Uncategorized —
03
Apr 13

Välillä se on tukasta kiinni

Joku ehkä näki meikäläisen tänään televisiossa Leijonan luolassa vielä pitkällä tukalla varustettuna. Ohjelma kuvattiin marraskuun lopussa ja parturiin menin seuraavalla viikolla. Olin tehnyt päätöksen letin leikkaamisesta jo pari kuukautta aiemmin, mutta ajattelin, että telkkarissa hippilook ja skarppi bisnesmeininki muodostaisivat hauskan kontrastin. Ja niinhän siinä taisi käydäkin, katso vaikka itse.

Aika moni onkin kysynyt, että miksi leikkasin tukkani. Totuus on, että olin vakavissani päättänyt toteuttaa kyseisen operaation jo useamman kerran aiemmin, mutta se siirtyi myöhempään ajankohtaan milloin mistäkin syystä. Leikkaamiseen ei siis varsinaisesti liittynyt suurta dramatiikkaa, vaikka tokihan tuo aika suuri muutos olikin. Olen rehellisesti sanottuna vieläkin hieman hämmentynyt siitä, että en näytäkään lyhythiuksisena ihan hirveältä!

Kukaan ei toistaiseksi ole kuitenkaan vielä kysynyt sitä oikeaa kysymystä. Ja sehän on tietysti “miksi laitoit rastat”? Ja siihen vastaan nyt.

Koulukiusaaminen, pettyminen ensirakkaudessa ja huono itsetunto tekevät ihmiselle hirveitä. Kun muutin pois Hangosta vanhempieni luota armeijan jälkeen syksyllä 2001, olin todella huonossa kunnossa henkisesti. Olin epävarma, yksinäinen ja pidin itseäni rumana, huonona ja turhana ihmisenä. Ja se epäilemättä myös näkyi: vastakkaisen sukupuolen kiinnostus oli olematonta. Kävin aiheesta lukemattomia keskusteluja ystävien ja kavereiden kanssa (kiitos heille!), ja jossain vaiheessa joku sanoi maagiset sanat: “Masa, laita loksit! Saat pillua!”

Ryhdyin sotkemaan hiuksiani puolalaisessa paikallisjunassa heinäkuussa 2002, kun matkustin parhaan ystäväni Simon kanssa Gdanskista Wladyslawowoon, johon olimme saapuneet purjeveneellä Bornholmista. Projekti jatkui loppureissun ajan, ja kun reilua viikkoa myöhemmin rantauduimme Hankoon, näytinkin jo hipiltä. Ja katso, toverini sanat kävivät toteen nopeammin kuin ikinä osasin odottaa: kahden kuukauden jälkeen olin elämäni ensimmäisessä oikeassa seurustelusuhteessa, joka kestikin vielä usemman vuoden.

Sen tajuamiseen, että mistä oikeasti asiassa oli kyse, menikin sitten vähän kauemmin. Eikä tainnut suorasukaisen vinkin antanut kaverikaan ymmärtää asian varsinaista filosofiaa. Mutta hippitukan ansiosta sain lopulta rakennettua itselleni itsetunnon, rock-uskottavuuden ja lopulta kaiken sen, mitä mulla nyt on.

Olisihan tuosta mopista voinut hankkiutua eroon jo vähän aiemmin: nykyisellä hiustyylillä koen kuitenkin olevani oma itseni enemmän kuin koskaan ennen. Välillä se on tukasta kiinni.

Random / Social Media —
12
Jan 12

Miksi äänestän Pekka Haavistoa

Note: This post is about the Finnish presidential elections. I suggest that if you can, vote for Pekka Haavisto. However, the rest of this post will be in Finnish for obvious reasons.

Harkitsin pitkään, että vaivaudunko kirjoittamaan oman blogikirjoituksen Haavistosta. Hyviä perusteluja Pekan puolesta kun tuntuu olevan blogit ja yhteisöpalvelut pullollaan.

Tuttavapiirilleni tuskin tulee yllätyksenä, että olen käytännössä aina äänestänyt arvoliberaaleja, ehkä myös hieman vasemmalle kallellaan olevia ehdokkaita. Kertaakaan aiemmin en ole kuitenkaan yhtä voimakkaasti ottanut kantaa, lobannut ja jopa osallistunut kamppiksen tekemiseen toisin kuin nyt, presidentinvaaleissa 2012. Ehdokkaakseni valikoitui jo suhteellisen varhaisessa vaiheessa Pekka Haavisto, josta tiesin tuolloin lähinnä sen, että miehellä on erittäin tiukkaa osaamista erittäin haastavista kansainvälisistä tehtävistä. Tutustuttuani Pekan taustoihin valinta oli selvä. Fakta on se, että riippumatta asennoitumisesta esim. maahanmuuttoon ja monikulttuurisuuteen, joudumme (tai pääsemme) tekemisiin hyvin erilaisista lähtökohdista lähtöisin olevien ja erilaisella arvomaailmalla varustettujen ihmisten kanssa. Nimenomaan tämän homman Haavisto hanskaa ylivoimaisesti parhaiten.

Mainittakoon tässä, että Paavo Arhinmäki on mielestäni hieno mies, joka on joskus myös saanut ääneni. Hänellä on mitä parhaimmat mahdollisuudet olla maan johtohahmona joskus tulevaisuudessa, mutta ei vielä. Haaviston kokemus on ylivoimaisesti parempi.

Lähdin mukaan kampanjatyöhön ennen kaikkea seuraavasta syystä. Demokraattinen järjestelmä perustuu sille, että jokaisella äänioikeutetulla kansalaisella on mahdollisuus valita häntä edustamaan mahdollisimman osuva henkilö. Eduskunnan 200 edustajaa ovat ainakin periaatteessa läpileikkaus kansasta ja kansalaisten mielipiteistä. Presidenttejä on kuitenkin vain yksi, joten mielestäni kaikkein tärkeintä on, että niin monen kansalaisen kuin mahdollista tulee kokea, että presidentti edustaa häntä kelvollisesti.

Uskon, että Haavistolla on ehdokkaista parhaat mahdollisuudet olla koko kansan presidentti. Paremmat, kuin Sauli Niinistölle, joka ei huono vaihtoehto juuri tähän tehtävään olekaan. Tämän asian on ymmärtänyt myös perussuomalaisten Jussi Halla-aho (lue blogikirjoitus), vaikka hän luonnollisesti itse äänestääkin oman puolueensa ehdokasta. Ennustan, että kansan keskimääräinen tyytyväisyys presidentin toimintaan olisi Haaviston kauden jälkeen ehdokkaista korkein. Arvojohtajana ja persoonana Haavisto myös varmasti edistäisi maailmalla Suomen imagoa kansainvälisenä, modernina ja suvaitsevaisena maana – ja epäilemättä myös onnistuessaan tehtävissään muuttaisi yleistä asenneilmastoa tähän suuntaan.

Näistä syistä oli helppo luvata käyttää joitakin tunteja (noh, itseasiassa lopulta aikaa on kulunut enemmän kuin kuvittelin) Pekka Haaviston epävirallisen nettikampanjan suunnitteluun ja toteuttamiseen, kun Teemu Pasila minua mukaan pyysi. Erityinen hatunnosto, yläfemmat, hyväjätkätys ja niin edelleen kuuluvat Tommi Forsströmille, Sami Niemelälle, Miemo Penttiselle, Pertti Jarlalle ja Lari Lohikoskelle, muita kamppislaisia unohtamatta. Ja kehtaan väittää, että aika hyvin on onnistuttu. Itse asiassa en ole tainnut nähdä yhtään näin hyvin toimivaa viraalikampanjaa Suomessa. Yhteisöllisten verkkopalvelujen lisäksi aikaansaannokset on huomioitu useampaan otteeseen ainakin Ilta-Sanomissa, Hesarissa ja Iskelmäradiossa.

Jos minun mielipiteeni ei riitä, niin lue lisää perusteluja Haaviston puolesta: http://siksipekka.fi/

Ja sama sanottuna hauskemmin: http://kakkonenonykkonen.fi/

Äänestyslappu

Suosittelen, että sinäkin täytät äänestyslappusi yllä olevalla tavalla ja olet koko kansan asialla!

 

Electronics / Music —
03
Sep 11

ADK Vienna Tube Modification

I recently got an ADK Vienna large-diaphragm capacitor microphone from a friend. It actually sounded pretty ok as-is, but soon the switch for the built-it 18 dB pad started to crackle. Instead of repairing (or disabling) the switch, I opted to replacing the electronics with the so-called Royer tube modification, or actually, a circuit loosely based on Royer’s idea. I have tested my circuit already a couple of years ago in another mic, which uses a Neumann capsule and a Lundahl output transformer.

Since I don’t have any extra money at the moment, I decided to use the stock transformer. And since the original idea was to use an AKG C12 -style, i.e. edge-terminated capsule, I naturally left the original in place as well. Of course I may later swap both the transformer and the capsule, since – I’ll reveal it already – the mic sounds amazing, actually somehow “better” than the other mic!

This is the starting point.

And without the cover. A 2SK170 FET-based amplifier, not that bad actually, but nothing special either.

This is pretty much everything one needs to build a mic. A tube socket, tube (5654W), transformer, 7-pin XLR connector, couple of resistors (metal film to minimize noise) and two capacitors. The electrolytic capacitor and three resistors are used to filter the capsule polarisation voltage. The remaining two resistors are the plate (anode) and cathode resistors of the tube, which is by the way triode connected. The 2,2 uF plastic capacitor is the coupling capacitor for output. No ‘lytics on the signal path!

After taking the mic apart, I started with replacing the connector. The wiring is teflon insulated and includes some silver as well. Expensive, but good stuff. I nowadays only use this type of wire when I build equipment.

Transformer and connector are back in place. Now it’s time to build the amplifier circuit!

Since the circuit is so simple, I decided to build the mic point-to-point. No problem as long as you remember to insulate the live parts with heat shrink tubing. I used the center tap of the tube socket as the B+ connection and one end of the heater pin as ground.

Everything in place, ready to be tested! Btw. I use a slightly modified power supply from a t.bone SCT-700 tube mic, which also provided the body for my another tube mic.

And as I said, it sounds wonderful! Watch this space later for sound examples.

Electronics / Music —
10
Jun 11

Hammond L-100 restoration

Almost an year ago a friend of mine gave me his father’s chopped Hammond L-100 wreck with the idea that I’d restore it to usable condition. Finally in the beginning of the week I decided to start the project. The organ was really dirty everywhere, a lot of tubes were missing and there was bunch of non-functional modifications here and there.

After almost two full days of work it was practically finished and I even played it on a band rehearsal same evening. Here’s a little documentation on what I did.

The AO-42 power amp was heavily customised. The reverb circuitry was partially removed and the reverb output RCA socket was used as a line output. I rewired the amp according to the original specs, except that as usual I disconnected the negative feedback loop to be able to enjoy the wonderful distortion of the EL84/6BQ5 output tubes. Also I wired couple of 10 watt power resistors to function as poor man’s dummy load, since the speakers weren’t installed.  The power amp coupling caps were looking really bad, so just to be sure I swapped them to some NOS Philips 47n/400V caps.

I had never before seen this dirty drawbar contacts. Half of them are already cleaned. The people in the States always praise Caig’s De-Oxit for this kind of cleaning, but that stuff is not available in Europe, at least not in Finland. However, CRC makes similar contact spray that really works – unlike basic isopropanol.

Here you can see the bottle. Really good stuff! I also cleaned the drawbars itselves. You can’t believe how much dust and dirt there was.

I tried to be lazy and didn’t unsolder these wires in the first place. However, I ended doing that anyway, since putting the drawbar assembly back together really wasn’t possible without it. That is probably the hardest part anyway.

The drawbar assy installed. The nuts and bolts are holding the assembly together. There’s holes on the cheek plate under the assembly for the nuts. I reversed the direction, since I think that the assembly is easier to put together this way. First insert the bolts from below and then just screw on the nuts. The four bigger screws are fastening the assembly to the cheek plate. The small screws only keep the busbars in place. I didn’t bother removing them.

As usual with spinets, some keys were broken. Actually I was a little bit surprised that in total there was only eight of them, and only one of those in the lower manual! Getting there was quite a work, but it’s not difficult, just time-consuming. I should’ve had better tools, but I managed with the ones in the photos. When replacing a white key, one needs to remove the adjacent black keys as well.

When inserting the new key, make sure that the washer stays in the right place; between the key assembly and the screw. If the washer goes between the key and the manual assembly, you’re not able to secure the key in place.

When replacing a lot of keys, it is faster and easier to unscrew them all first and then remove and replace. Note the little pieces of metal that keep the key in right position. When tightening the screws, do that in two parts: first so that you’ll able to tilt the key a little so that it’ll hold in right position, hold it so that it stays in place when you finally tighten the screw.

As you can see, there really was a lot of dust and dirt in the manuals as well!

That was it, mostly. I still need to do some work on the swell pedal. For now I’m using an old Korg volume pedal between pre and power amplifiers. Works fine, but doesn’t do the real Hammond swell effect. I have a good plan on reworking the original pedal in my mind – more about that later.

Electronics / Music —
30
May 11

What to do with a broken Behringer ADA8000 AD/DA converter?

Well, some may say, trash it, but I’ve heard from various sources that the converter chips are (were) one of the best available when Behringer started the production. Even the preamps are usable as is, albeit bit noisy, due to the cheap opamps on the signal path.

So when I noticed a broken ADA8000 for sale on Muusikoiden.net, I bought it. As I guessed, the power transformer was shot, so I ordered a replacement from PMS electronics. Also a couple of electrolytics and a regulator were in quite questionable condition, so just to be sure, I swapped them as well.

People at Gearslutz have noted that the power transformer outputs so high voltages that the regulators run really hot. Adding some resistors and capacitors help the situation and also reduce the ripple, i.e. improve the quality of the power supply. However, it is not really necessary to use 25-watt rated resistors; 10-watt ones are more than enough. The power dissipation is approximately 5 watts. Since I was lazy and I didn’t have the required 10 ohm / 10 watt resistor required for the 5V supply at hand, I decided just to mod the +/- 15 volt rails.

After I got the unit up and running and verified it was working fine, I noticed a horrible problem. Since all good-sounding units weigh a lot, like my Hammond C-3, I thought that the ADA wasn’t heavy enough. So it was time for fun. I had bought a bunch (~15) of old Sennheiser 1:5 microphone input transformers couple of months ago for just couple of euros a piece and now though that installing them on the ADA would make the preamps sound better, reduce noise without swapping the opamps and of course, make it heavier!

Unlike this guy (thanks for the inspiration!) my transformers did not have center taps, so I left the former circuitry as is, except that I removed the 47 uF / 50V input caps (check out the schematics) and soldered the transformers there.

Results are better than I ever expected. Now I’m really looking forward to make some real recordings to see if I still need to change the 1k3 that are now loading the transformers. Maybe, maybe not.

I’m going to get some velcro to fasten the transformers to the chassis. I originally planned to use a piece of aluminium profile, but I’m lazy and velcro will probably work well. And when it finally will be time for the Behringer to be trashed, it will be easy to recycle the transformers again.

Electronics / Music —
14
May 11

Rhodes Suitcase Power Supply Repair

A friend of mine has a beautiful, late-70′s Mk. I Suitcase (“Janus”) Rhodes that had started to behave badly: it introduced very nasty-sounding distortion. I measured the voltages and soon found out that the PSU wasn’t putting out what it should.

At first it seemed to be an easy fix, since usually the problem are the regulators or rectifier diodes. However, this wasn’t the case this time, and actually I noticed quite weird behaviour: the voltages were exactly what they should when the preamp wasn’t connected, but just a couple of seconds after connecting it they dropped.

After quite a long research, I found out that there was something really weird happening on the power transformer: even while my voltmeter was showing exactly what it should, the PSU wasn’t keeping up. Finally I tried with another transformer and everything worked again. Too bad that the transformer used on Rhodes PSU isn’t standard stuff, so I had to order a replacement from EP-Service in the Netherlands.

While working on it, I decided to rebuild the preamp PSU: new rectifier diodes and electrolytic capacitors were installed.

Now, finally, the Rhodes is alive and kicking again. And sounds great!

Music —
10
May 11

How to record your Hammond / Leslie?

Every now and then people come and ask how a real Leslie cabinet should be miked. Lately there was a discussion regarding the topic on the legendary Hamtech mailing list.

Depending on the situation, I use either of the techniques shown in these photos. Click to enlarge!

The first photo shows the overall situation. My Leslie 22H (converted to 2-speed operation and totally rebuilt by me) is hooked up to the 1958 Hammond C-3 (also completely overhauled, including the generator capacitors) next to it.

This is the mid-side (m/s) mic setup. It could be bit further from the Leslie to get bit more bass, but that would also add even more room ambience. I originally set up the mics bit earlier for a recording session and they already had bass tracks recorded, so just a little from the lower rotor was enough for that record.

The mics are about 1,5 ft or 45 cm from the front of the cabinet. I used an ADK Vienna for the middle component and a Neumann U67 set up as figure-of-eight for the sides.

The best place to set up the traditional stereo pair is the front left corner. That is as far away from the motor noise as possible. They could be bit further from the cabinet as well, but as you can see, there’s no room for it at the moment.

The mics are Sennheiser MKH40 small-diaphragm condensers. I’ve had good results with almost all mics starting from Shure SM57′s, but I just love my MKH40′s. The frequency response is almost ruler flat.

This is the bottom rotor mic, a Sennheiser MD441. There’s even proof that I hover the place every now and then!

The sound example here includes a short “performance” of myself playing a short jam based on Monk’s “Well You Needn’t”. First you will hear the M/S setup and afterwards the close-miked variation, i.e. the Sennheiser MKH40 pair and the MD441. The tracks were recorded using Pro Tools 8 and an M-Audio ProFire 2626 audio interface, using two Neve 1073 clone preamps for the M/S mics and ProFire’s own preamps for the close mics. No processing was used except for a master compressor (max. 3 dB) and limiter (max. 0,5 dB) to bring up and equal the levels a bit.

You’ll notice besides lousy playing the fact that the M/S setup sounds more realistic, but there’s much more room ambience. Depending on the situation, this can be a good or bad thing. A great feature of this technique is however the fact that if the organ just plays some basic backing chords for most of the song and then you need to rise up the levels when it’s time for a solo, you can just put up the mid mic, which a) has less ambience, thus making the organ sound more upfront and b) it stays in the middle. I just hate organ solos sailing around the stereo image while the rest of the band stays at the middle! ARGH!

The basic idea of the M/S setup is that after recording you double the side channel, invert the polarity and pan the channels hard left and right. Now you can control the stereo width with the level of the side channels (now two). Another advantage of this system is that when played back mono, the side channels will totally cancel each other so the level change is not as big as with the normal micing.

If the organ only features as a pad, the traditional close mics may work better. Very often you don’t even need the bottom rotor mic at all.

If you are interested in the topic, please read these as well: Unearthing The Mysteries of the Leslie Cabinet

And here’s a warning example how NOT to do it! If you mic the Leslie from the opposite directions, the Leslie appears to be spinning in double speed when played back. Ok, I have to admit that in some special occasions it may work fine, but in 99% of the cases this is just a no-no.

I hope you found this information useful. At least a little bit.

masa

Random —
05
Apr 11

New site online!

For a while now I’ve been working to rebrand my personal company to take it to this decade. Also I haven’t been blogging for over a year now and every now and then I feel that I have more to say than what fits on a Facebook status update.

You may expect a post very irregularly. The only thing I promise is that the subjects may be almost anything and the language may vary between English and Finnish – depending on the topic, of course.

I already have several interesting topics in my mind ranging from audio electronics to politics – stay tuned!

Thanks for your time.

masa