Merry Christmas from sweetbeats

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sweetbeats

sweetbeats

Reel deep thoughts...
Hey all. A sincere wish for peace and restoration in your whatever befalls you in your corner of Creation.

As you reflect, have a listen to this rendition of Claude Thornhill's "Snowfall", arranged by Phillip Keveren and performed by my 15 year old son.

The piano is a 70's vintage Yamaha upright, the mics are my Radio Shack PZM mics with the Uneeda Audio preamps and the Tascam M-__ was used for preamps and summing, and my Tascam RS-20B was used for reverb.

A bit noisy but that's thanks to 75' of cable and the AM radio station down the street...and likely some improvements that could be made to the signal path as far as grounding.

Anyway, the song gives me warm chills.

Merry Christmas!

 
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that's very nice mang. Your son is talented ....... good for him.
:)
Nice recording too ...... I thought it had maybe a little too much 'room'. But it sounded very nice and it was great hearing a youngster manage something so sparse and make it sound complete ...... cool.


Those PZMs are really great for some things. A friend of mine used some sort of different batteries so he could double the voltage, maybe even tripled it .... I forgot ....... but a better S/N I think he got and maybe a slightly fatter sound.
 
Thanks, fellas!

Bob, what you're thinking of with the mics is utilizing a AA lithium cell which lasts longer and produces about 1.7V...it does improve the headroom and dynamic range of the mics, but that's not what i'm doing...if you google pzm mod kit likely the first site that will pop up will be one for Uneeda Audio. I got the parts kits to build the phantom powered amps for the mics...you lop off the horrible AA powered boxes leaving behind the Crown licensed mic elements and then build the bonafide phantom-powered modules...TOTALLY different animal the mics are when done. TREMENDOUSLY sensitive and dynamic...no comparison to what they used to be. I simply drop the mics onto a mineral fiber panel sitting on a music stand at about chest-level and track away.

the room sound was a necessary animal to get a good balance of the piano in the space, and I prefer the room sound anyway...plays nice with the RS-20B spring reverb.

Lotsa fun, particularly when its my own blood and a beautiful arrangement.

Anyway, one family gathering down, at stop number two...time to read the Night Before Christmas to the kiddies and then finish wrapping! :o :D
 
no .... it wasn't that small of an increase. He was using some sorta small , I wanna say 9 volts ..... anyway he was getting them to 18 volts or it may have been 27 ..... I remember being shocked at how high he was running them and surprised they didn't blow up. I wouldn't have thought that for that small of a difference.

Anyways ..... they're cool mics. Wish I had bought a bunch.
 
Be interesting to know what that was because the components in the stock RS units won't handle that kind of power.

But yeah the mics are cool because they are licensed versions of the Crown mics which Crown allowed because Tandy agreed to put an inferior power supply inline with them in that awful AA powered unit. Cut the cord and go to work!
 
...and a Happy New year to all.... :)

Nice piano playing.
Don't let him give up on it when he turns 17-18 and starts chasing girls and wanting to be a "rock star". ;)
 
+1 to the above. He'll appreciate later what a little solitude and a piano can do for the soul...
 
Don't worry, fellas...what my dad did for me and drumming I will do for my son and his piano. ;)
 
NICE! Very Nice indeed.
Be sure and show your son all of this feed back on his playing. :thumbs up:
 
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