Bargain Recording :D

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Ramshackles

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« on: August 16, 2012, 08:01:15 PM »
I've spent the summer so far moving, being on holiday and more importantly hunting down cool gear as I edge closer and closer to a studio of my own. :D

Anyway, I'd thought I'd mark a hopefully more active return to the forum with a run down of some good bargain (relatively) gear I've heard of and/or snapped up this summer.

Echo Layla24 Audio Interface
I've now bought 2 of these 8 in 8 out AD/DA converters, the first one for £80  a little over a year ago and the second for a meagre £50.
These came out in 2002 costing a whopping £900 for 1 unit and were considered to be up there with the best high-end converters. So why are they selling for so little now? Computers don't sit still, and these interfaces worked with PCI cards connected to an external break out box (which houses the inputs, outputs and converters). PCI is no longer the favoured option (back in 2002 firewire was fairly new and USB still fairly slow) and there is only driver support for up to windows xp.
That suits me fine and I now have 16 channels of line-in's and line-outs for a fraction of the cost of modern DAC's.

Dbx 118 Compressor
The famous Dbx 160VU compressor goes for around 600-900 USD on ebay, but it's more budget friendly sibling the 118 and 119 shares much of the same circuitry and with the mod's that many sellers apply to them, they come very close to the original sound.
I picked up a Dbx 118 for 200 USD, they generally go for between 200-400 USD. If you can find a Dbx 162, they are very well made aswell.

Urei LA-4
The Urei (and now Universal Audio) LA-2A and LA-3A compressors are studio staples that command whopping prices thanks to their use on many legendary recordings. The next to be developed was the LA-4. Very expensive when it came out, but largely overlooked as it's older brothers had already built up there legend and every engineer would now rather have the compressor that graced recordings from Bob Dylan to Amy Winehouse...
I've not got hold of an LA-4 yet, but am told that they sound excellent and again, share much of the same circuitry as the LA-3A. All they lack is a legend to make their prices sky rocket. Expect to pay £400 to 500 for one, although going for as low as 300-350 has been known (apparently).


Great British Spring Reverb
Plugins on the whole are extremely good and approximate the classic units they are modelling better and better. Which is why I see no reason to buy an actual LA-2A. But when it comes to reverb there is nothing quite like doing it yourself with a big old plate, spring or even a speaker and a room.
I got a Great British Spring off ebay for about £100. It's a tube about a metre long, with a couple of connections, a knob and a big spring inside :D.
Other spring reverb names to look out for are Grampian and AKG.
You may also look into doing it yourself with a speaker and a microphone if you have a suitably echo-y room or a nearby cave...

Shure SM58, AKG D12.
You've probably heard of the SM58, the D12 is an understated mic which is most famously used on bass instruments. £43 for a used '58. Buy it now prices on ebay for a d12 in great condition can be as much as £400, but I picked mine up for £100 and replaced the grill which was dented.


Small amps for recording:
I got rid of my crappy marshall 50dfx (large, noisy, poor sound) in favour of a tiny laney cub8. I cannot stress the use of small amps for recording (where high levels are not that useful) enough. Whats great is that there seems to be a good variety of high quality small amps on the market at the moment at prices between £100 to £300, which is great. They aren't lacking in quality though. Unlike, say, budget console manufacturers (argh), the price point is met by cutting out features, not quality. For my £120 I got an amp with just 2 knobs - tone and volume but with a class A circuit driven by 2 premium tubes and a good quality celestion speaker.
Only 5W, though it still gets more than loud enough to annoy the neighbours! For our vintage-style kind of music, thats pretty much all we need in an amp (coupled with the spring reverb for recording, and a pedal for live use), but you could really extend its capability with the addition a couple of choice pedals. Fender and blackstar also make some good-looking variations on the small amp theme.
Sold my Epiphone Les Paul aswell (on the lookout for another epiphone now; Casino, Sheraton or 339 if anyone knows of any...)

For those with a DIY nature:
http://www.diyrecordingequipment.com/ - Great website that lists many DIY kits available. A typical DIY kit may consist of just a PCB and instructions with a bill of materials, or it may include everything you need to make the unit.
Many of these projects are recreations of classic equipment for much less (as you have to do much of the work yourself!)
I just finished a Helios '69 EQ clone in 500 series format and it is stunning. Total price comes to about $400 USD.

Next up for me is an attempt to make my own Neumann U87. More tricky as no one shop sells all the required parts. So far I have sourced a circuit board for the amp section, a capsule and various electronic parts.

If you want to get into this type of thing, start with a DI box :D


Thats enough bore from me now :D