Meaning suddenly.. I’ll have a digital recording system I can tote from place to place. Saw one of those tiny little notbooks a little while back and wondered about the ability to record with them. Was in at the computer shop, next to a music shop in Manukau, and went from one to the other till I had it sussed. Then I’m at home debating the approx 700 bucks it’ll set me back when I decide that trademe might have second hand laptops at reasonable prices… long story short I’m meeting a guy in a carpark in highland park, by countdown, in just under two hours, to hand over 400 bucks for a Toshiba M5…(so when it comes to myth making, as in the artists career steps, a little innocent cloak and dagger allusions never go amiss).
But I gotta have the ability to A/D any signals and yesterday at the shop I had in the back of my mind that since the last time I looked at this stuff there’ll be something out there for less than 100 bucks that’ll take a line level and change it to USB. The guys in the shop weren’t really up with my requirements but I did spot what I wanted in the Behringer catalog.
In the photo the red thing on the right is a Behringer UCA 222 which is USB powered and Audio/Digital converter with line level, RCA, ins and outs and a headphone jack for monitoring and a wee volume control + spdif optical which makes it a surprisingly adaptable little box for 99 bucks clean bought off the internet and picked up from the north shore this morning. Buy now is good! The things capable of a little bit better than CD at 16bit and 48kHz. While I was at Dr Music on the shore I happened to see he had a BSY600 Behringer Bass synth and I’ve been after one for about two days after reading about them on DIYstomboxes. Guy who likes my stuff on there had just gotten one and enjoyed the experience and it’s an almost direct copy of the Boss Bass Synth which another fellow from Vit S uses to great effect with a throat mic and hand held carbon mic. Two days ago there were no BSY600’s that I could find and eventually put 50 bucks down on one of six coming into the country hopefully by the end of next week. Helps when you want something so you do what you can then forget about it.
Above is just half or even a quarter of the whole story that I followed up after various things struck my fancy but the sum total being that my versatility with musical stuff, tool wise, has just expanded expotentially with the minimum of effort and tons of coincidence plus a budget well within what I can afford. Trust hunches and follow your luck blindly!!!
But thats not all folks!!! because out of the blue I also got a message that there was some old gear waiting for me that I’d completely forgotten about and even knew what it was… Two old tape, solid state, decks, one reel to reel and the other casette and this fine old specimen of absolute quality from the mid sixties.
Two AB1 output P/P fixed bias tube amps with 9 x 12AX7’s and a few signal pentodes. What a great score and to make things even better the output tubes are 7868’s which are a Novel version of Octal 7591’s which are some of the most sought after power amp tubes when it comes to being tough, dependable and musical. The 7591 is the “to die for” tube for harp players amps and they were made right at the end of the tube technology thing and so are almost the ultimate tube!
Now all I gotta do is live up to the luck I’ve been given…