Paul White reveals a few of his Blue Peter‑style secrets, the general aim being to construct something useful in the studio without spending more than a pound!
As I write this, it's the festive season, when all my budget is traditionally diverted from the studio to the purchase of short‑lived plastic toys from the Far East, red ribbons, and dubiously sooty pine trees to 'brighten up' the living room [all that's missing here is 'Bah! Humbug' — Festive Editorial Assistant]. Despite this seasonal drain on your resources, there are still a few worthwhile studio improvements that can be made at very little cost, and though you may have seen some of these before, this is the first time we've jammed them all into the same article.
Pop Shield
No matter how many times we describe the construction and operation of pop shields, we still get readers asking us how to stop microphones popping while recording vocals. You can go out and buy a pop shield, but it can set you back between £20 and £60, depending on the model — so here's a more cost‑effective option.
Visit one of those fancy embroidery/craft shops on the pretext of buying your granny a present (so as to maintain your cred in case anyone sees you), and buy a 6‑inch, circular embroidery hoop. Place it in a plain bag, check nobody you know is watching, and leave. An embroidery hoop, for those unfamiliar with the delights of cross‑stitch, comprises two concentric wooden or plastic hoops. The outer ring has a break in it, which is bridged by a simple screw‑tensioning mechanism, allowing the outer ring to be clamped firmly to the inner one. Normally, your embroidery goes over the inner ring and then the outer one is fitted to keep it taut, but to turn it into a pop shield, you fit a piece of fine nylon stocking material instead. The stockings aren't included in the £1 budget, so you'll have to scrounge these, or go over budget and buy a new pair. Tights are OK by the way, but fishnets or other patterns with large holes in them won't work — sorry guys!
Vocals are usually recorded with the mic between six and 12 inches from the singer, and with the pop shield around three inches from the microphone, interposed directly between the singer's mouth and the mic. A suitably mangled wire coathanger usually suffices to hold the hoop to the mic stand, and that's it — no more pops.
Just in case you want to know how it works, the low‑frequency blasts of air that are produced at the beginning of so‑called 'plosives' ('B' and 'P' sounds) are dissipated as turbulence by the fine mesh, and they never make it to the mic.
De‑Esser
A de‑esser is a device designed to clean up sibilant recordings, by filtering out bright 'S' and 'T' sounds that have got out of hand. They work well enough, I suppose, but if you can get by without needing one, then you will can save yourself a few hundred pounds — a far more attractive proposition, methinks!
If you're having sibilance problems, you could try a less bright mic such as a dynamic model, but if the problem persists, one trick regularly employed in American studios is to fix a pencil or Biro vertically in front of the mic, close enough that it's actually touching the mic grille. This creates an acoustic shadow over the centre of the diaphragm, and also disturbs the sound propagation in the vicinity of the mic. It isn't always a complete solution, but it's worth a try, and usually offers some improvement.
Non‑Stick Guitar Nut
You may be lucky enough to have a guitar with a graphite nut to prevent string binding, but if not, you may have noticed that when you bend a note, it doesn't always come back to the same pitch. This is a particular problem if you tend to use a lot of tremolo, or 'whammy bar', as I believe those high‑density metal chappies call it. More often than not, the problem is caused by friction in the nut slot causing the string to stick, and this can be remedied quite easily by placing a single layer of plumber's PTFE tape over the nut before you fit your next set of strings. The tape is so thin that it doesn't affect the sound or the action — it simply gets dragged down into the nut slots and acts as a lubricant. If tuning problems are the bane of your existence, take a trip to your nearest hardware shop or DIY superstore now!
Kick Drum Pad
Having problems getting a nice snappy bass drum sound? The usual solution is to use a wooden beater and fix a special hardened patch on the drum head to create a nice smack, but a much cheaper alternative to proprietary pads is to use those credit‑card like token cards (available at all good petrol stations, folks) and fix them on the head where the beater strikes, using gaffa tape around the edges. Now you'll get all the click you want. The more image‑conscious reader might want to use a platinum American Express card — I've heard they work just as well!
Jack Splitter
How often have you wanted to split a signal into two so that you could feed two different destinations, but couldn't, because you didn't have a Y lead? My solution is to buy a few cheap plastic jack sockets from the Maplin catalogue or somewhere similar, then link them together in groups of three, as shown in the illustration. All you need to do this are two pieces of stiff wire (such as the copper earth wire out of a scrap length of house wiring cable), and a soldering iron. Providing the sockets are positioned as close together as possible before you solder them, the whole thing will be self‑supporting. To split a signal , feed a jack lead into any one socket and take the outputs from the other two. However, you can't mix signals as easily, so don't be tempted to try using this as a mixer.
In‑Line Effect Sharing
The designers of most modern in‑line desks have finally realised that we would like to use the same reverb to treat signals coming through the channels (off tape) as we use to treat the keyboards, drum machines and samplers that come in through the monitors. However, some desks don't provide any way to link one of the Channel Sends to one of the Monitor Sends — which leaves you with a problem to solve.
Your reverb effects unit might offer its own solution, because the majority of Stereo In, Stereo Out machines mix the left and right inputs before feeding them to the effects processor. Only the dry parts of the signal are retained as separate left and right signals, to be mixed back with the effected sound at the output.
Most of the time when working with Aux Sends, we don't want to use the dry part of the signal at all, so we can feed the two inputs from two different Aux Sends, one from the Monitor path and the other from the Channel path. The two aux signals will be mixed by the effects unit, and the effects outputs may be returned into the mixer via stereo returns or spare channels in the usual way.
Speaker Decoupling
Ideally, loudspeakers should be mounted on stands in such a way that any vibration from the speaker cabinet is discouraged from passing into the stand. I'm sure that if you read the popular hi‑fi magazines, you'll be able to buy all kinds of exotic solutions for this problem, but for my money, you can't really beat a marble‑sized blob of Blu Tac under each corner of the speaker cab before you set it down on the stand. Not only does this help decouple some of the sound energy, it also makes sure the speaker is sitting securely, even if the top of the stand isn't quite level. And it helps stop the speakers from getting scratched.
Tape Machine Rubber Cleaner
Most analogue tape machines use at least one rubber roller in the tape path, and it's important not to use tape head cleaner on these, as the rubber may eventually perish. You can buy special detergent cleaner at the equivalent price of around £20 a pint, but a few drops of washing‑up liquid in a pint of clean water will work just as well. Make up two pints and sell the extra to your chums!
Ink Jet Refills
Ink jet printers such as the HP Deskwriter offer near‑laser quality printing at a fraction of the cost — but the ink cartridges are the best part of £20 a throw, which takes some of the smile off your face. Various companies offer refill kits, including a special ink loaded into a syringe, but providing you can put up with a less solid black, ordinary Quink ink works very nearly as well.
All you have to do is to fill the ink cartridge via the small air vent hole at the top using a syringe (if you fill it before it runs out, you'll obviously get a better shade of black). Should you overfill the cartridge, you can suck a little of the ink back out using the syringe. If the cartridge does run out, refill it straight away, otherwise the tiny nozzles will get blocked as the ink dries out, resulting in streaky or faint printing. Note — some of the double‑capacity cartridges don't have a vent hole in the top; instead they have a little bung, which must be replaced after refilling, otherwise the cartridge will leak. If this applies to you, I'd contemplate buying one of the refill kits that come with a quantity of replacement bungs. You can always go back to Quink when the refill kit expires!