kid klash
The original Mr. Nice Guy
...for this 60's band, and the digital keyboard the keyboardist had had a nice B3 type sound, but it just didn't sound like te 60's... you know, The Animals, The Doors, Traffic, The Box Tops, Sam the Sham, The Kinks, and all those other great bands from the 60's.
The keyboardist Emails me and says "my sister's neighbor has an old Conn Prelude console organ with built-in Leslie speaker... she says it needs a new home - take it - it's FREE!"... So he takes it home, builds a plywood and 2x4 dolly with big casters out of stuff laying around at home and attaches the organ to the dolly with ja-HUGIC wood screws... "it ain't movin nowhere" he says...
He takes it to the rehearsal sight, and we find ourselves in this dilemma... if we put a direct audio out on the organ, we'd have to choose what to pull the signal off of... one channel goes to a 12" speaker on the main channel, and the other channel is the analog signal going to a small Leslie speaker... no "Leslie" effect, just the straight audio signal (direct).
Either one would get the job done, but it still wouldn't "wail" like an organ should, so we stew about it, then, finally after lots of grunts and deliberation, wind up taking an acoustic (mic'ed) signal. Yep. Acoustic signal.
One of the guys dissappears for a while and resurfaces with a new ($25) Radio Shack dynamic omni mic, and we commenced to take the back off the organ. After turning the mic switch to the "on" position, the handle was encased in a piece of plastic pipe insulator sleeving, for shockmounting. Then after numerous hand-held placements of the mic inside the organ console, coupled with lots of real-time listening tests where the mic would pick up both the main channel (12") woofer, and the Leslie speaker, which rotates vertically on the opposite end of the main speaker, we found the "sweet spot". This was the spot with the best mix of signals from the two sources, and the least amount of hum from the old amplifier transformer. Oddly enough, this spot turned out to be directly above the amplifier.
A custom-fit ceiling mount mic holder made of plumber's tape (perforated plated steel), screws and bolts. It then was bolted to the foam sleeve of the mic on one end, and attached to the bottom of the keyboard bottom board with the other.
We then drilled a hole in the center of the end panel closest to the mic, cut the cable to length and wired the new mic directly to a brand-new 1/4" jack, which was mounted from the inside on an aluminum plate so that the jack was centered in the new hole in the console.
When that was all done, we re-attached the back, plugged the newly-mic'ed organ to several devices (including a rather large and loud keyboard amp) to see what our concoction sounded like. After playing around a bit with the phase of the two speakers, this unbelievably goofy idea turned out to sound amazingly good! Who'da thunk it?
The keyboardist Emails me and says "my sister's neighbor has an old Conn Prelude console organ with built-in Leslie speaker... she says it needs a new home - take it - it's FREE!"... So he takes it home, builds a plywood and 2x4 dolly with big casters out of stuff laying around at home and attaches the organ to the dolly with ja-HUGIC wood screws... "it ain't movin nowhere" he says...
He takes it to the rehearsal sight, and we find ourselves in this dilemma... if we put a direct audio out on the organ, we'd have to choose what to pull the signal off of... one channel goes to a 12" speaker on the main channel, and the other channel is the analog signal going to a small Leslie speaker... no "Leslie" effect, just the straight audio signal (direct).
Either one would get the job done, but it still wouldn't "wail" like an organ should, so we stew about it, then, finally after lots of grunts and deliberation, wind up taking an acoustic (mic'ed) signal. Yep. Acoustic signal.
One of the guys dissappears for a while and resurfaces with a new ($25) Radio Shack dynamic omni mic, and we commenced to take the back off the organ. After turning the mic switch to the "on" position, the handle was encased in a piece of plastic pipe insulator sleeving, for shockmounting. Then after numerous hand-held placements of the mic inside the organ console, coupled with lots of real-time listening tests where the mic would pick up both the main channel (12") woofer, and the Leslie speaker, which rotates vertically on the opposite end of the main speaker, we found the "sweet spot". This was the spot with the best mix of signals from the two sources, and the least amount of hum from the old amplifier transformer. Oddly enough, this spot turned out to be directly above the amplifier.
A custom-fit ceiling mount mic holder made of plumber's tape (perforated plated steel), screws and bolts. It then was bolted to the foam sleeve of the mic on one end, and attached to the bottom of the keyboard bottom board with the other.
We then drilled a hole in the center of the end panel closest to the mic, cut the cable to length and wired the new mic directly to a brand-new 1/4" jack, which was mounted from the inside on an aluminum plate so that the jack was centered in the new hole in the console.
When that was all done, we re-attached the back, plugged the newly-mic'ed organ to several devices (including a rather large and loud keyboard amp) to see what our concoction sounded like. After playing around a bit with the phase of the two speakers, this unbelievably goofy idea turned out to sound amazingly good! Who'da thunk it?
