabinet on the kitchen island to have a look. So far, very happy with the build quality
Not wasting any time, I dove into the kit build. This one is a bit of a stretch for me. The kits I’ve been building (mics and preamps) are all built with modern components on real printed circuit boards. This amp, true to the era it is modeling, is all point-to-point wiring and the closest thing to a circuit board is a turret board. It’s also the first thing I’ve built or worked on in a long time that had tubes. This thing has five tubes and a tube recifier with all the high voltage transformers and capacitors that go along with it.
Mojotone Circuit Schematic The schematic shows a pretty typical tube amp design. Nothing fancy – no FET switches, FX Loops or anything else that they put on modern amps. The kit is recreation of an 18w Marshall combo amp which was made between 1965-67. The original amp had two channels with only a single “Tone” control. Channel two had a tremelo circuit. Many people would mod these amps to remove the Tremelo circuit and use the holes for those controls to add a real TMB (Trebble, Mid, Bass) tone stack. Mojotone did exactly that in this kit except the tone stack and in fact the whole preamp of channel 2 is that of a JCM800. Pretty cool! Then, of course they added a “master” volume on channel 2.
One really cool/cute thing about the design is that the master vol knob is actually mounted where one of the input jacks would normally go in the original. This is exactly how it would have looked if you did this modification back in the day. They didn’t even put numbers on the face plate around the master.
The build is supposed to take about six hours. That may be true if you are really experienced at amp builds. It took me more like sixteen to get it up and running. There was one more session of rework a few weeks later that added a couple more hours (more on that later). And I do have one mod planned for it (parts are ordered) so it will be back on the bench once again.
Tube Sockets and Trannys installed Transformers, controls and Tube Sockets mounted
Mistakes
Overall, the build pretty well. I did make a couple of mistakes though:
- I installed the wrong resistors on the high voltage filtering capacitors. Right resistance, but I grabbed the lower wattage ones from the kit box without paying attention to the power. When I discovered this, I tried to remove them and destroyed them in the process. So the original build had some whimpy looking modern metal oxide resistors in the circuit instead of the more vintage looking carbon ones. I ordered more from Mojotone and have since installed them.
- I got too much solder on a pin in two of the tube sockets. The solder ran down inside the sockets and the tubes would not seat very well. I did my best with the solder sucker and a few other tricks, but I made quite a mess of those two sockets. They worked, but I ordered new sockets and have since replaced them.
The Power section wiring Wiring the power section. The astute reader may notice that I have the wrong resistors on those big filter caps! They should have been bigger 2W resistors but I grabbed the 1/2 watt carbon ones of the same value from the kit by mistake. These were intended for the turret board.
The circuit Board Turet board and most of the internal wiring is complete. Notice the non-carbon skinny (metal oxide) resistor about 1/3 from the right of the board.
Moment of Truth – Plug it in and fire it up
After checking and rechecking everything, I plugged it in, held my breath and switched it on. There are several steps to the initial bench testing which involve turning it on and off several times adding tubes and doing voltage measurements in between. Everything was looking good and the poorly seated tubes didn’t seem to be a problem.
Chassis final assembly and testing. The power light is on and no smoke! The Speaker
The speaker in a guitar amp is a huge part of the tone. Go on youtube and search for “guitar speaker shootout” and there are dozens of videos which compare speakers and really demonstrate how different they sound. Some of these shootouts are done more scientifically than others. I ordered the kit with no Tubes and no Speaker. I have two Electovoice EVM12Ls and so I thought I would put one of those in at first. Many people would consider this an abominaiton of nature but it actually didn’t sound bad. Actually it sounded great. Ulitmately, a friend of mine had a Celestion Vintage 30 which he had no use for and we made it mine. That’s the speaker I have now and the tone is a huge improvement. It also weighs about 15lbs less now!
Celestion Vintage 30 mounted The speaker is a big part of the tone. Going with a classic Celestion Vintage 30 here.
Rework
A few weeks later, I finally sat down at the bench and replaced the two tube sockets that I messed up in the original build and replaced the metal oxide resisters with new carbon ones. It took a couple of hours but it all went back together perfectly.
Up Next
I have two small complaints:
- There is a little bit more 120hz (rectified) hum in the power section than I would like. You hear it even with all gains down to zero.
- The master volume is very touchy at the low end of the range. It’s difficult to get a reasonably quiet studio (or late night bedroom) volume. It goes from nothing to a little too loud and it’s hard to get in between. Turns out this is a very common complaint across many amps with a master vol.
For complaint #1, I have ordered some additional 47uF high voltage caps to put on the high voltage circuit. This kit has dual 32uF caps which is not a lot of filtering. My 50w Sovtek has dual 220uF caps as a comparison. I will add the new caps in and see if that reduces the hum a bit. It’s not a problem at all for recording or playing. It’s just more of an annoyance.
There are several ways to address complaint #2. What I am going to do is replace the master vol pot with one that has a push/pull switch. That swich will switch in a series resistor which will give me a “low range” setting so that I’ll be able to use more of the rotation of the pot. If I ever play a gig again, pull the switch up and get the full volume range.
But I Love The Amp
I’ve spent many hours just playing guitar since I got this. It’s such a great responsive amp with a gorgeous tone. It can overdrive as much as any JCM800, but it sounds wonderful at my more usual mid-level distorted tones that I like. Although it’s a combo, it’s actually a pretty big box and has a surprisingly big tone. I really feel like I’m playing through a 4×12 with it.
Plugged in, Mic’d up and sounding great! 
Successful Collaborating With Multiple DAWs
Occasionally I find myself collaborating with other studios by sharing files and projects back and forth. I recently had the pleasure of contributing some vocal and instrument tracks to an album by an Artist from my hometown in upstate NY. There is almost always some trial and error involved in the process of transferring – especially if working in different DAWS. In these strange days of distance and isolation, collaboration across time, space and DAWs is becoming more common.
Collaborating Solo…
So I decided to play the part of not two but three different studios and record a song in three different DAWs by myself just to go through the process and the pain. The key was transferring the audio as Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) files so they would remain time-aligned in each DAW. That sounds simple, but every DAW has its quirks and each have different options for import and export. I went through the process in both directions between Pro Tools and Cakewalk and between Pro Tools and Reaper.
I captured the process in a couple of videos (see below), but if you want the short text version, here is the chronology of what I did:
- Recorded a guitar in Pro Tools
- Exported that
- Imported that into Cakewalk
- Recorded another guitar in Cakewalk
- Recorded a mandolin in Cakewalk
- Exported those
- Imported those into Pro Tools
- Exported a mix of everything from Pro Tools
- Imported that mix into Reaper
- Recorded a shaker track in Reaper
- Exported that
- Imported that into Pro Tools
- Recorded a whole bunch of other stuff in Pro Tools
- Mix
- Listen
For reference, Part I of the video has steps 1-8. Part 2 has the rest.
The Settings
I’m sure that most modern DAWs offer some way to do what I did. I happen to have licenses for Pro Tools, Cakewalk and Reaper so those are the ones I used. Following are some details of how to set this stuff up.
Pro Tools
One good thing about Pro Tools is that as long as you set BWF as the format for your session (it is by default), everything will be done as BWF.
The first thing that bites you about pro tools is that their idea of “Time 0” is – by default – One Hour. This is not unusual among video editing applications as it allows for “Preroll”. The problem is that if you leave your session set with a one hour offset, anything you export to another daw will end up one hour down the timeline. Fortunately, this is easy to change. But first, I would suggest you Turn ON the Timecode Ruler.
The Ruler in Pro Tools Having this on makes is very easy to see what the smpte time offset of your session is. And you can see that the default session start of 01:00:00:00 is reflected in the ruler. To get to this Session Setup dialog, go to Setup|Session in the main menu.
Change that Session Start to 00:00:00:00. Once you do that, zero will be zero everywhere.
Pro Tools Ruler with Timecode Lane Pro Tools Importing
When importing into Pro Tools, you might hope that drag/droping a file on the timeline would automagically align it to the BWF Timestamp. That would be nice, but it doesn’t happen. The clip lands whereever you drop it and you need to Spot it to the BWF Time. To do that, right-click the clip and choose Spot.
Pro Tools Spot Dialog The Spot dialog shows where the clip is now as well as the BWF Time (Original Time Stamp). Note that you can display these in any time format you like (even raw samples). The little widget next to the Original Timestamp will set the actual start time to the BWF time. Click OK an your clip will fly to the right time.
Pro Tools Export
Pro Tools has the simplest Export Dialog of all the DAWs I worked with. Instead of having a source category picker like other DAWs, you either use the Bounce… menu choice from the Track Menu (which will render separate files per track), or the Bounce To Disk… menu choice from the File menu which renders a mix to one track. Personally, I found this a bit confusing and it would have been clearer to have one Export Menu with some widgets to control the behavior explicitly. In both cases, BWF Timestamps are always written.
Pro Tools Export For bouncing raw clips to import into another DAW, I normally uncheck vol and pan automation. That way the dood on the other side can mix the stems anyway they want.
Cakewalk
Ahhh Cakewalk! Cakewalk as the name implies makes this all very easy once you adjust a few settings.
Cakewalk Settings The most important thing is that you check Always Import Broadcast Waves at Their Timestamp and Export Broadcast Waves by Default. I don’t think these are checked by default which is too bad. With these options checked, Import/Export of BWFs is very easy. If you drop a BWF clip on the timeline, it will instantly fly to the ritght location. No extra Spot step required like in Pro Tools (and Reaper).
Cakewalk Exporting
Cakewalk has a very versatile export dialog. It has enough settings to do anything you need but it’s not overwhelming. And it even has presets!
Cakewalk Export Dialog Here again, when exporting individual clips, you can choose the Clips source category. The key thing is to render as BWF to preserve the timing! I normally disable all automation in this case. I would render track effects if I had some plugin that was crucial to the content (like a sync’d delay or something).
Reaper
This is the DAW I am least familiar with. I did buy a licence for it just for cases where I need to work with these projects. That said, I would preface everything I say here with “as far as I know”. I’ve spent the least amount of time learning this app.
Importing into Reaper
Like Pro Tools, it seems that Clips must be moved to their BWF timestamp after they are dropped onto the timeline. To do this, you go to the Items menu (either right click or main menu) and choose Item Processing|Move items to source preferred position (BWF).
Click that and the clips fly to the right place. It’s similar to Spot in pro tools.
“Spotting” a clip in Reaper Exporting from Reaper
Reaper’s export dialog, like Cakewalk’s is very comprehensive.
Reaper Export Dialog Like Cakewalk, it is a single Dialog box with a Source Category and lots of controls that affect the behavior. Again, for our purpose here having Write BWF (bext) chunk checked is the most important thing to preserve the timing.
That about covers the settings for import/export to be aware of in these three DAWs.
Isolate, The Making Of
Here are the videos. I wanted to actually go through the process on a real tune. Although all the tracks were recorded in one studio, I went through all the steps (except for transferring files over the internet) that would happen if this was recorded in three different countries. There was a lot of time spent here on trial and error. You’re seeing a very edited down version of the process.
Hope they are helpful. Please don’t like, subscribe or comment (using reverse phychology here)
The Final Track (Audio Only) can be heard here
Robert’s Reason · Isolate
CAPI VP312 Preamp Build (and HP Filter Switch Mod)
CAPI is another source for Professional DIY audio kits. They make a bunch of 500 series and rack device kits. It is not by accident that [c]API look very similar to vintage products by API but CAPI has no affiliation with API.
I’ve built most of the components in my 500 rack as kits. As I started down that road, I also got myself pretty deep into microphone mods.
While you’re here, check out our custom microphone modifications and rebuilds. If you have a neglected MXL 990, MXL 910 or similar mic in your locker, we can very affordably turn it into a “go-to”.For this kit, I decided to go simple and build the basic VP312 Preamp. This version has no DI input which greatly simplifies the build. I also chose to buy the Discrete Op Amp pre-assembled. When I built the Lola, I made the mistake of building the DOAs myself. This accounted for more than half of the build time and about 90% of the difficulty so I didn’t want to repeat that mistake.
I had the 312 done and working in less than three hours. It was by far the easiest kit I’ve done.
First few components installed The array of resistors in the top left are for the 12-position stepped input gain switch. This is an upgrade option but you can get the kit with a variable input gain instead. I opted for the stepped version. That said, CAPI has been having a terrible time keeping the Grayhill switches in stock. I even had to pass on a couple of sales in my reverb.com shop because I wouldn’t have been able to replace the kits if I sold them.
Transformers
At the time I ordered the kit, they were out of stock of their own CA2622 Input Transformer. But they did have plenty of the Ed Anderson (EA)2622s in stock. So I ordered the “No Iron” option of the kit and then added the EA input transformer and upgraded to the Litz (red) output transformer.
I also ordered the “stepped” gain version which is a 12-position grayhill switch with an array of resistors.
Finished Kit on the bench Not too many steps along the way and before you know it, the kit is done.
Although the kit was easy to build, this is the first kit where there was an error with the parts inventory. Fortuntely, it was just two missing 4-40 flat head screws. Unfortunately, my local hardware store did not have them so I’ve had to order some. Until they arrive, I can not do final assembly. It’s put together enough to install in the rack and use though.
In the rack with her siblings Room for Mods
Besides being easy to build, an advantage of the low parts count of the CAPI is that there is a lot of room for modifications.
One thing that is missing from the Lola and the MP573 is a Lo Cut (hp filter) switch. These come in handy quite often and it is one reason why I bought the RND 511 preamp (which I don’t love). Adding this function to the CAPI looks to be very easy to do. There is plenty of room to mount an additional toggle switch and I manged to find some very cool mini toggles that have an illuminated handle!
Here’s the general idea: R3 is an optional Load resistor for secondary of the input transformer. I’m installing it and using it as the “R” in the R-C circuit. A trace is cut between transformer and R3 and I’m putting some capacitance across that gap with a switch to short it out. I found some cool illuminated toggle switches which will give me a cool indicator light when the filter is in.
The Switch will short out the cap disabling the filter. With the switch open, the other contact will close and light up the switch LED.
For fun, I also considered a two-position version of the filter whcih would use an on-off-on switch and two capacitors. This ended up being what I finally went with.
A couple variations on the HP Filter mod. The bottom one (two position) is what I went with 
This is the Trace to Cut 
The CAPI vp312 schematic showing where the trace is cut 
Drilling the pilot hole for the new switch Can’t wait for the cool switches to arrive!
2020-06-22_14-09_942.jpg
The pilot hole in the front panel Adding the Mod
Well, my fancy illuminated switches were delivered today. That’s the good news. The bad news is I had them sent to the house I lived in six years ago. Oh well I hope the new owners enjoy them once they get over their initial confusion. Being impatient to get this done, I decided to skip the illuminated switch. The switches I had in stock were some SPDT On-Off-On switches. So I was able to do the two-position version of the filter. In hindsight, I’m really glad I didn’t get the illuminated switch. Having two steps for the Lo-Cut frequency is very nice.
Step 1 was to (ugh) drill a hole through the board to provide access for the wires. Next time I build one of these kits, I will think ahead and do the whole mod on the top side of the board which will eliminate the need for this hole. Not a big deal as there is plenty of open acreage on the board.
Step 2. The Two 0.01uF caps are wired in series across the cut circuit board trace.
Step 3 is to get some wires to the caps. I ended up doing two of the connection below the board and the other above. The pin on the input transformer made a nice big fat solder pad to hook one to. The other wire goes to the connection of the two series caps.
Two capacitors wired in Step 4 is to wire the switch. I drew an arrow facing down so I could keep track of which way to install the switch. I want OFF to be with the switch handle down. The two blue wires go across the cut trace (shorting both caps). The red wire goes to where the caps are wired together (shorting one cap).
Switch Installed And there it is with all the gadgets mounted to the panel again. Since this is the last time I hope to disassemble this, I put blue locktite on all the fasteners.
Final mod on the bench The switch works as follows:
- Down: Off
- Middle: 220Hz
- Up: 110Hz
I was a bit concerned that the extra wiring would pick up some hum or noise. They are between the input transformer and the high impedence input of the DOA. But upon testing, the amp is still just as silent as ever. Did I connect it to some expensive signal analyzer? Nope. But I did put on my sennheiser headphones and floor the amp and to my ears, it’s as quiet as it ever was (very). Operating the switch does not produce any clicks or glitches either. I didn’t expect it would as there is no DC anywhere near this part of the circuit.
In the down position, the switch is shorting both caps as if they were not there. In the middle position, both caps are in series producing a total capacitance of 0.005uF. This gives us a 225Hz corner frequency. In the Up position, one cap is shorted so we have 0.01uF which yields a 112Hz corner. I’m assuming the input impedence of the Discrete Op-Amp is much higher than R3’s value of 150K so the R in the RC circuit would be around ~140K.
The illuminated switch would have been cool, but having two settings of the filter is much more valuable. Now, I want to build another one!
And here it is installed in the rack and working.
Final version installed in rack and working Hairball Audio Lola Mic Preamp Build: Adding Another Color
Editor’s Note: Since publishing this post, I have been doing mic mods and builds using my own components rather than kits from mic-parts. As awesome as mic parts is, I’m much more excited about my own products these days. Please see my mic mod shop for more information or contact me with any questions.
My eight space 500 series rack has had only one module in it until now. It was the Sound Skulptor MP573 Mic Preamp kit I built several months ago. My ultimate plan is to get a second one of those and a pair of something else. After a lot of consideration, I decided that the something else would be the Lola from Hairball Audio in Seattle.
While you’re here, check out our custom microphone modifications and rebuilds. If you have a neglected MXL 990, MXL 910 or similar mic in your locker, we can very affordably turn it into a “go-to”.Thanks for visiting. Since writing this article, my DIY activities are mostly centered around microphone mods and custom builds.
Now, enjoy the article about the Lola Build!
The kit arrived a few days ago, and I managed to build it in three sittings. And.. it actually works! Other than the discrete op amps (see below), the build is pretty simple and straightforward.
Early in the build The main board in the vice ready to populate (sorry for the blurry pic. I had my high-mag reading glasses on at the time)
The main board build is actually pretty easy. It’s a very good quality circuit board with decently sized and spaced pads. Resistors, caps, diodes transisitors and relays are all packaged in a series of bags referenced by the build guid. It’s very buildable by anyone with decent soldering skills. The input and output transformers are very easy to mount. I added a little bit of blue locktite on all fasteners for the transformers and other mechanical connections..
Discrete OP Amps
The Lola takes two discrete op amps because it maintains a fully differential signal path through the whole amp. Hairball offers several options for amps – including a DIY version of their own JE990 amp – but you can put any standard footprint DOA in here you want. I went with the Hairball DIY option and that was my one regret. It’s a very challenging build which probably doubled the overall build time. There are 30-ish parts on a 1 sq inch circuit board with very tiny solder pads. I have pretty good soldering skills, but while I was working on the DOAs, I was thinking that the chances of both of these actually working is pretty slim!. If/when I get another Lola, I will certainly not build the OP Amps myself.
Installing the two JE990 Discrete Op Amps Hairball Kit Quality
So far, I’ve built kits by Sound Skulptor, Mic-parts and Hairball. I’m battting a thousand (so far) at having stuff work right off the bench, but that says as much about the quality of the kits as my ability. In terms of parts inventory, the hairball kit was perfect – nothing missing and nothing extra. The build-guide is pretty good, but slightly not as good as the other companys’ kits I’ve built. The guide is written with a little light-hearted dead-pan humor which I appreciate. I don’t own a printer so I was reading the guides on my phone while building. There were a couple times when I should have scrolled down just one more half inch for a warning or tip before I soldered something. The one part of the build guide that stood out as being sub par was for the LED Meter board. The image in the guide for that build is very low res and quite unreadable. The silkscreening on the board is so tiny, it is also unreadable so the image for that board is especially important. I found myself installing the resistors I could read first and then doing the rest when there were fewer choices to guess between.
Finishing the LED board. The idea is to get the LEDs all pointing straight up. 
LED board mounted to Driver Board. The guide for this board was particularly not so good. Hairball Kit Mechanicals
500-series stuff presents a challenge for a designer. There is very limited space (in three dimensions), limited power supply rail voltage and limited heat dissapation. Sometimes to get everything to fit, the parts are very difficult to physically put together. Not so with the Lola. The main board fastens to the back plate with four stand-offs. The back plate wraps around so that the front panel sits against it making alignment of the controls very simple. The LEDs sit behind the panel and a series of clear plastic light pipes are used to get the light outside of the box. It’s a very well-done design overall!
Final assembly complete Fully baked and ready to test 
In the rack and working! 
Mic setup for the a shootout using the matched Mic-parts kit mics First Impression
Well, mainly the fact that it worked at all was a big (and somewhat unexpected) thrill. I was encouraged after the main board and DOAs were done that an initial smoke test in my rack yielded none (smoke, that is).
The Lola has the familiar Grayhill rotary switch for input gain and an output +/- variable trim control. Unlike most of these style preamps, it has a 10 segment LED meter so you can really tell how hard you are hitting it.
The input gain switch on the Lola is awesome – it’s rotates over 270 degrees and covers steps from 17 to 65 db of gain. That 65 instead of the usual 60 is due to the differential signal path. My MP573 by comparison has a switch that is only about 180 degrees with bigger steps. The Lola will definitley be more tweakable in terms of pushing it into saturation with more fine control.
As I was finally installing it in my rack, I heard some birds chirping outside. I put one of my modified 990s out the window (with a tee shirt over it as a wind screen), floored the gain on the Lola and recorded a bit of ambient neighborhood sound. It doesn’t really matter how cool a preamp sounds if it’s noisy, but this thing is really quiet. That was supposed to be one of the Lola’s strong points (wth the fully differential signal path) and it certainly is.
Another Microphone (re)Build – MXL910
Editor’s Note: Since writing this article, I have been doing mic mods and builds with my own components instead of mic-parts kits. Mic-parts makes awesome stuff, but I am much more excited about my own discrete board designs and capsules. Please see my mic mod shop for more info and contact me if you have any questions. Now, please enjoy the article!
After building a couple of microphone-parts.com MXL990 kits last week, I did some shoot-outs between them and against other mics in my collection. I discovered that one of my existing mics had a problem. First, some background…
Before I found out about mic-parts, I had a few microphones from a company called Michael Joly Engineering on Cape Cod, MA. MJE was in the business of doing mods on cheap mics and making them into really nice mics. MJE is no longer in the microphone business though. Like Mic-Parts, he had a “47” version of a capsule which had flat frequency response and could be a drop-in replacement for the cheap chinese mics with linear circuits (no high frequency compensation). He also did electronics upgrades. One of the MJE mics I had was a modified MXL910. It had the MJE “premium electronics” and his “K47” capsule. This mic always sounded great but it suffered from some intermittent noise and hum.
During the shoot-out, the MJE910 had a constant high frequency oscillation (like someone whistling). I took the mic to the bench and tried again to find out what was making it flaky, however all the solder connecitons looked fine and I didn’t see anything wrong visually. I sent an email to Matt at mic-parts and he suggested I swap in one of the 990 capsules that I had just removed from the previous donor mics as a test. That would eliminate either the electronics or the capsules as being the culprit. Great idea! I did just that, and the whistle was still there which clearly pointed to a problem on the circuit board. With that, I ordered the mic-parts kit that will fit this Mic – the MP-V57.
In just a couple hours, I had the mic re-furbished with new electronics and the existing MJE K47 Capsule. But not before painting the body cylinder the same funky green color I did the 990s with!
Below are some photos of the build.
The frame of the mic with original circuit board removed Although it looks done, there’s nothing inside the body yet. This is the kit bag in front of the donor body 
Early in the build – one of the two circuit boards in the kit 
Both boards done 
Boards wired in and attached to the frame 
Finished mic on the bench ready for calibration 
Calibrating the capsule polarization voltage (60.0 VDC) 
Finished mic with the two older siblings Let’s Compare and Contrast
My impression… The 414 and 990 are very similar. Silky top end and not really forward on the upper mids. The 910 with the K47 capsule has that neumann-ish upper midrange push. I am liking the 990 more than my 414. The 414 does more tricks (multi pattern, pad and filter), but the basic tone of that 990 is just a little nicer to me.
Timmy May “Headed Down To Merlefest” Session
My first bluegrass project since the old days in NY with the Susquehanna Hat Co. Timmy played Guitar, and Mando. Jamie Lawton from the Fastnet Pub Band played fiddle. And I got to be sideman on bass, a little electric guitar and some background vocals.
This was the first session where I got to use the new Sound Skulptor MP573 Preamp Kit that I built a few weeks ago. I used it on the Mando and the Fiddle and one of the guitar mics. The guitar was mic’d in stereo with an SDC close up and a 414 LDC up above the body facing down.
Tim is such a great player (on all instruments), he makes it easy.
Jamie’s fiddle was done with the Michael Joly modified MK219 into the Sound Skulptor.
All vocals were done with the Joly Modified 990 into the Sound Skulptor.
The DAW of choice was Pro Tools and I made some use of the Waves SSL plugins on the mix.
Timmy put the final mix on youtube here:
