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Above: The Fairchild Integrated Console of 1972
How y’all doing out there. Today at PS dot com: some interesting bits from the archive: a collection of Fairchild data sheets from 1972. Download all 12 pages here:
Products covered, with texts, specs, and photos, include: Fairchild ‘integrated’ console, Reverbertron 659A, the FPC series of ‘portable mixing consoles,’ 610 and 870 power amps, plus a whole slew of distribution amps and power supplies that i just ain’t got time to list. Enjoy!
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Boozhound Labs Phono Preamp Kit
I know. The grey box above ain’t much to look at in the abstract. But, it’s what’s inside the box that we are concerned with today. Jsn at Boozhound Labs (hf ‘BHL’) sent me one of his new “JFEt Phono Preamp Kits” to check out, and I’m glad I did. It was a quick+ easy project that has greatly improved my LP listening situation in the living room mini-system.
Above you can see the BHL preamp right beneath a little stereo power amp (with A/B input select and a stereo volume pot). The power amp is a design that I have built dozens of times for clients: a single 6SN7 is shared to provide one voltage-gain stage per channel, with each channel using a 6L6 (cathode biased) class-A to provide approx. 8 watts of power to each speaker. Just so you know where I’m coming from, here’s the complete setup: ADC QLM 30 mk III cartridge mounted on a Technics 1200 table, then into the BHL, then to the SE 8-watt power amp, and finally to JBL 18ti speakers. Very circa-1980. The other input of the power amp is connect to an Apple Airport Express so that I can stream music off the iPhone or the macbook. Certainly not an audiophile setup, but I’ve never found it lacking.
The BHL kit ($89 direct) comprises the board that you see above, all the parts to stuff the board, instructions, and a bunch of good quality wire. I supplied the Hammond steel chassis and bottom plate and the vintage-style lamp holder and big power switch, plus a $13 24v switching power supply from eBay, some El Cheapo-brand dual RCA jacks, a binding post, and a goofy old Amphenol connector to mate the power supply.
Note that since this thing is running at 24V, I had to try to find a 24v bayonet bulb for the vintage-type jeweled-lamp. Don’t use a 6.3V bulb from yr parts drawer here! It will not end well. Luckily, MCM electronics had 28v bayonet-base bulbs (the closest value that I could find to 24v) for just a few cents. Anyhow, I went through this trouble since I wanted the BHL preamp to match the appearance of the power amp perfectly, but you could easily build this board into whatever you want. Here’s a dude on Instagram who went for more of an ultra-modern/brutalist look for his build. Point is, you can do whatever you like as far as the visual aesthetic yr after. I probably spent about $50 for the non-included components for my build.
The circuit is super-simple and it’s very very easy to assemble. The BHL site has a transcript of the directions that come with the kit if yr curious. It took me less than an hour to solder all the parts together. As Jsn explains on his site, “This is just about the simplest circuit possible that will accomplish what we need – reverse-RIAA equalization with gain. This is 2 JFET gain stages with a passive (no feedback) RIAA equalization network sandwiched between them.” Simple as it is, the components included are of a very high quality.
Now, I was replacing a very cheap phono preamp with the BHL (I had been using a $50 Rolls VP29), so keep that in mind – but here were my initial impressions, which the past month of 4-hour-per day listening has proven to be (subjectively) correct:
*The sound is very good; the low end is a bit more even and less ‘rolled off’ versus the ROLLS preamp. Vocal-area midrange is a bit more forward. The high end seems to sound about the same, but the cartridge/LP is probably the limiting factor as far as treble.
*The biggest improvement is that the self-noise of the BHL is so much lower. And there is less hum. So overall there is really a huge difference in terms of background noise, which just brings out so much more detail in the music. And honestly, I never even thought that my ROLLS preamp was noisy until I installed the BHL.
*Gain is a little lower than the ROLLS that it replaced (maybe 2 or 3 dbs). Not ideal, but not a huge deal.
Full disclosure, and maybe this is unnecessary: Jsn provided the kit to me at-cost. That being said, at the street price of $89 I do still think it is a very good value. If yr thinking of testing the waters of Audio DIY (and you like listening to LPs…), I could not think of a better place to start. Jsn is a great guy, and it was his old BHL blog that was one of my greatest inspirations in starting PS dot com; so if you dig this website, support the dude and get yrself some upgraded sound in the process.
How y’all doing out there in internet land////
Tonight I will be taking a dip into the murky waters of real life social interaction with a 4-hour DJ set at FIREHOUSE 12 in New Haven CT. I’ll be trading off with my good old pal JBW aka SWAY with a night full of weird dark old rock punk and soul. And maybe some electronic terror if you stay late enough. You can check out my instagram to see some of the recent-findings to be spun up tonight.
45 Crown Street, New Haven CT. 9P -1A
Come on down and hang out with all the regulars and irregulars. No cover.
I came across this odd bit from 1972… Phil Upchurch was one of the most lauded studio guitarists of the 60s and 70s; at one point he was the house guitarist for the Chess label (Muddy Waters, The Dells, Howling Wolf, etc). He also has some great lines on Bonnie Koloc’s 70’s folk rock LPs. Check out the multiple solos (with a CRAZY quadraphonic mix) around the 3:25 mark here:
A versatile player, certainly. Anyhow, check out this interesting promo campaign from Rogers Drums:
I love this idea. I would equally welcome “advice for guitarists (by a great drummer).”
Why do certain guitarists make great drummers?
Players: have you learned more from those who play your instrument, or other instruments?
Does anyone have the ‘Phil Upchurch Percussion Fact Sheet”?
She stood by the TV holding a cup of coffee from the vending machine in the hallway. I was just packing up my toothbrush and she asked me, half-joking, if I’d be coming by this way again. Damn that woman could wear one hell of a Canadian tuxedo. I didn’t know what to say. Sure, I’d been through Tulsa a dozen times or more, but I was on the wrong side of 35, trying to make a living playing an instrument that was completely irrelevant for 99% of music in the world. I might as well of been a fucking kazoo player. I mean, all those goddamn pedals and levers; what do they even DO? Big Billy was a peach for bringin me out on the road again for this tour, but even backwoods Bill was talkin’ about goin disco for his next record. Shit man, ain’t gonna have pedal steel on a disco track. So, Cindy, answer is, I don’t know. You seen my comb?
hello y’all… I am looking to buy a 2nd-hand hardware box that will allow me to input a stereo analog audio signal and get a clean pitch-shifted polyphonic octave-down. I’ve been looking at eventide H3000s on eBay but they are just a bit too expensive for what may be a total boondoggle.
I don’t need uber-fidelity; 44.k sampling rate and 16-bit internal processing is fine. Balanced i/o would be very good but maybe not a necessity?
And pls no speculation or armchair recommendations folks; I am just looking for suggestions from people who have actually used the suggested device personally for this specific task. Thanks for reading – c.
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New Years 2014 Mixtape
How y’all doin on this cold+dark December day… been toiling like a farmer at the PS dot com HQ, tryin to get another mixtape out the door before the bell tolls on ’13. I am more excited about this mixtape than I have been in a while; some really great cuts on here. I was v v fortunate to chance upon some really outstanding collections this past season (special thanks to D.S…) and the best of the best are captured here. As always, if you see me, ask me for a CD of the mix- as always, transcribed fresh from vinyl via my trust Benz Micro cartridge. Hope you all have an excellent NYE, and here’s to a better+brighter one-four.
1. The Equals “Police On My Back” from the comp The Best Of The Equals, EMI/Stateside (year unknown; presumed to be 1968).
2. John Entwhistle “I Wonder” from the LP Whistle Rymes, Track/Decca/MCA 1972.
3. Lee Clayton “Carnival Balloon” from the S/T 1973 MCA LP. (no link available)
4. Sopwith Camel “Fazon” from the LP The Miraculous Hump Returns From The Moon, Reprise 1972.
5. Danny Cox “Hey Jude” from the LP Birth Announcement, Forward/Together Records, 1969. (no link available)
6. The Electric Prunes “I Happen To Love You” from the LP Underground, Reprise 1967.
7. Suzi Quatro “Michael” from the LP Your Mama Won’t Like Me, Arista 1975.
8. John Ussery “Must Have Been The Season” from his self-titles LP, Phonogram 1973.
9. David Wiffen “Climb The Stairs” from the LP Coast To Coast Fever, Liberty 1973. (no link available)
10. Earth Opera “Time And Again” from the s/t LP, Elektra 1968.
11. Longdancer “Too Much Too Soon” from the LP If It Was So Simple, Rocket/MCA 1973.
12. John Entwhistle “My Wife” from the LP Rigor Mortis Sets In, Track/MCA 1973.
13. 999 “Bongos On The Nile” from the LP Concrete, Albion/Polygram 1981. (no link available)
14. Brownsville Station “Rumble” from the comp Non-Dairy Creamer, Warner Bros Records 1971.
15. Black Pearl “Mr. Soul Satisfaction” from the s/t LP, Atlantic 1969.
16. Rare Bird “What Do You Want To Know” from the LP As Your Mind Flies By, ABC 1970. (no link available)
17. Stealers Wheel “Right or Wrong” from the LP Right Or Wrong, A&M 1975.
18. Redeye “Collections of Yesterday And Now” from the s/t LP, Pentagram/Bravo/Viva 1971.
For track notes + more of the greatest album art of all time, click the link below to READ ON…
As a kid, before the DAT deck was available, I vaguely remember talk about ‘so and so mixes his music digitally to a VCR’ and this just sounded like some black magic to me. Well, as it turns out, this was done via a reasonably affordable series of SONY devices, the base model of which was the 501 ES. The 501 ES was a duplex AD/DA convertor that could covert stereo analog audio to a single PCM stream that was then sent out as a video-bandwidth signal, to be recorded as single video signal on any VCR deck. There were some real drawbacks, such as a 1/2 sample interchannel delay, and apparently it worked best in 14 bit, rather than 16 bit mode? But none-the-less, this was a ‘real thing’ and back in those days, DIGITAL WAS BETTER and any way that you could GET DIGITAL was pretty much embraced.
Now, SONY actually marketed this technology as early as 1978, but at that point it was extremely expensive and beyond the reach of a small studio or musician. We ran an article on that first machine, the SONY PCM-1, a long while back. You can read it at this link. The PCM 501-es was much more of a prosumer product, though, so it managed to achieve much wider use. I found a great article from a 1986 issue of MUSICIAN mag which explains, in great detail, operation of the 501ES. It is by a person or persons named FREFF, and I reproduce it below for your edification.
Thanks TW for turning me on to this… fantastic music and a great story! Read on…