eccentricblog

A long time coming...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:20:34 GMT

It’s been far, far too long since last I posted an entry.

I’ll hide behind the excuse of pressure of work, and yes – things have been very full-on, what with building Snap Studios

http://www.proaudioeurope.com/229/october-part-15th

advising and equipping studios on the four corners of the earth (Beijing, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Italy, Norway, the US and more) and trying to maintain a little quality time with my two cats, but the reality is I’ve let things slip.

In the meantime, much has been exercising my mind, such as…

Michael Jackson shuffled of his mortal coil after a sad decade when his former splendour paled into the Fantasy Island of somewhat squalid delusions of grandeur. He was not unique in allowing fame to turn his head and indulging in every base desire, carnal or narcotic, and neither was he alone in choosing to surround himself with self-interested ‘yes’ men, more concerned with not derailing the gravy train than in attempting to steer it back onto some form of straight and narrow.

Jimmy Scott (of Pretenders fame) was once an employee and tehn a close friend. Indeed, I played a role in his joining the band. My last conversation with him was a heated row, when I tackled him about his cocaine habit. He was furious and told me to fuck off and mind my own business. For months I agonised at my presumption at having crossed the line between addressing issues of concern and accepting a friend, faults, frailties and all. It was a moral dilemma…had I let my concerns go unvoiced, the friendship would have continued. But would it have been a true, an honest, friendship if I failed to voice my concerns? I guess I felt guilty at having raised the subject until…
Jimmy died, aged twenty four, after choking on his vomit following a cocaine binge. The world lay in his magic plectrum, with the promise of everything a guitar freak like him could ever dream of. And the best was surely yet to come.

Had I not spoken out as and when I did, I doubt that I could have ever looked myself in the mirror again. My only regret is that my words fell on deaf ears…

Rest In Peace, Michael. You had precious little in your last few years.

Despite the tragedy of his premature death, Jackson’s passing moved me less than that of Les Paul. Here was a man who shaped the lives of all those who love electric music and recording. Apart from his virtuosity on guitar, this man single-handedly created multitrack recording, the tools for modern rock music and much more. Despite his achievements and success, he remained modest throughout his life, driven by a love of music and an inquisitive nature. If he imagined new techniques, he locked himself away and found a means to realise his dreams. In the process, he provided the rest of us with the vehicles to realise ours.

I firmly believe Les Paul died with a chuckle on his lips. A great, great man.

Vera Lyn came from a similar generation, and is thankfully still with us. In her own words, the woman was an entertainer who was surprised at her success. She regarded herself as fortunate to have enjoyed such a dazzling career. Another modest champion of popular music.
Recently, a compilation of her best known recordings was released and raced to number one, keeping remastered Beatles albums off the top of the charts. But having been recorded more than fifty years ago, dear old Vera hasn’t received one penny, one red cent, one measly groat in royalties. Copyright in performances and recordings expires after fifty years, meaning they can be recopyrighted by anyone fast and mean enough to steal them one second after midnight on the fateful day.

So despite the fact that her face is on the album cover, that films of her performing were plastered over our TV screens and she did the newscast rounds with dozens of charming interviews, not one penny generated by her talent found its way into her bank account.

And did the fat cats at the record company decide to give her a slice of the dosh that her labours had generated? Come on, folks – this is a record company. A r.e.c.o.r.d c.o.m.p.a.n.y, or, to use another phrase, a bunch of legal thieves. Vermin of the worst kind.

So when the major labels start to whinge and moan about internet piracy, stop and think; who are the biggest bloody pirates of the lot? Yup – you got it. Those nasty, snivelling, talentless crooks in their ivory towers with bloated expense accounts and high end Mercedes Benz’.

Screw the artist.

And given half a chance, they will.

Eccentric

I'm back...

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:53:59 GMT

If you're tuning in once more, please accept my appologies for a prolongued absence. It wasn't entirely my fault, however.
Some bright Silicon Alley big shot Cybercompany ate up the small blog hosting site I use to post my rambling thoughts. As seems to always be the case in our brave new world, Mega Corp decided to employ hundreds of bright Cal-tech computer wizz graduates to update, modernise, capitalise, utilise, prioritise, fuckmetize and generally phaff about with the quaint old site to make it ultra modern and hyper-profitabale.
And the result?
Utter bunk. For months I;ve been trying to get back on to post without success. I've quantised, changed my password, my askword, my emailwoird, my gender, my date of borth, date of death, date of insanity and the rest. Eventually I went out and hoiked a five year old off the street who fiddled with a few parameters, typed a string of code into the ethersphere and restored access.
So I'm back on like...(is this the correct hip vernacular?) Annd please bear with me if some pf the forthcoming posts are well out of date, but they've been accumulating during the long, dark night of my absence.
Hello again.
Eccentric

Fact, opinion and blah...

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:49:20 GMT

A few days ago I received an email asking my opinion of the difference in sound and facilities of an SSL 4000 and the new AWS.

hi,
i'm watching your website and i'm interested in the ssl
4000 24 channels,i never had an ssl consolle,so i
have 2 questions for you:
1)can i have more details pictures of this consolle
and also where is possible to see it.
2)wich one is better in sound quality the ssl 4000 or
the new aws 900+?
thank you

I answered honestly as follows;

There is no comparison between the real SSL and the AWS. In comparison,
the AWS is like a toy.
Differences are;
1. The SSL has full in line monitoring, giving 48 channels on mix.
The AWS is very simple 24 channel.
2. The SSL has dynamics on all inputs (24 x compressor/gates) plus
the classic 'quad' compressor on the mix bus
The AWS has one compressor that can be assigned.
3. The SSL is fully modular, meaning that if a channel goes down, a spare
can be used while it is being fixed, or alternatively that channel can be
removed for fixing, leaving 23 in use.
The AWS has chanels in blocks of 12, so if one has a fault, all 12
channels have to be removed for fixing.
4. The SSL is easily repaired and serviced, as eq, dynamics etc are on
internal cards and are 'discrete' (i.e., easily repaired components)
The AWS components are 'surface mounted' (i.e. stamped onto the PCB
by machine) which requires special tools to remove and resolder. It
is really only repairable in the factory.
5. The SSL has an external power supply which can either be fixed or
replaced if it has a fault (all our desks are supplied with completely
rebuilt power supplies which are guarranteed for a year and will last
for decades)
The AWS has a built-in switch mode power supply. If this developes
a fault, the entire desk must go back to SSL to be fixed.
6. The SSL sounds like an SSL - full bodied and positive.
The AWS sounds like an AWS - much less powerful than an SSL
The SSL cost in excess of £150,000 when new (at a time when £150,000
was worth far more than it is today). It is innevitable that the build quality and
performance are far higher than a desk costing £37,000 today.

On the downside, the SSL requires more installation, will need occasional
servicing and draws more power. However, it will last far longer than an
AWS and is a fully professional piece of equipment.
Best Wishes
Mark

Now, I think this is a pretty fair assessment. You may dissagree, but we all have our opinions. Equally, though, I can't see my comments about the ASW as being particularly negative. It is what it is, we sell quite a few and for a whole variety of modern day useage, it's the perfect tool for the job. But come on - the AWS is to a 4000 what a Smart Car is to a BMW. You get what you pay for, and SSL made their reputation with the 4000, which is a beautifully designed, engineered and sounding console.

The point of this blurb is that it seems that my email found its way into the hands of the sales department at SSL, who were offended, outraged, pricked. Now, quite apart from the fact that I am miffed when an email of mine is circulated without my consent, I see nothing in any way offensive in my comments. Actually, I'm pretty laid back about my mails doing the rounds; I'm always honest in my comments (whether in private or on the website), express a fair opinion and am happy to stand by that. I will never say one thing to one person and another behind their back. With me, what you see is what I am (a blunt northerner, I guess).

This anecdote is symptomatic of the age we live in, sadly. When I first became involved with the industry, the monthly bible was a magazine called Studio Sound. All my fellow engineers turned straight to the reviews section to read about the latest recording equipment. And we believed what we read. Why? Because the reviewers were honest. If a piece of gear sucked, they said so. If it shone, they said so. If it sparkled but lacked lustre in certain areas, they said so. And when we got our hands on that bit of kit we found...the reviews were spot on. In the interests of fairness, Studio Sound allowed the manufacturer or distributor the right of reply. But what often happened was that the manufacturer took these technical reviews seriously and rectified the faults, making their gear fit for purpose. Thus Studio Sound were in no small way responsible for much of the excellent vintage gear still happily in use or trading hands today.

Now, compare this with the modern review. I can tell you as a fact that the more filthy lucre a company spends advertising in the 'Pro Audio' rags, the better will be the reviews for their products. We call this 'Advertorial' and it's an open secret in the trade that these days, to all intents and purposes, good reviews and purchased rather than earned. Indeed, I can quote a number of new products that we've had in our hands with serious design faults - mics that are inherently noisy, compressors that distort if the threshold is set above one, eq's that don't eq - yet these units have received five star ratings in so called respectable magazines.

Yes, bro, integrity went out of the shop window years ago.

And this is why I stand by the comments I make, when asked, in correspondence with customers. I won't gild the lilly. I won't polish an electronic turd to generate a sale. I am an opinionated snob and proud of it. Because audio gems deserve the highest praise and sewage deserves none.

I like SSL consoles. I like the mind that conceived them, the skills that made them, the ears that use them, the ethos that sustains them. Strangely, I also like the AWS900, even though on day one, when a company representative showed me the mock up, I pointed out a series of shortcomings - the lack of even simple in line monitoring, the lack of dynamics, the switch mode power supply, the non- modular construction, the surface mounted components. And the rep's response? He agreed with every damned point, but added...'It's not supposed to be a proper SSL. It's built to a price.'

The AWS is a valuable tool for modern recording. But it ain't an SSL 4000. And if those within SSL take the hump at this simple truth, then I pity them. They should take pride in the history of the company, in past acheivements and in the fact that so many of their great desks remain in daily use rather than nosing around in private correspondence.
SSL is dead. Long live SSL.
Eccentric

A letter to a friend...

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:01:15 GMT

Cool... we need to talk economics... I have been reading Wall Street
Journal daily and am convinced that Wall Street hype is ficticious wealth
created on paper only, by CEO's, investment banker types making $35M a
year and a fucking bonus on top for company's they put into the dirt. It
is all bullshit... capitalism at its worst.

Have a good day.

Best regards,
___________________
michael nehra

Mike,

I'm an old fashioned commie bastard (actually, an anarcho syndicalist) but I must leap to the defense of capitalism (also being a capitalist pig by virtue of my businesses).

What went on in the last decade is fraud, not capitalism. Rather than a free market, the market was distorted by an unregulated banking system that invented ways of turning thin air into massive profits by the simple expedient of lending money that didn't exist to people who couldn't repay. You, I or my brainless cat could do much the same just so long as a) we didn't tell the outside world what we were up to and b) we wore slick suits, kept a confident grin on our faces and hid behind the facade of respectability.

These bankers knew exactly what they were doing and were very well aware that the whole pack of cards would collapse one day; it had to. But until it did...they pocketed massive 'commission' bonuses on fantastic paper profits (liken Enron, these profits were not actually banked, but rather represented potential future profits over twenty five years, all booked into the year when the deals were written rather than the long term when the capital and interest was paid and actual profits generated). They didn't care that it was a scam; the loopholes in the system allowed them to get away with it, and get away with it they did, becoming billionaires in the process. Indeed, there are still thousands of fat cats making millions through 'hedging' on collapsing stocks and currencies and doing their utmoset to perpetuate the phoney doom and gloom that fills the media.

I have two concerns; firstly, that these rip off merchants won't be bought to book. The system will protect them. There are most definitely many that should be behind bars for fraud. Secondly, western government policy is designed to try to recreate the economic falsity of the last ten years by printing money and mortaging our futures to prop up a failed system.

That economic model didn't work, hence our current woes. So why try to recreate it? Why prop up car manufacturing plants (for example) when quite obviously the world doesn't need so many new cars? Vehicle sales have fallen by 50% in the last year. Who is hurting? So you and I squeeze an extra year or two out of our existing motor (in fact, I drive a £300 1992 BMW 320 and wouldn't change it for the world). No...we can get by. And so I resent mortgaging my kids future to subsidise car plants to make motors that no one wants or needs. The excuse is to avoid unemployment. Great. So why not make tractors and combine harvesters and GIVE them to the third world? It will cost us the same, but would bring real benefit to whole populations who could then increase crop production, improve their standards of living and buy UK made compressors and mixing consoles when their economies flourish down the line.

Mike, we all got screwed. To quote The Who...'We won't get screwed again...' Or rather, to quote Gordon Brown, we will.

We're about to experience a Groundhog Day as the spivs regroup to embark on a second round of fraud.

A plague on all the politician's houses.

M

Another year…

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:38:57 GMT

It’s depressing to see the New Year kick off with another bout of man’s inhumanity to man.

Pictures of twenty-first century war machines raining terror on trapped civilians in Gaza leaves me feeling numb and wondering just how far civilisation has come in the last ten thousand years.

Irrespective of anyone’s political views, I can see no justification whatsoever for the indiscriminate carnage currently being waged in Palestine.

Two wrongs can never make a right. Additionally, such brutality is surely counter-productive and must lead to another generation of (rightly?) embittered terrorists. More than anything, though, I am sickened to the pit of my stomach by the implied lack of value placed upon an Arab life in relation to an Israeli or American (or European?). All life is precious – by far the most precious commodity on this ravaged planet of ours. I can only hope that within my lifetime I see equal weight given to the hopes, dreams, aspirations and lives of my third and second world brothers and sisters as we currently bestow upon our immediate neighbours.

Closer to home, we enter a new year of economic madness, and this concerns me. Maybe it is part and parcel of the distorted value system propagated by the media (as witnessed in their attitudes toards the Middle East and parts of Africa), but we run a serious risk of losing a rare opportunity to rectify the mistakes of past decades.

Let me elaborate…

We are experiencing the collapse of mammon, in the form of the discrediting of a financial system that feeds on greed. For twenty years, since the Thatcher/Reagan ‘revolution’, the free market has run riot, untrammelled by regulatory constraints or moral concerns. Profit has been the be-all and end-all of finance, to the point where fortunes have been made by manufacturing phoney margins from non-existent deals. First Enron collapsed as strings of spurious accounting paperchains unravelled, and now we see a slump in consumer confidence following the widespread realisation that the dodgy commercial instruments invented by banks and hedge funds – derivatives, inflated asset values and speculative gambles – have no more substance than the hot air promulgated by our political masters.

My concern is that measures are being taken in our name by our representatives that are not designed to deal with our economic problems, but rather to restore the discredited status quo. Billions of pounds are being pumped into banks around the world to enable them to continue as before. Huge subsidies are being offered to automobile plants to enable them to continue to produce vehicles that we, the public, no longer want to buy. Efforts are afoot to force banks to offer loans to house buyers (and most obviously, Rackmanite buy-to-let landlords) to force property prices back up to previously inflated levels.

The reality is that we’ve rumbled the pointlessness of this false economic model. We want banks to be somewhere safe to invest our wages and to make modest profits by carefully lending any surplus to secure borrowers. We don’t need a new 4x4 every year. The old car is good enough to last for a few more years. And we’ve decided that a flat or a house is somewhere to live rather than a sky-rocketing investment to make property speculators into overnight millionaires. In other words, we see that we were flogged a dream that didn’t measure up in the cold light of day.

We won’t get fooled again.

So let these profligate bankers and hedge funds go to the wall. And if Ford, GM and Chrysler can’t sort out their businesses, let them fold. And if this makes hands idle, how about growing food on fallow land to replace the costly imports that deny impoverished farmers abroad a local market. If I need a car, I’ll keep the one I have alive. And if the property market goes into free fall, why, hopefully the government will snap up a few hundred thousand bargains and let them out for an affordable rent, just as councils did back in the old days.

The unregulated market has failed. In any event, we were never players in the get-rich-quick game, but rather two-legged lumps of product for the Masters of the Universe to manipulate.

There is another model that I much prefer. It is a system that puts the needs of society before those of the privileged, a system that regards homelessness as a scandal and greedy landlords as profiteers. It is a system that cares more about the careful use of resources than unbridled consumption. It is a system where money is the product of endeavour rather than a poker stake for the rich.

We have seen the financial and consumer experiments of the last twenty years collapse in abject failure. We should be given the option of a new philosophy, a more inclusive way forwards, a plan for the future that is based upon partnership with the third world and the just division of our limited resources. But no…instead, we are being asked to mortgage our children’s futures for another dose of more-of-the-same.

I am not happy with decisions being taken in my name and with my money but without my consent.

Stop and think about what’s going on. And don’t believe the media when you’re told that there is no alternative to Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown’s profligate plans. After all, who controls the papers and our TV screens? Yes – got it in one… those same fat cats who have benefited so greatly at our expense in recent years. And of course they want a return to how it was then.

If music be the food of love, play on. After all, it may be the only food you can afford in years to come.

Oh…and Happy New Year.

Eccentric

Another one gone…

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:36:23 GMT

Methinks Guy ‘Fingers’ Hands has problems at EMI. Big, big problems.

If so…yippee.

Hands made billions (this year’s favourite word) from buying up old fashioned companies, sacking half the staff, parachuting in overpaid, jumped-up management, squeezing the margins until the pips squeaked and then doubling his money by flogging the shell onto gullible stock exchange investors.

Sorry, did I say his money?

No…these flashy arbitrage merchants borrow dosh from shady investment vehicles – hedge funds and merchant banks – who want in on the glorious action.

But Hands’ ego took him a bridge too far. Not content with wanting a collection of Beatles albums, he eyed up EMI, outbid all his more experienced rivals and lashed more than a billion bucks too much on the creaking carcass (this, by his own admission). He then arrogantly told us all how the music business should be run, instituted his theories, bought in the usual pack of know-it-all top brass and…has been losing dosh hand over fist ever since (no pun intended. Damn it – yes, every pun intended)

EMI have both feet in the grave. With two months to go to replace the massive loans from Citi Bank that funded the buyout, there isn’t a Cowell’s chance in hell that Hands can bridge the massive gap between what he owes and what any prudent lender will advance for his ailing business. The company will be divvied up, the parts flogged off and the last UK major record company will end up as a logo on a cheap Chinese toaster.

You’re a real swell guy, Guy. Here’s hoping you go bankrupt along with those thousands of banker mates (that’s banker with a capital W) whom you ponce around with.

The downside is the human carnage this man’s ego will wreak. And it’s started already.

On Monday, the staff and tenants of Olympic studio were given two weeks notice to vacate the building. As of the end of December, this world famous facility will be no more.

In itself, this is sad, sad news. I hate to see any studio close, let alone one with such an historic pedigree. To be honest, though, it’s been on the cards for a while. And this makes the manner of the closure all the more outrageous.

Hands’ management style is straight from the Gordon Gecko school of Greed Is Good. There are ways and means of dealing with such a sensitive issue, but the way the EMI top brass have handled the studio closure is puke-making in the extreme.

Almost all the staff at Olympic signed on the EMI payroll when Hands was stuffing his lardy face in the Tuck Shop at prep school. Most certainly, all the tenants of the dozen or so producer suites at the studio were making great records when Hands was raping Autobahn service stations in Germany to make his first billion (and causing massive unrest by replacing the traditional menus with high margin junk food).

So what did he do? Be honourable and pop down to the studio for a chat with his long serving staff? Arrange a meeting with the producer tenants?

No. The tenants of the various white rooms at Olympic have received a terse legal letter advising them to vacate the building within two weeks or else… Oh, and a note adds that should they leave any equipment in their rooms, EMI reserves the right to sell it without discussion or recourse. The equipment doesn’t belong to EMI. It belongs to the tenants. The tenants have leases, summarily ripped up by Hands and his hatchet men.

Theft plus Rachmanism equals the brave new free enterprise economy.

So the staff go on the dole, the tenants are thrown out on the street and their worldly goods sold off to fatten the depleted coffers of this dashing entrepreneur.

Happy Christmas, folks.

Nice Guy…does he remind you of anyone?

Maybe the name Scrooge comes to mind?

A plague on all his houses…

A stressful day at t`mill.

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:27:20 GMT

I lost a guitar this morning – one of my prized collection – but thankfully tracked it down tonight. I must stop lending so much of my gear out.

And then we got hammered with a five figure sum for duty and freight for new US made a console purely because the manufacturer had failed to follow our detailed shipping instructions, as a result of which the fees were twice what they should have been. And this means that we’ve put nine months hard work into a deal (with installation and commissioning to come) for a negative payback. Let’s hope the government spends their undeserved bonus on something worthwhile rather than another junket to sunny climes for one of their ‘Summit Conferences’ (otherwise described as a jolly back-slapping jaunt).

One of the few fallouts of the credit crunch then bit us in the bum as a regular client got in touch to apologise for a lengthy delay in paying for an SSL we’ve been refurbishing for him. It seems that his life savings were invested in an Icelandic bank and he’s still wrestling various authorities to retrieve his dosh. He’s been offered a truckload of herring as compensation, but that’s not going to liberate his desk from our workshops.

Oh, and then there’s all yesterday'se budgetary nonsense as the UK government comes up with more ill-conceived panic measures to resolve economic problems of their own making.

Firstly, there is a loudly trumpeted reduction in levels of UK VAT, from the dizzy heights of 17.5% to the subterranian low of 15%, the upshot of which will be…bugger all. The majority of retail outlets won’t vary their existing VAT inclusive prices for the simple reason that all their wares are already rounded up or down to the nearest quid. And what real difference does two and a half percent make, anyway? No. The reduction will just sweeten the margins of the high street chain stores, and add to their bottom line. Joe Public won’t see any difference. Of course, our prices don’t include VAT, so any reduction is automatically passed on. But then we’re a pretty transparent bunch. With Funky, you know what you’re paying, and what you get.

If Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown really wanted to pump money into the consumer economy, there is a simple measure he could have taken to inject cash straight in the tills – reintroduce student grants.

If every student in the country was given an annual grant of ten grand, the cash would be spent in the flicker of an eyelid in bars, gigs and shops up and down the country. At a stroke, the government would have fulfilled the twin advantages of giving students enough dough to scrape through the year and injecting cash in the jugular of the economy. This windfall wouldn’t be invested abroad and it wouldn’t be stuffed under mattresses. No, it would be splashed about immediately on necessities and get the high street tills ringing overnight.
It’s a thought…

Today's the day...

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:53:52 GMT

I've been off air lately, for which I appologise. It's just that...

I've been riveted by the US election coverage, channel flippig between the newbunnies and teletotty of CNN, Foxx (for some whacky utterly biased McCainery) and even the grizzlies on BBC (why does Kirsty Wark dress like a hooker these days?)

Tonight wil be a late one for me, glued to the goggle box.

I guess this is probably the most seminal election in my lifetime. I really do feel that for once, the US could be guided by someone with a genuine understanding of the world outside the narrow confines of America. And that might - just possibly - bring the most powerful economy the world has ever known into the twenty first century. And we need this desperately. Within a decade China will be the new powerhouse with India close behind. The latent resources of Africa promise a revolution in that blighted continent. And if we have a leader in the West with the vision to understand that resources and energy must be put into resolving conflicts, whether in the middle east, Africa or Eastern Europe, there is hope for our children and our children's children and...

What happens tonight may shape the world we live in for the better.

We can but hope.

Eccentric

My first and only post on Gearslutz responding to a dealer thread...

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:50:32 GMT

A note from Funkyville...
For my sins I rarely visit these pages, but made an exception during a recent idle credit-crunch moment.
This thread displays much of the confusion about shopping for equipment that I encounter frequently, which is hardly surprising. After all, no outlet can ever claim to be all things to all men; one size doesn't fit all, whatever the marketing nurds might want us to believe.
Customers want different things from their suppliers. There are those who merely want the lowest price and of course they can google forever, saving a nickle here and a dime elsewhere. That's a valid approach. Then there are those who want advice on a particular link in the chain. Always remember that any such advice is ultimately opinion (albeit based upon experience not merely of using a wide range of equipment but also knowledge of how the gear performs over a period, which is crucial; we see more broken equipment in our service department than any other dealer in Europe or possibly the world, and believe me there is a lot of very poorly made but sexy looking kit out there...)
Companies such as Funky, KMR and the others mentioned in these threads do our best not merely to offer impartial guidence but also to stress the important of trying before you buy. After all, it's ultimately how the musician or engineer perceives the sound that matters more than all the Slutzwords or sales-blurb in the world.
But there are other considerations that perhaps don't perculate into the buyers consciousness, but which are, from an experienced seller's standpoint, equally crucial.
There are items of equipment that we at Funky don't stock, and moreover which we won't stock. We take our after sales responsibilities extremely seriously; indeed, we spend over £100,000 a year maintaining a service department staffed by some of the most experienced techs in Europe to give our customers unrivalled support. After all, our clients are professionals who rely upon their gear for their living, so if a piece of equipment goes down, it is our responsibility to get it working immediately. And we've learnt over fifteen years that there are makes of equipment too troublesome to sell with any confidence. So we don't sell them. Sure, we won't slag them off - it's for the buyer to learn the lessons him or herself - but we can live without that level of grief, and prefer our customers to lead an equally hastle free existence.
We experience more problems with the new equipment we sell than the used, in no small part because our service department is efficient in carefully refurbishing the used gear that comes through. However, the unsuspecting musical public would be alarmed at the high proportion of new gear that is 'dead out of the box', particularly from some of the more expensive and boutique manufacturers. Many readers will know exactly what I mean. So selling equipment is only part of the story; offering prompt, professional support is, in our book, the be-all and end-all of equipment supply. Our clients appreciate this, and we're fortunate in having a large and loyal professional client base. And yes, we may get a little dispondent and appparently lackadaisical when we get callers concerned first, last and foremost with price. And of course we know that plenty of callers will ultimately buy directly from Mike at Vintage King or Fletcher at Mercenary in the belief that they'll save a few bucks, and why not? This stuff is expensive (I can't afford to buy the gear I sell!) But...if readers could see the volume of new or nearly new equipment sent to us for repair that has been directly imported, they'd realise the risks they run.
Of course, we can't finance our service department and sell equipment virtually at cost, but then this isn't our business. Ultimately we offer a service that includes keen prices, experienced advice, large purpose built demonstration facilities and comprehensive after sales (with over £80,000 of spare parts, to say nothing of £30,000 of state of the art test equipment). It's horses for courses. I won't claim that everyone wants or needs what we offer, and equally I won't criticise those with a different business model (but next time you speak to you usual supplier, just ask how many service techs he has ON STAFF; not freelances available at a few days notice, but in-house techs on hand for an immediate fix).
So it's important not to compare like with like. If you know what you want and are happy to take a risk, by all means shop wherever you can to get what you perceive to be the best deal. I have no problems with that. Alternatively, Nicky and Keith at KMR or many of the DV guys will offer a combination of good prices and good, professional advice (as, of course, do we). Vive la difference - long live competition. It keeps us all on our toes. But if you aspire to something a little more and want a bespoke rig, a room designing, building or kitting out, then there is an altogether different infrastructure of professionals who have spent a lifetime doing just this. It's an area where experience and technical qualifications are everything, as we find constantly when called in to resolve problems caused by bluffers who profess to be room designers or installation engineers.
Ultimately, the point of this rather too wordy note is to confirm everything that has gone before in this post - there are just as many levels of service as there are customer requirements, from box shifting to (say) the design and outfitting of a major new theatre in Nigeria or advising on a business plan, includng the refitting, of an international studio in South Africa (both of which projects I'm currently consulting on). In between, and every bit as important, are the needs of a musician in Rochdale going out on a limb to build his first modest recording studio or the guy in Croydon wanting to spice up his home recording rig. Alll are important, all warrant the same amount of time and attention and all are spending what is (for them) a huge amount of dosh on a project that they cannot afford to fail.
One size does not fit all. No company (or musician, come to that) is perfect. And just as there is no right or wrong way to record a vocal (up to a point) there is no perfect way to satisfy a customer's demands. All I would say is that every dealer I've seen mentioned in this thread is honest, is conscientous and does their utmost to offer the client the best equipment he or she can at the most affordable price.
We are all part of the same tight community of recordists, united by a love of music and a passion for audio quality. And I don't doubt that from time to time we all make mistakes. Equally, I have no doubt that we all bust our guts seeking to rectify these, lying awake at night worrying if a customer loses a single minute in downtime.
I am saddened by the culture of slagging gear, people, producers or dealers off on so many chatrooms, which is why I probably log on so rarely. Rather than revel in mean spiritedness, I much prefer to praise the generosity of so many in this industry who have taught me over the years, shared their tips and techniques and gone out of their way to encourage and assist my own musical journey. We are, as I said, all lucky to be members of such an open and generous community.
So shop around, my fellow Slutz. Decide what you want and need and you'll find someone out there able to supply. But is ain't a competition - the Gear Olympics. We sell creative tools for a creative job done by creative people and by and large, I'm honoured to fulfil that role.
Eccentric

Tea Break Over, Back On yer Heads…

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:55:53 GMT

I make no apologies for the somewhat theoretical nature of my last few posts. After all the collapse of capitalism and the end of the world as we know it doesn’t happen very often, does it? Er…not that it’s actually happened now, despite all the hysteria filling the front pages and the gleeful hand-rubbing manifested by a host of round the clock rolling-news stations.

A few weeks ago, I made the case for the government taking shares in financial institutions rather than merely handing over our financial future will-nilly (just as a year ago I pointed out the logic behind nationalising Northern Rock to ensure the valuable mortgage assets were protected and allowed to mature, to the advantage of all). Similarly, my last post argued for the reintroduction of stringent controls and oversight of the banking and related sectors.

Hey presto – and so it came to pass. But as Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown smugly basks in the glory of saving our financial souls, I feel it only fair to point out that if smeggy muso in North London can spot the logic behind such moves, our government can hardly claim to be either visionary or radical in pressing the only buttons that realistically should be pressed. In other words, the scandal is that any alternative options should ever have been considered – that there should ever have been a debate about what steps to take.

If you stand on the railway tracks watching an express train bear down on you, it is hardly innovative thinking to jump out of the way. That so many argued in favour of staying put in case the inevitable disaster might be avoided by, say, the express dematerialising prior to the point of impact, is a condemnation of the paucity of economic and political common sense. Of course we had to step aside. There was no option.

By the end of the year, the ‘banking crisis’ that has so preoccupied the media will be a fading memory. We will, however, be facing something altogether more real – a problem that will start to impact each and every one of us, a crisis moreover that has been brewing for a decade (and one which I drew attention to nine months ago) – a recession marked by rising unemployment and inflation.

By and large, we no longer make anything in this country that the rest of the world particularly wants. This is no accident. Rather, the UK has quite deliberately fostered a spiv economy in recent years.

London has grown to become the world’s leading financial centre. The skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and the Carbuncles dominating the City skyline are home to just those Slick-Willy operators who have traded derivatives, written dodgy mortgages and splashed out cheap credit cards, which lie at the root of our current financial ills. But those days have gone. We are now entering a period of payback. We are already seeing a degree of financial caution enter the economy as you and I reduce our extended credit cards and overdrafts, stop borrowing against the inflated value of our homes (if we’re lucky enough to own one) and generally become more cautious about debt. Oh, sure – there’s plenty of dosh available for those who want to borrow, despite claims of credit crunch and frozen liquidity. After all, we have a fat, inflated banking sector that relies upon lending to justify its existence and generate the obscene profits required to cover its massive overheads. Easy money still slops around the system, the big difference being that we, the people, won’t get fooled again.

It’s payback time – literally.

Hmmm…therein lies a pretty big problem for Chubby’s hard-pressed exchequer. Because the UK economy is now driven by the financial sector and the easy taxes skimmed off their massive profits. Once those profits turn to losses and the financial sector shrinks to more sensible proportions, the government will have a massive black hole in its coffers. And how do we fill the gap?

By borrowing. A nation already in hock will lurch ever deeper into debt.

Manufacturing industry has been sacrificed over the last twenty years in favour of a strong pound (required to attract money into the country, or rather the City, from foreign investors). Education has been geared towards the so-called service industries (another euphemism for banking, insurance and the like). Indeed, our schools and universities now turn out more economists than engineers, physicists, chemists or linguists combined – a deliberate policy to feed the insatiable needs of the mushrooming banking industry. And a fat lot of good they've done us. Closer to home, it is not just factories that have closed. Where has the tax relief for the UK film industry gone? Why have we never seen any government support for the record industry, one of this country’s most successful export industries? Indeed, our creative industries have been increasingly run like banks, relying upon easy money from repackaging back catalogue or the ticker-tape of publishing receipts rather than investing time, talent and resources into developing the next generation of long-term creative talent required to bring precious foreign currency back to the country.

We are entering tough times, my friends. We have exported our manufacturing industries to the US, to China, to the Tiger economies of South East Asia. And in return? In return we’ve allowed financial services to drive the economy with their opaque sharp practices and dodgy derivatives.

The recession will be altogether more severe in the UK than in mainland Europe. It will bite deeper and will last longer. We’ll suffer higher unemployment and greater inflation than our trading partners who kept banking regulations in place, true to traditional lending and borrowing criterea.

Those who’ve spotted the signs will realise that if anything, I’m an adherent of Keynesian economic theory. Simply stated, John Maynard Keynes advocated that in difficult times, governments should borrow in order to invest in the national infrastructure – roads, schools, hospitals, education and suchlike. The upshot is the creation of jobs, which in turn ensures that consumers have continuing incomes to ensure that the economy stays buoyant while at the same time creating long-term assets of value which will generate the funds required to repay the debt. Sure, that’s a simplistic overview of the great man’s thinking, but it is relevant to what we’re about to face. Because with shrinking tax revenues, an explosion of expensive government debt resulting from the non-productive bank bail-out and a fragile manufacturing base, we will need all the help we can get to sustain our economy and maintain employment. A programme of state spending on public services is the only viable answer.

The problem is that we’ve already committed ourselves to borrowing billions to save the profligate lifestyles of the bloody bankers. Money that could have been invested in education, the NHS, roads, flood relief and a score of other essential projects has been used to buy shares in the Royal Bank Of Bleeding Scotland. So to raise additional funds brings great risk, and most particularly the risk of inflation.

The only way to realistically raise the money we need is to effectively print the stuff. This will have an immediate side effect of reducing the value of the currency, and as the pound sinks against the Dollar, the Yuan, the Yen and the Euro, imports will cost us more, including food and essential raw materials. Oh, of course this will mean that our exports will be correspondingly cheaper abroad but…what the hell do we have left to export? Cars? Forget it. Intellectual property? See my comments about record companies and movies above. Brainpower? Not now our education system is so far behind the rest of the developed world.

No, we must combine forthcoming economic measures with help for manufacturing industry, particularly exporters, and massive well directed investment in education - in traditional skills and trades rather than yet more feeble academic cop-outs such as Media Studies, Photography and Muffin Munching. Because unless we can reap the benefits of a falling pound by raising productivity and renewing our manufacturing base, we’ve had it. The economic decline will be long term. We will have sacrificed our children’s standard of living in return for a ludicrous short-term fix for the banks.

I could write at even greater length about the current crisis, but will do what I can to move on. In particular, I have a thousand questions welling up about the state of our recording industry at present, the impact of new technology and the means of delivery, possible ways of rebuilding what remains a uniquely creative and positive branch of UK industry and the extent to which access to the means of production (in other words – gear) is resulting in a revolution in the provision of high quality production values to musicians and engineers at an affordable cost.

These topics are linked to the overall state of our present and future economy, and the way that the unique and extraordinary talent we produce on these shores offers a very real role for the UK in the world economy of the future. I’ve been luck to have received several exceptional CD’s lately, made by artists in their homes or by their friends. What is missing is the business infrastructure required to add an extra level of production values and then deliver to the market on a basis that will provide a reasonable return and allow these artists to make a living from their music in order to devote the time and resources required to take their talent to the next level.

We have an extraordinary amount of musical talent in this small island. It is a scandal that the greatest music industry in the world has for so long turned its back upon such outstanding ability in favour of short-term, fast-buck returns.

There must be another way forwards, and I believe there is. Hopefully I can generate some ideas and stimulate a debate that might result in a community of original thought to address the double-edged problems of developing Internet technologies and transforming moribund business thinking. Perhaps together we can offer some radical solutions to basic problems that the modern music industry so woefully fails to address.

In other words…onwards and upwards rather than backwards and downwards.

Eccentric

A chicken without an egg.

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:31:30 GMT

I am old enough – ancient enough, I guess - to remember the golden age of Pyramid Selling.

Here’s how the scam worked;

At the top of the pyramid sat a slick salesman peddling snake-oil, cosmetics, household cleaners – pretty much anything in fact. Indeed, the product was pretty much irrelevant. What mattered was that Slick Willy claimed to have exclusive rights to some product or other that he reckoned would generate millions in profits for those lucky enough to be enfranchised to sell it to the general public.

However, in reality the basis of the business model was not flogging Zippy Jello, or whatever the product might be, but rather it relied upon the sale of franchises to other salesman, each of whom then had the right to sell a sub-franchise to others, and so on. Effectively each franchisee bought the right to share in the promised retail harvest, lured by the pledge of wealth beyond their dreams.

Hmmm…so what these agents actually purchased was the right to recruit yet more agents, each of whom paid dearly for the franchise and each of whom in turn recruited yet more gullible salesmen, every one of whom stumped up his or her life savings for the privilege. And the upshot? A geometric progression of salesmen claiming to sell Zippy Jello to housewives but in reality hustling to recruit more and more members into the scheme. From each entry fee, a diminishing commission was paid up the line, with each footsoldier skimming of a percentage before forwarding the balance to his or her recruiting sergeant until the residue finally stopped at the top of the tree, or pyramid, and nestled comfortably in the pocket of our entrepreneurial friend, Mr. Slick Willy, by now a multi millionaire from the proceeds of his neat little scam.

What these schemes sold was not the perceived product, in our case the wonderful Zippy Jello, but rather the right to charge others for a share in the money making scam.

Of course, this was – and is – fraud. Because although the early recruits pocketed a fortune in commission from a percentage of franchising rights down the line, as membership diluted from tens to hundreds to thousands, the supply of naïve punters dried up leaving those who joined last with no means of recouping their investment, let alone making a profit or even a living.

Let’s face it, Zippy Jello is junk. But then, who cares? Not Slick Willy. His money has been made by enlisting agents who in turn enlist other agents who in turn…each one of whom filter a percentage into snake-eyed Willy’s snakeskin wallet.

Of course, the authorities moved in to stamp out the fraud as soon as it became a nuisance, but there was a problem. The reality is that legislation is always one step behind the fraudster’s ability to devise new variations on themes that avoid or evade the law. Hence a continuing hopscotch of sly villains exploiting loopholes and scam-artists constantly finding new schemes, always one step ahead of the game.

Until…

The current financial crisis is merely the collapse of the greatest pyramid scam ever. In place of Zippy Jello, we have the ultimate in must-have products – cash, or rather debt.

At the top of the pyramid sit a bunch of fat-cat bankers who have catapulted virtually unlimited debt in the market place. By convincing their avaricious mates that debt equals cash, they have sold pieces of paper, pyramid fashion, and recruited an ever larger network of greedy agents, each desperate to buy, repackage and then resell these chunks of debt down the line until…inevitably the day arrives when the supply of cash to purchase these phoney ‘derivatives’ dries up like the Colorado River in summer and the proverbial shit hits the fan. Because, as with Slick Willy’s pyramid selling scheme, this business model can only be sustained if there is an infinite number of punters queuing up for a piece of the action and it just ain’t so.

And where, ultimately, is the source of the filthy lucre that fuelled this scam? Well, sad to say it is me, it is you, it is granny, granddad, the guy next door – all of us. Everyone with a bank account, a pension, a credit card, a mortgage (or paying rent to a buy-to-let mortgage holder) or a savings account has providing the oil to grease the fraudulent wheels. But our cash is not infinite and inevitably a point arrived where the money supply was not sufficient to fuel the sprawling pyramid of debt-laden derivatives that were generating unseemly buckets of profits, bonuses and salaries for our pyramid-selling banker mates.

And so, just like Slick Willy’s scam, the entire kit and caboodle has imploded. And it did not just unwind gradually, but has collapsed virtually overnight. The down is so much faster than the up, and we are left facing stark panic in the banking community with entire nations (such as Iceland) collapsing, having lived high on the hog from the tax proceeds of inflated profits generated by this pyramid selling scam.

So what should we do?

Nothing.

That’s right – nothing.

We should stand back and let the entire dodgy edifice collapse.

Whatever happens, there will be pain. The question is, who should bear this pain?

There can be no clearer indicator of where vested interests lie than the obscene panic shown by Hank Paulson and Ben Bernackie in the US and Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown over here.

The sight of ex fat-cat banker and current Secretary of the US Treasury, Paulson, going down on bended knee and begging congress to pass his ill thought-out, hastily prepared and ultimately useless trillion dollar ‘rescue package’ will live long in my mind. Effectively, this was a spoiled brat who had squandered his pocket money on a weekend binge, begging dad to fork out more dosh so that the party can go on. Paulson and his mates have a way of life to maintain, after all. How dare we allow the party to fizzle out before they’ve drunk their fill?

The authorities reaction to this crisis is arse about tit, if you’ll excuse the vernacular. And I guess this says an awful lot about where official priorities lie.

The problems arose because of ‘deregulation’ – the removal of any sane checks and balances on the banking system. Whereas traditionally building societies borrowed from investors and lent to proceeds to members in order to assist with house purchase and banks invited deposits, lending a modest multiple to business and commerce to fund operation or expansion, Thatcher and Reagan cut away all sensible checks and balances and opened the door for an ‘anything goes’ banking sector. They confidently told us that the market knows best, that we should leave them to get on with it anyway, anyhow, anywhere. Banks lent our money, they lent their money and then they lent money that they would never have. Our dosh was invested in dodgy pyramid selling schemes and massive salaries, bonuses and stockholder’s dividends dished out to cronies and fellow travellers along the way. Tens of thousands of reckless spendthrifts made millions or even billions and we, the people, paid the price.

And are these greedy bankers dipping into their own private reserves to fill the gap in their vaults? Are they hell. It’s the innocent who pay the price – the Cat’s Protection League, the pensioners, the children’s charities and local authorities.

The starting point in any measures to address the crisis should be regulation. Only then – when a strict framework of supervision is in place – should we even consider whether or not to inject cash into the system to restore some kind of equilibrium. The current approach is utter madness.

Look, we know that the international monetary and banking systems are totally screwed. So how are the authorities choosing to react? By pouring financial oil on the flames. Pumping trillions into a flawed market will only serve to perpetuate a bankrupt system. Unless and until we have legislated for a strict set of checks and balances, imposing a supervisory and regulatory system with real teeth to ensure that the excess of greed and moral turpitude that motivates these despicable financial Slick Willy’s is controlled, we should stand back and watch as dog eats dog.

When this crisis first arose I was clear that the authorities should stand back and allow the stinking edifice to collapse. They want a free market? Let them have it. And under their rules, the strong will gobble up the weak (witness the battle between Citibank and Wells Fargo for Wachovia; there is plenty of dosh in the system to snap up a wounded competitor as Lloyds did with HBOS).

And what has government intervention actually achieved? Without exception, it has made matters worse. With every bailout, the Footsie and Dow have crashed. Why? Because these bankers are masters at conning the authorities. The more money our representatives slap on the table, the more it becomes obvious that so long as the market manipulates our purse strings, we’ll donate oodles more. A trillion dollars? Poo…if it was that easy to get congress to vote such a massive sum, why not squeal a little louder and get another trillion? And another…after all, this will keep the bankers safely in their mansions. It is only we, the people, who will suffer. We will have the debts. We will pay though higher taxes, increased unemployment, cutbacks in schools and hospitals and public services.

No, my friends. Let the chickens come home to roost. Let the banks deal with problems of their own making. Rather than invest time and, more importantly, OUR money in cleaning up the mess, we should roll back the clock, understand that we can no longer allow these reckless financial snake-oil salesmen to write their own laissez-faire rules and legislate a set of honest, honourable and legally binding laws to govern their behaviour.

After all, it’s our money, our lives - our future.

Eccentric

P.S. Want to buy the exclusive rights to sell Zippy Jello in your neighbourhood? Only a thousand bucks, and you could make millions. Give me a call, or better still, have a word with my agent, Henry Paulson…

Wot a load of bankers...

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:40:59 GMT

I’ve been meaning to post my take on the jolly-old goings on in the gilded palaces of Wall Street for some time, but whenever I’m about to put finger to keypad, another twisty-turny chapter unfolds.

Ultimately, none of what has happened in the past week has changed my underlying attitude - that we, the people, are being taken for one great, big gullible ride.

Everywhere you turn are newspaper articles elucidating in infinitesimal detail the so called ‘background’ to this ‘so-called’ crisis.

Bullshit.

We have passed through a decade in which traditional banking principles have gone to the wall, substituting blatant self-interest for customer services. Rather than offering interest for deposits and then lending this cash to borrowers at a higher rate and making juicy profits from the margin charged, banks became players in their own right, gambling on ‘investments’ offering a promise of fabulous rewards. Having gambled all our (the depositor’s) money, they then gambled money they didn’t even have, effectively issuing IOU’s to support their reckless trades. And to top it all, these latterday spivs paid themselves (and their institutional backers) huge bonuses based upon future profits anticipated from these dodgy deals. For instead of lending money (for mortgages or corporate buyouts, for example) and reaping a return over five ten or twenty years, the projected profits were immediately flogged off at a small discount to other banks together with the debts.

Bingo – money for nothing.

This is madness of the highest order. This is like a record company signing an act for ten thousand quid and immediately selling it on to another label for fifty grand before a track has been cut – cashing in on imagined profits rather than actually selling any records (sound familiar Mr. Branson? Wasn’t this Virgin’s business model in the 1980’s? And where are you now…?) Or to take another example, it was like developing an oil well with the potential to general a million bucks profit over twenty years and counting all the profit in year one (and paying handsome bonuses all round on this imagined profit). Which is exactly what Enron did before it was found out.

So what is the common link between Enron, our dodgy record companies and the banking system? Why, shareholders funds, of course. As long as the general public is pumping money into the corporate coffers, the scam works a dream and palms are greased all round. However, the moment this pyramid of phoney sales stalls, not merely does the process go into reverse, it collapses completely. Witness Enron. Witness whole swathes of record companies that suddenly disappeared into the maws of a few majors in the late 1980’s. And witness the current crisis on Wall Street.

So what is the answer? A Trillion Dollar bail-out? Bollocks. This is being foisted upon the gullible masses by spokesmen for the banks who are looking for yet more funds to support their lavish lifestyles. They offer nothing in return – it’s a one sided bargain – and merely claim that the alternative is economic disaster for all concerned. If so, then why not trade their debts for shares? Nationalisation or part nationalisation, in other words? Not a bit of it. They want the dosh without an ounce of accountability or anything of value in return.

This is blackmail, pure and simple.

So, what should we do?

The banks claim they want the market to rule, so let the market rule.

Let the weak go to the wall or be eaten by those who have stood aside whilst games were played. This is not an economic crisis, this is a banking crisis and I, for one, don’t care two hoots if a raft of banks collapse into cess pits of their own making. I don’t want my dosh to bail them out. Indeed, if I have any say over how government trillions are spent, I would rather donate every last, red, mortgaged cent to the third world. This would have infinitely more beneficial long term results for me, for you – for us all. A trillion dollars invested in Africa would pay massive dividends over the next decade for the world economy, and therefore for everyone. But if half of Wall Street goes bankrupt tomorrow, how will I suffer? Will mortgage rates or interest rates go through the roof? No. Competition will ensure continued equilibrium in the market place. It always has, it always will. Sure, money may become harder to get for risky ventures, highly geared leverage buyouts (watch your back, Guy Hands…Citibank are getting twitchy) and the like, but for crying out loud, it was all this greedy rampant financial nonsense that got us into the present mess in the first place.

Wall Street wants our trillions so they can carry on playing money games and feathering their corporate nests, not to reintroduce sanity to the money markets.

So let the investment bankers rot in their own empty vaults. It will make not one jot of difference to you, to me, to the man next door or to Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. We were never players in the fat cat’s game, and I’m damned if we should pick up the tab so they can go back to the roulette tables and pocket yet more phoney bonuses for doing less of a job than a workaday postman or a street cleaner or even the average jobbing musician, come to that. We can do their jobs in our sleep, and a damned site more responsibly, I bet. I doubt they can do ours.

So I sit on the sidelines chuckling as the panic mounts. And if I know one thing, it’s this – if Wall Street collapses it will make not one jot of difference to the likes of you or me. Life will go on and in six months time, we’ll have forgotten all about this ‘crisis’. But if we offer up our hard earned taxes to these greedy usurers, we will suffer. Other, far more vital, public spending will have to be cut to pay for featherbedding the banks. Schools hospitals, third world debt, social security and other essential services required for a civilised society will be starved of funds, and why?

Because we gave the bankers all our dosh, that’s why.

And what will they give us in return?

That’s right. You guessed it. Fuck all.

Erewegoagain...

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:03:25 GMT

Several months ago, I massaged my Funky crystal ball and predicted that we would shortly see a nasty, a very nasty, bout of inflation in our industry.

And yeah, so it came to pass.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been deluged with revised price lists from our suppliers, with increases ranging from seven to fifteen percent on resale prices. Why?

Well, it’s the economy, stupid. Or rather, we’re experiencing the front end of Hurricane White House – the ripple of the forthcoming US election.

Over the past ten days, the US dollar has appreciated against the pound by twelve percent, and almost as much against the Euro. And that means that anything made in the grand ol U.S. of A now costs bucketloads more than it did a fortnight ago. And bearing in mind that China has tied its currency to the US, Chinese imports are similarly expensive.

So why has this happened?

Gas, my friends. Gas and hot air.

Oil is priced in dollars. For years, the US government pursued a policy of ‘benign neglect’ (Alan Greenspan’s words – Chairman of the Federal Reserve – not mine). The US authorities were not merely happy to see a weak dollar, they actively encouraged it. Why? Because a weak dollar made US goods cheap overseas, which in turn kept American businesses busy and therefore maintained low unemployment. In other words, the reasons were political.

The results were twofold; firstly, US goods, products and services were comparatively cheap when compared to products from elsewhere. In our industry, we’ve seen a virtual takeover of by our Yankee friends. Universal, Manley, Apogee, Lynx, Avalon, Shure, Retro – the list goes on and on. All this gear undercut homegrown audio of comparative quality, such as Neve and SSL , and came to dominate our market. Even the Japanese found they couldn’t compete, particularly as cheap goods from China flooded in.

It might well be argued that we in the UK actually exported jobs by outsourcing to China (as have Focusrite and others) or leaving the Americans to take our market by default. But now that the dollar is gaining strength almost daily, the chicken McNuggets are coming home to roost. Bigtime.

Unemployment no longer matters to Bush and his cronies. A strengthening dollar will, of course, lead to a dramatic reduction in overseas sales of US goods, but the repercussions won’t be felt in the US labour market for many months. In terms of the forthcoming election, though, one factor and one only offers enough votes to see the Republicans back in office – petrol prices at the pump.

Oil is valued in dollars. When the US dollar was weak, oil producers hiked the price. After all, their dollar payments bought less goods and services, so therefore they needed more of them to maintain price parity. Inevitably this led to higher and higher prices at the petrol pumps and murmurs of discontent that have swelled to almost revolutionary proportions. And with a presidential election less than two months way, dramatic action was needed to slave the baying crowd. And the fastest way to reduce gas prices? Strengthen the dollar, of course.

And so it came to pass. Bush and Cheney have opted for a short term fix that will cause long term economic chaos. In exchange for the vote winning fix of cheaper petrol prices, they have stabbed the US manufacturing industry in the back. Can Boeing complete with Airbus in the world markets now that costs are effective fifteen per cent higher? And closer to home, will you and I still want (or be able to afford) that new Bricasti reverb now it lists at £2300 rather than two grand? Because 15% is a LOT of dosh in these post credit-crunch days.

Sadly, UK and European manufacturing won’t benefit, even though prices of UK goods are now twelve per cent cheaper in the major US market. Why? Quite simply, because (as I said earlier) we’ve exported our manufacturing industries to the USA and China. Apart from a reinvigorated SSL and the innovators at Prism Audio, we now produce precious little that the rest of the world wants. Neve have spent five years struggling to survive and can barely cope with the present trickle of demand for their excellent products, let alone the uplift that must now come. Other than that, we have a few cottage industries – EAR, Ridge Farm, Mosses and Mitchell – but nothing like the revered audio industry that once ruled the (air) waves.

So be prepared to find your wish-list stretched to the limit. But rest assured that not merely will we Funkies cut prices on new gear to the bone wherever possible to help your increasingly hard-pressed budget, we’ll continue to refurbish and recycle the best of yesterday’s gear to offer quality beyond today’s best offerings at a fraction of the price.

But in the long term, watch out. What we are seeing in our tiny backwater of an audio industry is being repeated on a massive scale with manufacturers and retailers up and down the country. If you think the cost of food, of gas and electricity or of mainstream products have risen sharply of late, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Add to that the fact that Bush has effectively pushed the biggest recessionary button imaginable for the US economy and hard, hard times lie ahead.

For as they say – when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches pneumonia.

So now is perhaps the time to focus on using your gear rather than buying more. And this makes us muso’s the lucky ones. After all, it costs nothing to write a song and as I pointed out in my last entry, if you have to, you can master your tracks for peanuts.

Let’s get back to reality after a decade of easy living, and play, write, record and gig. After all, not merely is that what we’re all about, it’s how we can spread a little sunshine to our fellow sufferers as a new age of economic gloom descends. And of course, if you happen to have a Stateside hit, your royalties will be twelve per cent higher. And that can’t be bad…
Eccentric

Sarah Palin...a letter to an American friend

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:25:58 GMT

Sarah Palin has arrived from nowhere and has given McCain a shot of monkey glands that he very desperately needs. As in any walk of life (pop music, politics, television) a fresh face with a degree of charisma causes a stir, and she has certainly done that.

However...

Sarah now embarks upon a honeymoon period that may be short lived. Having burst onto the scene, she will now be placed under a stronger spotlight than any other politician in US history, and how she copes with such a bright glare may well determine the outcome of the election, particularly as it seems likely that McCain's team will place her upfront in their campaign.

Obama and McCain have spent twelve months proving themselves in a brutal primary campaign, with every inch of their lives and personalities attacked, examined and scrutinised by the world's media, to say nothing of their opponents. This is a strength of the US election system that we lack (even if it sometimes means that the wealthiest candidates triumph on occasions). To expect a relatively young and innexperienced mother to step into such a ferocious and explosive cauldron without setbacks is a big, big ask and the pressure of expectation is, in my opinion, far too high. Sarah is mortal, whatever the excitable politicos may want us to believe. Moreover, you and I both know the effect that overnight fame can have on human beings, particularly if they aren't able to have any private time aaway from the media glare. Some personalities thrive, but others become 'drunk' with their own hype.

I think we're in for a fascinating two months. It could go either way - Sarah could maintain her momentum and become an election winner. McCain is gambling on this as to be honest she brings a bunch of negatives to his campaign, not least of which is that she makes him seem very, very old and tired in comparison with her energy. Two months of trying to keep up with the dynamic Obama (who's strategy will be to try to make McCain work 20 hours a day and fly thousands of miles a week) may well take their toll and frighten the electorate that a 72 year old is too muich of a risk in the White House. Hence McCain's strategy of putting a young and energetic running mate on the ticket; a clever move and perhaps a necessary strategy. But this then makes his running mate perhaps the most important VP candidate in US history.

This is one hell of a responsibility for any individual. Her family will be watched every second of every day. How will they cope? There seem to be a bundle of human problems in that particular nest. Can Sarah abandon her family for two solid months of electioneering, knowing that the press are camped on her daughter's doorstep 24/7? And will Sarah become TOO confident, caught up in the hype?

I watched much of the convention last night. You know, there was an extremely unsettling undertone to many of the speaches, particularly from female delegates, as if the genie of female liberation had been released from the political bottle, to a far, far greater extent than I ever saw with Hilary Clinton. Add this to the aggressive attacks upon the 'political establishment' and there is a very serious danger of alienating large elements of US society that the Republicans will need if they are to win.

In other words, the danger is of going over the top and being too aggressive in attacking a) the male establishment and b) vested political interests. Remember - ultimately whether for good or bad, the political power brokers and media moguls are male and have vested interests to protect. And if the shadowy powers that be want to take Sarah down in the next two months, they will.

As I say, we have a fascinating time ahead of us. Any my ultimate opinion? Well, I think that there is a really strong chance that the Democrats will sit back and watch the Republicans implode. I fear that the new Republican's tactics may well alienate an awful lot of their natural supporters without making inroads into Democrat territory. For the first few weeks, it may look as though the Republicans are making ground, but one false move or scandal (whether real or concocted by the tabloids) and the stategy could backfire bigtime.

From here, it looks as though McCain has committted to a massively risky strategy and has no plan B.

Let's see how long the honeymoon lasts...

M

>
> What did you think of her speech?

> Please excuse my spelling errors while on my handheld.
>
> Thank you
>
> Michael Nehra

Cheap as microchips...

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:35:28 GMT

The starting point of my most recent cluster of entries was a promise to outline a recording rig capable of professional results, but costing around a grand.

It can be done.

Most, but not all, of the following suggestions will be for used gear and, of course, the usual cautions apply; make sure any equipment you buy is in decent working condition and carries a money back or repair warranty. For our purposes, gear must work faultlessly, but I’ve plumped for bit and pieces that are generally reliable.

First, a couple of caveats. For my purposes, I’m assuming that I have a room in which to house the gear or at least an unoccupied corner of the bedroom or living room. I’m happy to invest a few quid in some old, heavy-duty velvet curtains from my local charity shop to deaden unduly reflective surfaces but other than this, I’ll have to rely upon the room having no obvious vices. Secondly, I’m assuming that I have a chair and basic table upon which to plonk the gear. Thirdly, I’ll generally be tracking one take at a time or two at most. Although my rig will be perfectly capable of recording drums and backline, I’m only budgeting for a couple of mics. Finally, my budget won’t include instruments. However, given a few more quid I’d probably invest in an old Yamaha drum machine (RX11 or similar) and early midi keyboard to programme. (Add £100 or so for these and £50 for an Atari computer with Cubase)

So here goes….

I’m going to start with the ubiquitous Alesis Adat. Indeed, I think I might well be able to squeeze a couple into the budget. Now before you all turn up your noses, bear with me.

The Adat is capable of excellent results, despite having been discarded by the thousands in this new, computer age. Indeed, the Adat converters actually sound better than many modern stand alone converters, and I know a lot of sussed recordists who are still using old Adats to get in and out of their computer/hard disc recorders. And because droves of musicians and engineers have discarded Adats, they offer the ideal bargain recording media for our paltry budget. Indeed, although I’ve allowed only £200 for our recorder, I’m pretty sure I could pick up a pair for this amount giving me sixteen tracks of decent digital recording. And remember – the Adat sounds a great deal better than the original Sony DASH machines such as the 3324 and 3348, which were responsible for many multimillion selling albums in the 1980s. We can also add additional Adats ad infinitum down the line to increase tracking capacity if we need to.

So the Adat it is.

How do we get in and out? Well, I’m a desk man and am going to allocate three hundred pounds for a mixer. Indeed, if I root about I might even save a hundred quid on my main choice – a Soundcraft 200.

Soundcraft made great little desks in the 1980’s. Fully modular with high quality external power supplies, decent mic pres and four band swept eq, the 200 offered eight, sixteen, twenty four or thirty two inputs and eight groups, eight fx returns, decent (VU) metering and a solid, well defined sound. Sure, they weren’t Neves but compared to most modern small desks, they shone. Costing between three and six grand new (in an age when you could buy a respectable new car for seven thousand) these are good sounding and low maintenance machines.

I’m pretty confident that given a little time and research, I could pick up two Adats and a Soundcraft sixteen or twenty four channel Series 200 (or even better, a Series 400) mixer for a total of £500.

There – I’ve invested half my budget but in return have an excellent sixteen-track console and recorder, perfect for tracking and mixing. Now to splash out on…

I want two mics. One will be a bog-standard Shure SM57, perfect for micing up guitar cabs, snare drums and even acoustic guitars, sax, clarinet and a variety of woodwind and brass. Fifty quid should get me a clean used example and a further fifty quid should provide two decent used mic stands and a couple of good leads. But what about vocals and the like? Well, in all my many years recording, I have to say that the cheapest mic I’ve come across that offers top quality professional results is the Audio Technica 4033a. This is a superb and vastly underrated condenser, very much like early AKG C414’s. I’m amazed that it is so often overlooked in favour of more expensive but vastly inferior mics. Irrespective of fashion, though, I’m going to put one in my rig, despite the lavish £170 price ticket – the only new item in my list.

So now I’ve spent £500 on a desk and recorder and £270 on mics, stands and cables (and I’m going to cheat a little by pretending that I got a bunch of cables thrown in with my Adats, sufficient to rig the desk and machines). So this leaves the princely sum of £230 for outboard and monitors.

Gulp.

I popped around to my local junk shop yesterday and hey presto – sitting in the corner were a pair of Gale hifi speakers and a Pioneer stereo amplifier. After some haggling I got the price down to £50 for the entire system. So that’s my monitors sorted, and very nice they sound too. Sure, they’ll take a bit of getting used to but I still have a decent pair of headphones (Beyer DT660’s) kicking about (another cheat) so I do have a point of reference.

Next stop is Cash Converters with my remaining £180 burning a hole in my pocket. My goal is ambitious, sure, but not impossible. And in a corner I found everything I need for basic processing and mixing.

Top of the pile I spotted an Alesis 3630 dual/stereo compressor/gate for £50. I’ve long regarded the 3630 as a bargain. Based upon a DBX VCA, this 1U compressor sounds good enough to track vocals or guitars (in limiting mode) or slam over a mix.

Next in line I stumbled across a real gem – a Fostex spring reverb (again 1U) for £30. Indeed, I had a choice between the Fostex and a similar spring made by Realistic. I plumped for the Fostex but also scooped up an old, original Alesis Quadraverb at £40. Finally, lurking at the bottom of the pile, lay an unprepossessing Powertran delay. Indeed, I had a choice between the Powertran and an early Yamaha 1010 bucket-brigade analogue delay. At £30 each, I was tempted to buy both but that would have cleaned me out completely, and there was one more effect I needed – an eq. And there it was, in the hifi rather than music section – a Marantz hifi graphic eq. Now graphics are about as trendy for recording these days as flared trousers are on the dance floor, but I can’t work without one. Given reasonable desk eq (which the Soundcraft has), a graphic enables me to boost or duck troublesome frequencies, reducing bass guitar ring, accentuating snare drum crack or tightening flabby kick drums.

So there we have it – a basic but professional recording rig for exactly a thousand quid, comprising;

DESK Soundcraft Series 200 24-8-2 £300
RECORDER 2 x Alesis Adat 8 tracks £200
MICS Audio Technica AT 4033a (new) £170
Shure SM57 £ 50
2 x mic stands and cables £ 50
COMPRESSOR Alesis 3630 dual/stereo comp/gate £ 50
REVERB/fx Fostex Spring reverb £ 30
Alesis Quadraverb £ 40
DELAY Powertran £ 30
EQ Marantz dual 11b graphic £ 30
MONITORS Pair Gale with Pioneer amp £ 50

For exactly £1000 I picked up a complete recording rig capable of decent professional recordings. The main limitation is now my imagination, but given time, care, a couple of killer songs and the right voice, this is an investment capable of repaying my outlay a thousand times over.

What a bummer that I can’t sing…

Eccentric

Recording (and life) on a shoestring; part two

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:13:42 GMT

The nineteen-eighties whimpered to a close, ashamed, abashed.

I was pleased to see the back of such an infamous decade, and not only because of the particular problems that it had wrought upon my personal fortunes. For this was a forgettable era. Musically vacuous – who remembers Flock Of Seagulls with anything other than a sneer? – it was socially divisive and politically terrifying. Indeed, I would argue that today’s financial woes have their roots in to ‘Greed Is Good’ ethos propagated by Milton Friedman and Keith Joseph’s warped monetarism as propagated by Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Regan. Politically, it was a decade of superpowers vying with one another to develop weapons of ultimate destruction in the hope that one or other would be bankrupt in the process. At the turn of the decade, it appeared that civilisation would be the loser. And meanwhile, these same great powers demonstrated their irresponsibility by pursuing foreign policies apparently designed by Don Quixote. Thatcher tilted at Argentinean windmills in the South Atlantic whilst Regan laundered arms to his arch-enemy, Iran, to fund an illegal war against Lilliputian South American democracies, most notably in Nicaragua.

All in all, the 1980’s were a shameful decade and I, for one, was glad to see the back of them. They had provided the soundtrack to a monumental collapse in my business, my dreams and my health. However, I emerged into 1990 with renewed motivation in the shape of a musical collaborator, Helen Rider, and the most modest of home recording rigs, based around an ancient TEAC 3340 recorder and Spartan Roland six-channel mixer. But the results excited me, not least because they showed the promise of better things to come, if only…if only I could fill a few gaps in the rig and somehow upgrade here and there…

That’s how it starts, isn’t it? I guess we’ve all been there. Indeed, I suspect that even the Powers That Be at Abbey Road are desirous of yet more bits and pieces to fill imagined gaps in the racks. It’s human nature, I guess – something I’ve christened ‘The Train Set Syndrome’.

Not merely was I broke, but apart from a few occasional consultancy gigs, as a single parent I was pretty unemployable. Much of my working life had involved long hours, frequent long-distant travel and lengthy period in the studio or on the road. Now my diary revolved around the kids, their schooling and their various problems. I wasn’t interested in accepting the handcuffs of state handouts, so had no alternative but to find some means of income that I could generate from home.

In a twist of fate, my new interest in recording provided an answer, initially on a modest basis but before long on a level that I could never imagine.

In those dim, pre-eBay days, the bible of sellers was a daily buy-sell rag called ‘Loot’. Initially I picked up an occasional copy to see whether there were any affordable bits and pieces I could buy to add to my humble recording rig, but very quickly my strange, methodical brain realised that the ‘for sale’ and ‘wanted’ columns were bristling with anomalies.

For example, way back then Atari Computers Ruled, OK? I had even acquired one and became quite proficient (programming a Yamaha DX21 drum machine picked up in a junk shop for £20 with the Prophet 2000 sampling keyboard kindly given to me by my former client and friend, David Lord – the keyboard he used alongside a Fairlite on Gabriel’s Fourth album. The accompanying sound library was amazing, needless to say).

One day, I was flipping through Loot and noticed half a dozen desperate punters advertising for Atari 1040ST’s in the ‘wanted’ section of the music pages. As I casually flipped another forty or fifty pages, I stumbled upon the ‘Games’ category and to my amazement saw that the columns were bristling with…you guessed it, redundant Atari 1040ST computers.

Hmmm…

That was when I hooked up with Mad Mark (whom I had also met through Loot when selling a mic). A partnership was formed. Mad Mark had a car and I had a phone and a sales patter. Mad Mark would buy Loot at King’s Cross Station the evening before it officially hit the street and I would call all the Atari sellers from the games section and arrange for Mad Mark to drive round and buy their unwanted machines, usually for fifty or sixty quid. I’d then call all those looking for machines in the Music pages and we’d punt them out for perhaps a hundred and fifty squibs each. On average, I guess we bought and sold half a dozen machines a week. So, hey presto…suddenly I had an income stream.

I was used to living on the breadline, so was soon able to build up a small reserve of capital, which allowed me to spread my trading wings. My background in the music industry meant that I had widespread contacts with producers and recording studios, and so had a ready market for the various bargains I bought from the pages of Loot – BSS and Urei compressors, Roland Dimension D’s and the like. Sales built up and before long I was asked to find homes for surplus gear for my producer and studio friends, as well as root out specific items they were looking for.

Utterly by accident, I had a bone fide business on my hands.

All the while, I continued to devote every spare minute to writing and recording at home for my weekly vocal sessions with Helen. My financial means remained modest so every addition or upgrade to my rig had to be carefully considered – very carefully. However, by the early 1990’s a steady throughput of recording gear was coming in and out of my life, which gave me the opportunity to put a wide variety of gear through stringent tests. If it delivered a result, it stayed in the rig and if not, I sold it on.

It was an excellent learning curve, and one that has held me in good stead.

Many of my favourite bits and pieces were quite unexpected. For example, I desperately needed an electric guitar for tracking guitars. Being broke (and a guitar snob) I couldn’t afford what I really wanted, but stumbled across a cheap Strat copy with the embarrassing name ‘Marlin’ stamped on the head. Surprisingly, it played OK. Even more surprisingly, it recorded beautifully and had a kind of pure, clipped Mark Knopfler vibe. Two years later, I sold the guitar for seventy quid (a twenty pounds profit on my purchase price) but regretted it the moment I played back an old demo featuring the distinctive Marlin sound. For months afterwards I peppered the buyer with higher and higher offers to buy it back, finally being told to bugger off when I offered two hundred quid. Apparently he’d fitted new pickups and didn’t want to part with it at any cost. In any event, I wanted the original guitar with the original crappy pickups. I wanted THAT sound.

I miss that cheap plank of wood with strings to this day. I’ve tried other cheap copies but none have that special vibe. I guess I learnt a lesson back then – it ain’t the name on the tin, but what the tin contains that matters. Always trust your ears over reputation.

There were other lessons. For example, the first compressor I bought (from ‘Loot’, for £40) was made by a company called Ashley. As I became more versed with quality compressors, I came to appreciate that unprepossessing little baby more and more. It was a simple, unfussy VCA compressor but one that I would happily use today, irrespective of budget. Indeed, when I decided to put together a writing rig in my spare room a couple of years ago, I picked up a couple of Ashley compressors to sit in the rack. These days I guess I probably have the pick of anything I want, but I chose the Ashley units deliberately. They deliver without fuss or complaint, and more and more I am drawn to gear that is well designed, simple and sounds good. I leave the fiddling to others. My concern is the song, the performance and gear that won’t screw up.

Within a year I had picked up the first of several Chiltern desks and a mint condition, high speed Soundcraft one-inch eight track. My vocal chain comprised a Neve 3118 (to all intents and purposes the same as a 33114 mic pre/eq) and a Summit Audio TLA100. My monitors were Phillips Motional Feedback (found for £80 in…in Loot, where else?). Effects were limited, but hey – I was to later learn that less is more. My eventual rig was (is?) so over the top that it gets in the way more often than not (see the ‘London Sound Laboratory’), hence my decision to get ‘back to basics’ with a modest recording rig.

Meanwhile, my foray into trading recording equipment had taken an altogether unexpected turn.

The first major breakthrough came out of the blue one day when I heard on the grapevine that a sound hire company – Samuelson’s - had gone bust. I spoke to the receiver, got a list of available gear and presented the best bits to John Arbiter, owner of Turnkey in Charing Cross Road. He was receptive to buying a dozen Soundcraft mixers, ten pairs of Bose speakers and the same number of Yamaha power amps, a package that came to around twelve grand which offered a profit of…let’s see…yes, this would give me a net profit of three thousand pounds – a fortune beyond my wildest dreams back then (1991).

With trembling hands, I asked the receiver to send me an invoice and upon receipt invoiced Turnkey. Two days later, the cheque arrived. I banked it with instructions to express and arranged to collect the gear from Samuelson’s a few days later. However, the next day my bank called. Turnkey’s cheque had bounced, or rather it had been stopped. I was in an impossible position, having agreed to buy nine grand’s worth of gear with money that I now no longer had.

I called John Arbiter (an extremely nice but shrewd guy, now sadly missed) to ask why he’d stopped the cheque. He was friendly, but concerned. He’d had second thoughts, he explained. He didn’t really know me, and this was a lot of money for gear he hadn’t seen. For half an hour we discussed options until John agreed to visit Samuelson’s warehouse with a briefcase full of cash. If the gear was all present, correct and as described, he would pay me cash.

In hindsight, he was perfectly sensible to view the gear before paying.

I was on my uppers. I had one pound to my name, literally, and this was enough to buy petrol to get me to Wembley to meet John Arbiter and examine the gear, but not enough to get me back. In other words, if the deal didn’t happen, I would have to abandon my rusty old Volvo at Samuelson’s warehouse and walk ten miles home to Holloway. But I had no option.

I drove off into the unknown.

John Arbiter was a man of his word. He walked around the warehouse ticking off the items on his invoice. ‘Fine’, he said. ‘It’s a deal’. I showed him to a small office where he snapped open his briefcase and counted out twelve thousand pounds – two hundred and forty crisp fifty-pound notes. I doubt that my hand has ever shaken as much as when I counted them out before walking next door and handing the pile to the receiver, pocketing three thousand pounds on the way.

I left that warehouse with a mixture of elation and guilt, a spare mixer and two power amps in my car boot, waiting for a tap on the shoulder. I couldn’t believe that either John or the receiver wouldn’t race out and stop me before I left, demanding that I hand over at least part of what was more money than I’d handled for years.

They didn’t, though, and that evening I paid off my rent arrears and cooked my kids a slap up feast. More to the point, I now had sufficient working capital to buy a decent mic and invest in more stock for my rapidly growing business.

The next seminal deal was equally unexpected and similarly crazy.

Several months after the Samuelson’s score, I was contacted by Southern Television who wanted to sell a warehouse full of redundant sound equipment.

The head engineer was extremely friendly as he showed me around. Of immediate interest to me were three Neve desks, a 1970’s Melbourne and two later 51 series sound consoles. I had buyers who would pay me upfront for these, giving me a reasonable profit so I offered STV twelve thousand pounds (my lucky number after the previous deal) for the desks. However, my offer was refused, but on rather strange grounds. STV were only prepared to accept an offer for ALL their redundant gear, which literally included a warehouse full of Studer recorders, DDA desks, Tannoy monitors and…oh, the list went on and on. They weren’t prepared to sell the Neves on their own. ‘OK,’ I said, half joking. ‘I’ll offer Eleven thousand for everything.’

‘Done…’ came the reply.

‘You have been…’ I muttered and put the phone down.

The problem was, where to put the stuff? I had effectively been given a mountain of decent audio equipment but I was based in a small upstairs flat in the Holloway Road. And that was when I stumbled upon a dingy, empty basement store beneath the rambling Von’s recording studio in Liverpool Road, five minutes from my flat. I took a peppercorn lease on the basement and within two years, occupied the entire building.

Fate. At every stage in the strange nascence of Funky Junk, fate played her fickle hand. Once more, serendipity had directed my life and this is how, by early 1993, Funky Junk was born, by accident and then necessity rather than choice or design.

But I digress…the point of this meandering entry was supposed to be a description of my recording rig and it’s growth over the years. That must now wait until another time, or rather, I will revert to my original brief – a discussion of how I believe it is possible to assemble a home recording rig capable of professional results for around a grand. It can be done. Not merely did I do it, but I intend to do it again, not just as an academic exercise but as an attempt to return to my recording roots.

It’s a bonkers idea, but then life should be a challenge, shouldn’t it?

Well, mine has been for sure…

Recording on a shoestring - part one

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:17:29 GMT

It may be a platitude to describe the book of life as a series of related chapters, but it is one to which I subscribe. I can point to a series of distinct and varying episodes in my journey through this vale of tears and sincerely hope that more lie in wait.

One of the joys of my peculiar life is the uncertainty that lurks around each corner, in part because I’m motivated by curiosity and an enthusiasm for exploring the unknown but also because more often than not I foolishly rush in where angels fear to tread. My northern stubbornness refuses to accept the impossible or take no for an answer. I would rather take risks and suffer the consequences than live, lamb-like, in an illusion of mundane security.

What is the saying? Ah yes – nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Platitudes rule, OK…

One factor has united the various chapters in my life – music. In my teens I played around folk clubs in the midlands, venturing as far south as The Chalk Farm Roundhouse in Camden for an unexpected solo gig filling in for a missing headline act. Then came my jazz phase which lasted half way through college before I reinvented my musical leanings and hit the road with various rock and roll bands. Having paid my Spinal Tap dues, I then earned a pretty decent crust as a jobbing session musician in theatres and recording studios for several years.

After a while I stumbled sideways and for much of the nineteen seventies found myself designing and building large PA rigs, ultimately running a sound hire company and doing tour production for many of the wacky Two Tone acts, including The Selecter, Bad Manners, Burning Spear (Winston Rodney), Stray Cats, The Beat, Haircut 100 and even the early Duran Duran.

Another twist of fate took me into management and record company work, first with my own label – Public Recordings – then with A+M in London and ultimately as a consultant for EMI, MCA, CBS, JVC Victor and a bunch of other majors around the world. I recall that in 1984 I made over forty international flights, ultimately choosing airlines based more on their dinner menu than the convenience of their schedule. Indeed, by the mid eighties I guess I was flying high (excuse the pun) with an international reputation and a rosta of managed artists and producers that regularly hit the higher echelon of the international charts.

Always watch your back, particularly if you have something that someone else wants. My fall from grace was dramatic, confusing and painful - incredibly painful, orchestrated by an avaricious record company, two naïve and greedy artists and a pair of crooked solicitors. It was an experience that I would have given anything to avoid at the time but now value above all else. I leant more about myself during the following five, dark, years than I could have imagined. Most of all, I emerged at ease with who I am. It was a difficult and painful process, but I suspect that all such lessons come at a price.

But what a price…

For reasons that I couldn’t understand, my business and even my very existence were threatened by powerful music industry forces. Sure, I know this sounds melodramatic but it is true. As I was battered from legal pillar to post, dazed and utterly confused, I found myself at the centre of an extraordinary affair that is genuinely stranger than fiction, although a fictionalised account will one day see the light of day – fictionalised purely to avoid the litigious attentions of a certain Mister Richard Branson. Believe me, the mid to late nineteen-eighties were a very, very strange and utterly confusing period of my life.

For several years I inhabited a netherworld of depression and mental despair, passing my time by studying law, trying to work out what the hell had happened to me and more to the point, why? Over the course of three years I became an expert in partnership, contract and copyright law, to the point where I found work as legal affairs advisor in a couple of fairly substantial television and record companies. And more to the point, my obsessive researches finally allowed me to unravel the fraud that had destroyed my life and business so suddenly and dramatically.

As well as scraping a living from occasional consultancy projects, I continued to manage my close friend, the producer David Lord, and will always take satisfaction that during a period when half a dozen music industry moguls and their crooked solicitors used every effort to drive me from the business and although effectively blacklegged from the UK industry for reasons that took me years to work out, David and I enjoyed massive hits around the world with a series of album productions that enabled me to finance my battle and pursue my legal studies, ultimately allowing me to fight back and recover both my sanity and self respect.

Sorry if this thumbnail account sounds a little crazy, but I recount the bones of what was an extraordinary story merely to explain how I stumbled into the fascinating world of home recording, initially on a shoestring - or rather, on the tiniest sliver of shoe-thread.

As the eighties ground and slithered towards a close, I was lost in a world of legal preoccupations bordering on obsession, my brain shrouded with the cotton wool of depression as I unpicked the horrendously complicated legal paperchain that lay at the heart of my downfall and subsequent problems. Although I managed to pay the rent on a small office, one of a suite in Harley House occupied by a dozen disparate music management companies, I was as broke as a man can be, having been fleeced by several lawyers and stiffed by a series of clients (but never by David, one of the most talented and generous souls I’ve ever encountered in this industry). I lacked motivation or direction, though, and was in a bad way, wallowing in the mental sludge that carpets the slough of despond.

Enter Helen Rider, the pretty sixteen-year-old receptionist for our Harley House office suite. I heard her singing in the kitchen one day, and was immediately impressed by her voice. In an unguarded moment, I commented that we ought to record a few tracks together and…Helen held me to my word.

That throwaway comment and Helen’s refusal to allow me to back out of my promise was an unexpectedly seminal moment and the start of one of the most extraordinary chapters of my life.

Shortly after my brief kitchen conversation with Helen, I handed in the keys to my Harley House office. On the eve of a major production, David encountered career threatening problems of his own, and my last regular stream of income dried up overnight. Added to this, I unexpectedly become a single parent when my estranged wife disappeared suddenly, leaving me to take two problematical teenage sons under my wing, the three of us shoehorned into my tiny top floor one-bedroom rented flat overlooking the dirty, noisy Holloway Road. So that’s how I entered 1989 – broke, in debt, effectively jobless and income-less and responsible for two confused boys. Everything I owned was sold to try to pay the rent including my precious guitar collection, leaving me with two acoustics (including my old Epiphone Texan), my Beuscher alto sax and a Yamaha flute.

To say that times were grim is an understatement. Most of all, I lacked direction or motivation. And then, out of the blue, I received a letter from Helen asking, nay demanding, that we get together for the promised recording sessions. And then she phoned. And then she came round and dragged me to the pub, refusing to take no for an answer. She intended to come around again in ten days – a Sunday – and I’d better have some backing tracks ready to work on…or else!

Helen wasn’t to know, but her actions were more akin to the kiss of life than the kick up the arse she intended. Suddenly I had a mission that would fill the vacuum in my life – a dream, no matter how far fetched, to fill the void of depression and obsessive introspection that filled my waking hours.

But how to record? I had no gear. Sure, I’d engineered in one shape or another for much of my working life. I had been a good live sound engineer, with countless tours of the UK, Europe and the States under my belt. I’d often produced the demos for the bands I’d managed and had even engineered and produced an album by Roy Harper. But I didn’t regard myself as a sound engineer. And to be honest, I remain of the belief that engineering is best learnt through experience or apprenticeship rather than academic courses. Engineering was always an adjunct to a number of my other activities in the industry – tour production, management, songwriting, demo production.

I examined my assets, a quick and easy stock-take as they amounted to my Epiphone acoustic, a nondescript electrified classical guitar left over from session muso days, my sax and flute, an AKG D190 mic, stand and cable and a cheap hifi with a Rotel amp, a cassette deck and pair of cheap Mordaunt Short speakers. Excluding my instruments, the entire value of my recording gear was probably less than a hundred quid.

I needed more to get going but I could only scrape together £150. However, that was enough to pick up an old (and pretty knackered) TEAC 3440 four track open-reel recorder. That damned machine would break down at regular intervals, as the spindle worked loose from the capstan motor. The first time it went, it took me six hours to dismantle, tighten the spindle with an Allen key and reassemble. The fix lasted a week or two before the spindle worked loose again. Within a couple of months I’d got the fix time down to six minutes, so the slipping tape assumed the realms of an inconvenience rather than a disaster. Other than this, though, the machine sounded great and the quality was such that as long as I thought ahead, arranged my songs carefully and recorded well, I could bounce tracks half a dozen times and multitrack pretty sophisticated stuff.

So I was half way there. What I now needed was some kind of mixer and an effect or two. Well, I worked out that I had a superfluity of acoustic guitars – two – but only needed one. I’d rather part with my left arm that my treasured Epiphone, so the decision was easy – the classical jobby would have to fund a mixer.

I hotfooted it to a gaff called ‘The Notting Hill Tape And Music Exchange’ and waved my surplus acoustic under the nose of the proprietor. He was singularly unimpressed and needed twenty minutes persuasion before he agreed to take it in trade-in. How much? I asked… ‘Fuck all’ came the answer, accompanied by a nod towards a small selection of bits and pieces in Crap Corner. A further ten minutes of haggling resulted in my leaving with a Roland six channel mixer (input level, high, lo, pan and a rotary fader times six) and a Korg Stage Echo – a copy of the Roland 301 space echo. The Stage Echo had tape echo, a spring reverb and phase.

So this, then, was my first recording rig - a TEAC 3440 tape machine, simple Roland mixer, Korg tape echo and reverb, AKG D190 mic and my Epiphone acoustic, all plugged into my cheap hifi with a cassette machine for mix down. My total cash outlay had been £150 plus maybe £100 value of existing equipment and the same again in trade in - £350 or so. Studios don’t come any more basic than that…

In the next five days I recorded in every spare second I could grab, the gear set up in the one small room I worked and slept in. Tim and his younger brother, Joel, now occupied what had been my tiny living room and the minute 12 x 6 kitchen served as a communal cooking, dining and living space.

When Helen came for her first session the following Sunday, I had four backing tracks ready. Every now and then I go back and listen to those simple tracks. They were four sensational songs. One day, I’ll record them properly. But they also sounded good. Oh, sure, the quality wasn’t up to the glossy home demos churned out by today’s bedroom recordists, but there is a charm and vibe to those tracks that I remain proud of to this day. Indeed, plenty of others have heard those songs and complimented them (with Helen’s sweet but timid vocals; she had a great voice, and over time it blossomed but even on day-one the potential was apparent). Ultimately, the song is always more important than recording quality, but the recordings did justice to those early tracks. Maybe the short signal path of the Roland mixer helped (the old, ‘less is more’ routine). Sure, my old Epiphone always records beautifully, and over the years has been borrowed by a dozen leading artists for their albums. The AKG D190 remains one of my favourite dynamics, and I still advise beginners to buy some decent used hifi speakers for £100 or less rather than lash out money they haven’t got on posh monitors. Indeed, I used to take Mordaunt Short MS20’s to studios when I mixed and more often than not, the house engineers would go and buy a pair after the session. After all, Yamaha NS10’s and AR18’s started life as hifi speakers, didn’t they?

Use your ears and talent rather than getting bogged down by snobbism. I had no choice, of course, but I still adhere to that principle.

I was recording. I was writing again and recording. Suddenly, I had a purpose and bit-by-bit my dreams returned, and with them, a new motivation and appetite for life. For the first time in years I looked forwards, not back.

It was a turning point, in more ways than I could possibly have imagined. Of course I regarded my simple little recording rig as merely a means to a creative end. But before long, it started to grow and it became more. Much more.

Much, much more.

But that’s a tale for another day…

Ted Wank Endorses Frumpty Vale Compressors. Buy one now!

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:19:54 GMT

I spend a great deal of time advising clients on which equipment they should consider for a variety of projects. In fact, this is only half true. The reality is that I spend as much time trying to persuade them not to lavish their hard-earned bucks on lengthy wish-lists of boutique audio monstrosities, invariably gleaned from hours spent trawling misinformed audio chatrooms and Swanky Yankee websites.

I guess I’m a pretty lousy salesman, really. Or, to put it another way, it isn’t in my nature to fleece gullible friends or strangers.

Let me elaborate.

Pro audio appears to have taken on the role enjoyed by esoteric hifi in the 1970’s. Whereas recording gear should be valued according to its practicality – in other words, in terms of performance – increasingly a whole generation seems more concerned with the ‘Wow factor’ (flashy lights, chunky knobs, jam-packed but unnecessary features) than the actual audio quality. A raft of gear has hit the market in recent years that is, in truth, second rate in terms of delivery, third rate in terms of design and fourth rate in terms of internal construction all hidden behind a facia that is more eye-candy than sense. There seems to be a belief in certain quarters that the bigger the knobs, the ‘fatter’ the sound. And all this (mostly US made) kitchen-table gear is hyped up on internet chatrooms by wannabe’s who appear to have nothing better to do with their time than rave about the latest fad, fashion and boutique name splattered all over glossy magazines and websites.

This makes the Emperor’s New Clothes look positively tweedy.

The other aspect of this latterday Audio Lemming syndrome is the four page list bristling with all the juiciest high-end processors but utterly devoid of everyday staples. Almost daily I get wish-lists spec’ing long lists of Manley, Tubetech, Chandler, Shadow Hills, Cranesong, Retro Labs…every box coming in at over two grand. When I attempt to point out that this is the equivalent of walking into a restaurant and ordering Steak, Lobster and Pheasant but no vegetables, the client often gets upset, as if I’m impugning his financial status.

The point is that an overabundance of high end, tube or transformer balanced beasts will not produce a decent sound (it will, however, send the electricity bills into the stratosphere, zap the Ozone layer and warm the control room up a treat). Great though a fat vari-mu compressor may be on vocals or bass, it sure won’t do your drums, your guitars or (if you’re recording hard rock, R+B, Hip Hop or Rap) anything else in your mix any favours. A few juicy bits and pieces will spice up the sound, but it’s the everyday gear – VCA comps and simple desk eq – that will do most of the work. There can’t be a classic album out there that didn’t get crafted using a bunch of DBX or Valley compressors (or SSL/Neve dynamics) – everyday veg rather than rump steak. Why is the Urei 1176 such a ubiquitous beast (or the modern day equivalent – the Disstresser)? Because simple, fast, controllable VCA comps are unbeatable for 80% of applications. And VCA technology is much, much cheaper to manufacture than chunky tube or class A units, with expensive valves and transformers.

So go for a balanced, rig, I advise my customers. Not merely will you save dosh, but the sound will be cleaner, less ‘woolly’ and the rig will be more versatile.

Usually the client takes my comments on board and we then work together to revise and redraft his spec. Invariably he finds a lot of money is left over from his initial budget and if so, I advise him or her to keep it in the bank; get up and running and then see where the gaps are (if any). Or get a week or two in the sun somewhere – you’ll need it after the stress of building your studio. Sometimes, however, the customer takes offence, as if I’ve insulted his vast experience and months of painstaking internet research. Oh, I ask, have you actually listened to any of these units? No is the invariable response, but Ted Wank endorses the Frumpty Vale compressor. His picture is splashed all over the internet and grins up from the pages of Pro Sound Hype, cheesing at the reader, urging him to lash our five grand on a Frumpty or six. Yes sirree…a happy, happy bunny. What Ted doesn’t mention, though, is that Frumpty Vale gave him a couple of their rubbish compressors in return for his gushing endorsement. How do I know? Because I traded them in the day after Ted’s photo shoot for the ad for a couple of Universal 1176’s that he actually used on that number one mix.

So think before you unload your life savings on a pile of fashionable audio poo that will clutter up your racks for the next few years. You can get top class pro results for a fraction of the outlay that the manufacturers try to convince you to part with. How do I know? Because here at Funky Junk we put together the studios in which those hot, hot, hot albums are made. Last week, three of the top five UK albums were made in studios advised and equipped by us. We know what is really used and how to install to get the best results. And it ain’t Frumpty Vale compressors. Or any number of the other new kids on the block that dominate the chat rooms.

All of which got me to thinking - what would I buy if I was equipping my recording rig from scratch today, and on an everyday budget, what’s more? I’ll let you know next time round. The answer will probably be as illuminating to me as it might be for you.

Happy Daze…

Eccentric

Don't say I didn't tell you...

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:54:56 GMT

It’s been a long time since I last put my blog-pen to paper (or rather fingers to keypad).

Too long.

Time has been compacted for me of late, what with the major distractions of clearing, servicing and reselling mountains of equipment from Townhouse in London and Plus XXX Studio in Paris and the world has moved on dramatically since I last wrote. In particular, the media is now full of tales of pending economic gloom as if civilisation as we know it is teetering on the brink of collapse.

Bullshit.

I would hope that any readers of these occasional thoughts shares my scepticism – nay, cynicism – of the press. Newshounds love nothing more than an opportunity to depict an everyday problem as a major crisis. They revel in doom and gloom, rubbing their snouts in the trough of despair at the slightest sniff of blood on the tracks. And so their prophesies of disaster become self-fulfilling. If enough hacks talk the economy down, then the economy will take a tumble, irrespective of the realities of the marketplace.

I make no claims to be a prophet, but if any regular readers of this blog exist they’ll know that so much of what has come to pass was predicted in these pages last year. Should I take credit for foreseeing the decline in house prices, the jump in inflation, the chaos in the financial markets, the travails of Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown? No. Of course not. For any objective observer, the writing has been writ large on the wall for months and months and months, clear for anyone but the blind to see.

I take no credit for spotting the obvious.

So what is the reality of our current economic uncertainty? Pretty simple, really, if we apply a little common sense.

The US money markets are still reeling from the fallout of unmitigated spivvery – the inevitable result of greedy financiers flogging mortgages to an economic substrata that was never truly able to afford to repay. These dodgy debts were then packaged into flaky ‘financial instruments’ and unloaded on other banks around the world, snapped up by greedy traders seeking a fast buck to inflate enormous, easy-peasy annual bonuses. And so a bunch of chancers made a fast buck at the expense of those who could least afford it – hard working men and women who had been peddled the false dream of a place of their very own.

Of course, these ‘sub prime’ mortgages were paper tigers, unsustainable and inevitably doomed. And as customers defaulted, firstly with a trickle and then with a torrent, the lending banks discovered that an uncomfortably large proportion of their assets were secured by rotten fruit withering on a drooping vine. The fallout spread like a virus, infecting the good along with the bad. Banks closed their wallets, credit became tight and reality returned to the money markets. The trouble is that these markets were already out of control.

Suddenly the banks panicked, no longer able to differentiate between the good, the great and the Goddamn useless. Shares fell as investors steeled themselves for bad news, and this in turn encouraged the banks to pull the plug on any and every iffy loan on their books in a mad rush to get as much cash back into their heaving vaults as possible. After all, if their shareholders anticipated the worst, why not bundle up all the bad news into a single year and rid the books of any potential blips in the pipeline? And so we have seen string of overextended High Street retail chains collapse as their financial backers have moved in to recover their investments. We will see dozens more in the coming months – furniture chains, white-goods stores, major property and building companies and more, all doomed not because they are fundamentally unprofitable but rather because lending has become uncool at exactly the phase in the economic cycle when many businesses most need their bank’s support.

Unemployment will rise, not because it must but rather because greedy and incompetent financiers are desperate to protect their own jobs at the expense of others.

In our industry, we have seen the collapse of the Sound Control chain of music stores (including Turnkey and Media Tools) for just this reason – the bank pulled the plug because it could. What Me Worry? you might expect me to say. But no. Reviewing the receiver’s accounts, I was horrified to see that over £800,000 of customer deposits and payments have been lost in the crash (to mention nothing of over £8 millions of supplier’s dosh) and four hundred jobs have been lost. The bank got its twenty million, though (or most of it at least). This will cause a lot of pain and have far-reaching repercussions in the High Street. But there is more to come, even in our tiny industry. Expect more bankruptcies. Take care.

Don’t invest in EMI, my friends. I’d bet my bottom dollar that the banks and investment funds will force a garage sale of assets before Christmas, Coldplay or no Coldplay.

One swallow does not a summer bring.

And what of house prices? Sure, they’ve fallen by maybe ten per cent in the UK over the last six months. Which means what? Well, this means they are back to level that prevailed last summer. Big deal. With any luck, they’ll fall by a further twenty five per cent over the coming eighteen months, but that will merely return them to the level they commanded two or three years ago (but will hit the avaricious buy-to-let market like a hurricane, and not before time) To become affordable for the average wage earner, property prices need to fall a good deal further than that and I hope they do. Current levels are, quite frankly, insane.

There is, however, one looming evil that stalks the economic highway, and this is inflation.

Here in affluent Europe we’ve generally enjoyed a period of deflation over the past decade. The explosion of low cost manufacturing in China, the Far East and India has actually seen falling costs, year on year. We know this from our business. Chinese audio products have offered useable gear at a fraction of the price of Western made kit. Add to this the falling dollar (deliberately engineered to maintain US employment but destined to seriously undermine the US economy in coming years) and we gear-junkies have enjoyed a purple period of cheap kit. But this is coming to an abrupt end.

Our experiences are typical of the UK economy as a whole. Everywhere cheap goods have subsidised living costs. Fridges, televisions, computers, cars, cutlery – you name it. Just about every manufactured product imaginable has fallen in true cost, ensuring inflation remains negligible and living standards have risen. But all that is about to change, big time.

Why?

Two main factors are now causing prices to rise at alarming levels.

Firstly, the developing economies are entering a new phase. Workers are demanding a share of the new prosperity in China and India. Rather than being the workshops for the rest of the world, consumerism is the new religion in these economies. Having undermined manufacturing in the West by super-cheap exports, prices will now rise without fear of competition. Add to this a burgeoning home demand in producer countries and prices over here can only go one way – upwards, and fast.

Secondly, the international financial markets need new ways of turning a fast buck. Having milked the property market dry, so called ‘investment banks’ (speculators) are now pumping money into other essentials, and in particular energy, raw materials and food. Oil and steel prices have doubled in recent months, driven to a small extent by increased demand from China (largely offset by reduced demand in the stagnating west) but to a much larger degree by greed on the part of speculators. These bloated financial funds buy a large part of the world’s raw material and energy supplies in advance in the sure knowledge that the investment will deliver large and fast profits. After all, it’s the oldest economic trick in the book (as Adam Smith predicted two hundred years ago in his ‘Wealth Of Nations’); corner the market in any essential but finite commodity and you can command massive profits from hungry consumers. Literally, in some cases.

Worryingly, these same financial gamblers have turned their attention to the most basic of all commodities – food. The world must eat, so how better to make fast bucks than to buy (‘hedge’) future harvests and force the price up to customers who have no alternative but to pay?

There is no better example of this callous strategy than the sugar market. There is currently a glut of sugar on world markets – far more supply than demand. But because speculators have invested so heavily in sugar crops, prices have doubled on the wholesale markets over the past year, not because demand outstrips supply but rather because supply is now controlled by financial middlemen who see staple foodstuffs as an opportunity to make large profits. It’s the property scam all over again, but with more serious repercussions.

And the result? Starvation in the third world. We in the west can cut back on consumption to stretch our budgets but for those struggling to survive on subsistence income, any increase in food prices brings starvation. But surely (you might say) if commodity prices increase, then farmers in the Third World will receive more for their produce so incomes will rise? Not a bit of it. The price increases don’t trickle down to the producers, but rather sit in the wallets of the middlemen, the moneymen and financial speculators who buy the crops in advance (with borrowed money) and resell at inflated prices.

This, rather than the credit crunch, represents the greatest threat to international stability in coming years and until the financial markets are regulated to limit the distortions introduced in the name of mammon (profit) the third world will grow poorer, not at the expense of the consumer in the west but rather to enrich the financiers and speculators.

And when this bubble bursts, as it surely will? More recession? Another financial crisis?

You better believe, my friends.

We ain’t seen nothing yet…

Eccentric

Mic pres; a typical response to a typical enquiry

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:26:29 GMT

Thanx for your call.
There is such a bedazzling variety of gear on the market at present that I find it hard to advise, particularly as (in my humble experience) 70% of it is merely a different flavour of gum.
You're experienced and have a clear idea of the sound your after. Like me, you prefer simple, straightforward discrete transformer balanced mic preamps. I've been fortunate enough to own a 1970's Neve for the last fifteen years and having tried all the new kinds on the block, have yet to discover anything that I prefer to using the desk pre's. Sure, I do like to fatten the sound with a compressor or limiter when tracking and reach for a selection of eq's and comps when mixing, but I do worry that too many people overcomplicate the front end in the seach for a holy grail that doesn't exist; the starting point must always be the instrument, the musician and the song and if these delliver then most good quality mic pres will deliver a satisfactory result.
In terms of Neve/Neve type clones much is written and said but nothing can substitute for listening. This is why we offer demo units of various products, including a two way rack housing a Neve 1073 reissue and the Brent Averill equivalent. The Chameleon Labs is a decent and cost effective means of achieving a similar result, although the old adage that yer gets wot yer pays for holds true; it outperforms anything close to its price range but doesn't profess to be a fully blown Neve.
API are often classed as the American Neve, as they have the solid, transfomer balanced sound typical of 1970's designs and fast transients that make them ideal for drums. They are coloured in a typically 'American' way, but it's a pleasing colouration. The 3124+ is excellent value, particularly if tracking drums or an ensemble.
Tube mic pres can sound great on acoustic instruments and the Universal 2-610 (or M610) is an excellent unit (again, transformer balanced). For clean, relatively uncoloured recording the Millennia is the preferred choice for a lot of classical and jazz recordists.
Ultimately, though, beauty is in the ear of the beholder which is why we operate a loan scheme. The choice is massive in the present market, though, although in my opinion the true options are limited. We'd be happy to send a few units out on dem according to your requirements.
Cyberegards
Mark

Mark Thompson
Funky Junk Ltd
Unit 10
407-409 Hornsey Road
London
UK
N19 4DX

tel: 0044 (0) 207 281 4478
fax: 0044 (0) 207 263 9186

http://www.proaudioeurope.com

Rip It Up And Start Again

Tue, 20 May 2008 18:37:26 GMT

I watched a very moving documentary last night about the rehabilitation of Edwin Collins, singer, songwriter and general all round eccentric.

Edwin’s fortunes became entangled with mine back in…I guess it was probably 1992. Maybe 1993. Hazy days. Hazy daze.

I stumbled across the perfect studio premises in Wood Green one fateful afternoon, during the course of my high tech totting. The incumbents were moving on, victims of a previous recession, and like a shot I took over the lease. (I later bought the freehold, but therein lies another story). I was developing a recording project with Flipper (Helen Rider whom some of you may also recall from Funky Junk) and my mate, ex Tears For Fears drummer Mannie Elias. The studio was the perfect base to work from, but I needed a co-inhabitant to share the time and rent to make the tenancy viable.

I knew Edwin, having sold him a bunch of stuff including a lovely vintage Neve from Thames Television. In those days he was down on his luck, having no record deal, no budget to record and living with his wife, Grace, and baby William in a dingy rented flat. It seemed the logical way forwards – to pool gear, pool resources and timeshare in the Coachhouse.

I won’t recount what turned out to be a costly and frustrating mistake on my part, other than to say that over the course of a year, I had no more than eight weeks recording time and stumped up far and away the bulk of rent and other costs. C’est la vie. It was a learning experience, and as these things always are, a valuable one. Edwin not merely managed to earn a living from taking in paid sessions, but also made his hugely successful comeback album during that year (‘Never Met A Girl Like You Before’ etc). Far from being resentful at having effectively subsidised his project, I was (and am) delighted that our studio played host to a purple patch in his recording career. Because Edwin was basically one of the good guys in this largely rotten industry. Sure, he was self-centred (and what successful musician isn’t? You have to be to stand the knocks and negativity the industry throws at you) and he had a tendency to get a little bit too loud when he’d worked his way through a bottle or three of Scotch. But he was a true individualist, preferring the song and the vibe to perfect intonation or tuning (ouch!), taking risks to push his talents to the limit and forcing his music to be heard when the business didn’t want to know.

I would hardly say that Edwin and I parted as best buddies, but I think there was understanding and respect on both sides, even if a little dust had to settle before perspective returned. Although not following his career closely, my respect continued – continues – and in my silent moments I wished him and Grace well.

I heard that Edwin suffered a serious brain haemorrhage three years ago, but wasn’t aware until last night of the extent to which the stroke debilitated him, or the superhuman efforts he’s made since then to rehabilitate both his life and his music. I doubt that any of us could begin to conceive of how petty the world of pop music is when contrasted to the real life experiences of so many of society’s helpless and disadvantaged, so when someone we know so well from his years in the public spotlight struggles to overcome such adversity, the reality of life’s pitfalls come home to a much greater extent than would otherwise be the case. Edwin lost almost every facet that we take for granted, including (at first) the ability to speak, to coordinate or even use his arms and hands, the ability to read (only just returning) and, most crucially for a lifelong musician, the ability to play the guitar or perform.

Happily, a support network centred around Grace – his wife – and highly skilled therapists backed by sheer, dogged determination, has enabled Edwin to start to long road back to the studio and revive the semblance of a creative career.

It was a moving documentary, particularly (I’m sure) for those like me who knew Edwin personally. He was (is?) a fiery character, determined and self motivated to a far greater extent than most, even most musicians. Sure, he’s prickly and spiky at times, but talent deserves a few more tolerances than us mere mortals should be allowed.

What struck me most was a degree of humility and appreciation of others that had been lacking in the Edwin Collins I once knew. Having suffered many pitfalls myself in years gone past (though nothing like to the extent of Edwin’s appalling illness) I can appreciate that greater understanding can often follows a collapse, and in a perverse fashion, we can see more clearly after we climb up from the bottom of the abyss and peer back over the edge of life.

It will be interesting to see how Edwin copes with his ambitions to return to writing, recording and performing his unique brand of music once more. It’s just possible that this nightmare experience may result some very special insights into his fellow man. Indeed, his best work may yet lie ahead. I hope so, but irrespective of his future musical output I wish him and Grace well.

No, I wish them more than that. I wish them peace, happiness. And love.

Eccentric

RIP Townhouse and Plus XXX.

Sun, 18 May 2008 17:10:48 GMT

Every time I de-rig a major studio, I do so with mixed feelings.

Very mixed.

Unlike many, I have little nostalgia for the past. Townhouse may well have been one of those bastions of the London recording scene that gave birth to a string of classic albums, but so did they all. No. The past is history as far as I’m concerned, and all recording studios are ultimately no more than bricks and mortar.

Only humans have a soul.

My greater pain is for the present, and particularly for the hardworking professionals who struggled to breath life into what is invariably a failing business. Having trodden that route myself in the past, I know only too well that this is a hard, hard road to travel. And Townhouse was typical of the dozens of studios that have faltered in recent years. Under the hardworking stewardship of Al Stone and kept alive by the skill and commitment of Bob Stewart, the excellent maintenance boffin, Townhouse nearly made a go of it of late, despite being a Brontosaurus in an age of the sleeker, fitter reptiles who are now populating the Jurassic Recording Park.

So why did the Townhouse and Plus XXX fold? Simple. Just like all those other penthouse apartment blocks named after large recording studios (Wessex and Swanyard spring immediately to mind) traditional studios occupy prime real estate in the development zoos of London and Paris. All of ten years ago Mike Vernon sadly told me that the price he’d been offered by a developer for the freehold of his Blue Horizon Studios in Chipping Norton was more than the studio could generate, even should it continue to trade for a hundred years. No matter how emotional the bond with his studio, pragmatism demanded that he sell and invest the proceeds in getting on with life outside the suffocating music biz. And as one of the production greats of his generation (remember ‘Nineteen With A Bullet’?) today’s glossy manufactured music scene no longer held an attraction for him. Ultimately recording studios are about music and if the song no longer motivates the heart, the equipment withers into nothing more than fancy nuts and bolts.

Recycle and be done with it.

Major studios in London or Paris are no longer viable by any stretch of the commercial imagination. On the one hand they can’t generate sufficient profits to pay the ludicrous rents and rates commanded by large spaces in such prohibitively expensive cities, and on the other more and more work is following artists and producers into smaller, more cost-effective private facilities. In between margins are pinched, rates grind along subsistence ruts and rooms wallow unoccupied for long stretches of time.

The crunch came for Townhouse when the landlord demanded half a million pounds be spent in ‘reparations’ – repairs and renovations to what had become a neglected building. This, on top of several hundred thousand pounds in annual rent and rates, led to a quick decision on the part of new owners, BMG Records, who had inherited the business when they bought the assets of the Sanctuary Group. Subsidising recording facilities played no part in BMG’s plans so the writing hit the wall. Of all the possible options, the least problematic and most cost-effective for BMG was to let Funky Junk buy the gear and use our professional expertise to decommission, service, renovate and resell. Our margin represented the experience and expertise we applied to what was acknowledged to be a mammoth task. Oh, and a modest return on our substantial investment of course.

As I said at the outset, I have mixed feelings about clearing such facilities. I’ve already expressed my regret at the human consequences of seeing professionals lose a home that they’ve invested so much of their life and talents in building. On the other hand, though, this is what I do – buy equipment, service and resell. I was recycling gear long before the word became a hip addendum to the daily vernacular. And the larger the project, the more demanding the challenge and the more satisfying the outcome. With a ten-room complex such as Townhouse, the skills of my team – head tech Steve Culnane, new boffin Matia Salvatori, warehouse manager Maurizio and a team of hardworking grunts supported by freelances such as Peter Higgs and Sean Davies – shone through a gruelling two-week task. And as soon as they’d finished removing the equipment, the engineers went hard to work carefully servicing each and every item prior to shipping to a new home.

I can confidently claim that there is no other business in Europe that could have coped so efficiently with the task of decommissioning and removing such a vast inventory of gear with so little disruption to the studio infrastructure and subsequently servicing this almost endless stream of gear prior to redistributing to new homes. Of more than 300 pieces of outboard and mics shipped thus far, only one has come back with faults, and this was because customs opened and damaged a tube compressor (and when I say opened, the idiots actually took the thing apart and prodded about inside!). So I take my hat off to Steve, Dave Way (our mic and vintage supremo), Matia, Simon Flynn and Lincoln for their hard work, attention to detail and talent.

I write this on Eurostar as I travel to France to commence the task of stripping yet another major four-room facility, Plus XXX in Paris. In many ways, the wheel has come full circle as I first became involved with recording hardware (buying and selling rather than using) in the recession of the early 1990’s. Then it was The Mill, Lillie Yard, Thames Television, STV, Great Linford Manor and a dozen other studios and facilities that were hit as the money men demanded repayment of their easy loans. Things are not too dissimilar now, as once more filthy lucre calls the shots. In between I’ve been involved in decommissioning Lansdowne, Battery, Louis Studios in Belgium, SABC in Johannesburg (nine vintage Neve consoles), and many more around the world. Each brings new challenges and all add to my experience. It's not as easy as you might imagine, beleive me.

The difference between the last decade and the present is that back then the basic economic model of recording studios was sound, even if the financial model was often anything but. Now, to be honest, the rational for major facilities is gone. The few remaining traditional studios are treading water. Some may survive as much out of sentiment as anything else – for example I hope and pray that Abbey Road and Air Lyndhurst live forever as monuments to an altogether different age. As for the rest…I hate to see studios close, but there is no alternative. The industry has changed and changed for good, maybe in every sense of the word. Recording is now more accessible and democratic. A skilled musician or engineer can now express himself or herself without recourse to expensive, intimidating rooms stuffed with wall-to-wall gear. Indeed, here at Funky Junk we spend our lives advising upon and equipping facilities for musicians and producers, most recently Magic Numbers and The Fratellis. Ultimately, this makes sense. A prime example is the private Coldplay facility. We were privileged to be asked to supply most of the gear for their new headquarters a couple of years ago, a relatively modest affair in relation to what they could have afforded. They wanted hands-on control in a private space where they could develop ideas and let the music breath before committing it to tape or disc, free from the pressures of budgets, clocks and schedules that had plagued the previous album and nearly split the band. It is a credit to that vision and their longsuffering house-engineer, Rick Simpson, that despite mixing the album in half a dozen major rooms with several famous engineers, the mixes that ultimately made it to the final cut were largely done ‘at home’, by Rick. Good on yer, mate.

So, then – what was the ultimate reason for the demise of Townhouse?

Because it could no longer justify an existence on any meaningful level in a fast changing world, that’s why.

Evolution always leaves extinct species in its train. Only the fittest deserve to survive.

The ancient regime is dead.

Long live the new kids on the block.

Eccentric.

The Times They Are A-Changin`. Still.

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:40:41 GMT

One of my pet hates in life is blaggers who start a blog and then drift off into
Cyberspace, abandoning any unfortunate readers they may have picked up to their own devices.

If it seems that I’ve joined that unsavoury crew, please accept my apologies. In fact, I’ve been slaving away at my desk for fourteen plus hours a day, seven long days a week for the last month. Why? Well, largely due to the massive Townhouse Studios inventory purchase (and I’m afraid there won’t be an auction for all those waiting eagerly, wallets poised.) The full and gory details will follow shortly.

Lots has happened during my cyberabsence.

To start with, poor old Red Ken has been booted out of office in the London Mayoral elections, probably a big mistake, but time will tell. Arrogant and high and mighty though he had become, he did a lot of good things that have been overlooked in the (predictable) backlash against the deputy headmaster who is fast screwing the country. Take it from me – Gordon ‘Chubby’ Brown’s days are numbered (as I said three months or more ago). Not merely will he be remembered as a disastrous Prime Minister, but the truth of his stewardship of the economy will be recorded in history. Rather than guiding the country through a golden age, he pandered to speculators, property sharks and fraudulent statisticians to gild what was, in fact, a somewhat tarnished lily. Our economy didn’t boom. Indeed, manufacturing and real jobs collapsed faster than a pricked balloon, the reality hidden behind the bloated machinations of financiers, boasting massive profits when in fact their coffers were
Emptying fast.

Oh yes – the credit squeeze. In my book this has been exaggerated out of all proportions, providing a handy excuse for bloated bankers to squeal and write off large profits (and therefore due taxes), put up interest rates when the official bank rate is dropping and use the ‘crisis’ as an excuse to lay off dead wood.

And what about our small backwater of economic activity? As I know too well, the trend for big studios closing and small one opening is accelerating, keeping us as busy as we’ve ever been. And there is blood on the high street as Sound Control hit the dust, taking Turnkey with them. This is what happens when retailers pile on the discounts. Ultimately, the suppliers don’t get paid and the customers suffer. What good is your after sales support and warranty if your supplier is no more than a twinkle in the receiver’s eye? I’m sure Turnkey will remerge with new owners, but there are other bankruptcies around the corner, so take care.

I have masses to catch up on, so I’ll be back to examine recent events in more detail shortly. Meanwhile, keep them hits rollin` and I’ll see ya in the charts.

Eccentric

The London Sound Laboratory.

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:28:49 GMT

For far too long – ever since the closure of my old studio in Wood Green – for far, far too long my collection of recording equipment has hovered in limbo, homeless. Sure, items have been out on semi permanent loan to friends or clients (or clients who have become friends), but like orphaned children, the collection has been separated and disparate.

At long last, this has changed. In a joint venture with Andy Chatterley – the new owner of what was formerly Sweet Georgia Brown studio on the top floor of Funky Mansions at 407/409 Hornsey Road – a techno Phoenix has arisen and after months of wiring and rejigging, The London Sound Laboratory is finally up and running.

So, what exactly is The London Sound Lab? Quite simply, it is a room housing a rare and splendid collection of the wacky, the weird and the wonderful – vintage recording gear and analogue synths ready, waiting and willing to translate creative ideas into reality.

The name gives away the vibe. As opposed to most modern studios where a ticking clock determines the session and banks of computers strain the eyes, The London Sound Lab houses machines, processors, synth modules and devices that stretch the imagination and open new creative doors. Here is a unique space for musicians, engineers and producers to push the boundaries of their art, confident that their ideas will be captured with ultimate fidelity using a combination of the state of current and former arts.

So what makes this room so special?

Recording starts at the source. The LSL control room is comfortable and compact with tie lines linking to a spacious live area, easily sufficient to routine and track a ten-piece band, chamber orchestra or jazz ensemble. To help, the live area houses an upright piano, Hammond C3 and Leslie, Wurlitzer piano and a clutch of vintage Ampeg (Portaflex) Marshall and Fender bass and guitar combos. Needless to say, the mic cupboard bristles with the best dynamics, ribbons and condensers available, including a stonking Telefunken Elam 251 – the ultimate vocal mic (just back from a year on loan with Coldplay, where it captured the vocals on their new album effortlessly).

The control room sports a combination of timeless classics – half a dozen Pultec and Lang eqs, a rack of Neve, Quad Eight, Urei, Audio Design, Belcamon, Disa and Valley compressors, EMT 240, AKG ADR68k, Publison IM90, Eventide 2016, AMS, Lexicon and other reverbs and delays – in addition to some ultra rare and groovy devices. Numbered amongst these are a four channel Echoplex tape delay, Master Room and Orban spring reverbs, Decca mastering equaliser, Fairman custom buss compressor, Bluebird Cyclosonics panner and phaser, Gelf, Moog and Delta Lab phasey-flangey boxes, Mutron Bi Phase, Allotrope mic pre/eq and…oh the list goes on and on and on.

Hooked up to this electronic bouquet are a Neotek Essence desk and classic Neve 12 channel sidecar (with 33114 and 33118 discrete mic pre/3 band eq – the ultimate front end for drums, electric guitar and bass and general tracking). These feed a choice of Protools DH3, Nuendo (with Prism Orpheus) or 2 inch 16 track analogue. Needless to say, a pristine Ampex ATR100 half inch sits in the corner for mastering purposes. Monitoring? Name your poison…NS10’s, APS Aeon, Proac Studio 100; whateveryouwantwe’llbring. Oh, and fancy banging down a quick guitar track or two? You’ll find a neat selection of axes around the place including old 1960’s Epiphone (Gibson) six and twelve string acoustics, Roger Giffin Strat, Fender hockey string electric 12 and pre CBS Mustang six string, all specially selected as prime recording instruments. There’s even an electric mandolin lurking in the corner.

I doubt there is a better sounding selection of outboard and guitars resident in any other affordable UK studio. However, there is definitely no other collection of such esoteric sound sources in London.

In addition to the Hammond. Wurly, Piano, guitars, amps and Ludwig or Sonor recording kits, the London Sound Lab boasts an ultra rare selection of sound modules and keyboards including original Studio Electronics rack conversions – Midi Moog, Prophirack (Prophet 5 in a rack), Obierack (Obie Four Voice racked), Voyetra 8, OBMX rack, MKS80 with programmer, Solina strings, Arp Odyssey and more. In short, the room houses a strength of sound from beginning to end, from mics and instruments through midi to outboard to media to master.

The London Sound Laboratory has been designed as a space to make uncompromising records and push the boundaries of creativity, whether that be in terms of writing, programming, tracking or mixing.

Appropriately the first session, under way as I write, is by Nerina Pallot, engineered by Helen from RAK. I’m utterly gratified that such a creative talent should launch this special space and trust that this will be the first of many sessions that will ultimately give me and countless others endless listening pleasure.

The London Sound Laboratory is the culmination of years of careful collecting, the service and renovation skills of Dave Way and his fellow boffins and the enthusiasm of Andy Chatterley encouraged and assisted by Adam Crowe and Marc Dolley, my Funky friends. Last, but not least, thanx to Justin Marcus and Steve Culnane for efforts way beyond the call of duty in ensuring that the gear is installed with the same attention to details as the rest of the project.

A separate website will be on line shortly with pictures and a full list of the audio zoo. Meanwhile, if you want to have a look or even book the place for a week or two give us a call at Funky Junk.

Eccentric

Watch your back…here comes that old inflation thing again.

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:04:13 GMT

Pretty much every day now new price lists from suppliers are hitting my in-box and desk. They all share one creepy thing in common; new gear prices are on the up, big time.

I doubt that recording equipment is any different from other commodities in life. Sure, we’ve all winced when the new gas or electricity (or council tax or business rates) bills arrive. These are essentials that we can’t do without, and if our suppliers decide to hike the ante, we’re stuffed. Heat and light and…yes, and local authority fresh air…these are all essentials which must be paid. Food, too, is one of the necessities of life, and prices of wheat and other essentials have been edging upwards for a while, partly because these so called ‘commodities’ have become the latest ‘investment products’ for ever creative financiers. Buy-forwards – bet on rising food and commodity prices and it’s a cert they’ll go up. Supply and demand, and all that jazz. And if ‘investors' decide to chuck their clever money at sugar (as is happening, despite a massive world glut), grain, pepper or whatever, then prices have to rise in line with the wash of money betting on future price hikes. And who said the South Sea Bubble die two centuries ago?

But I digress. Kind of…

Recording gear is not a necessity. If your wallet is pinched by the essentials of life, then savings must be made elsewhere. And with AKG mics now costing 20% more (as of March 1st), Neumann Geffell up by 16%, TC, PMC, Beyer and a bunch more on the rise, then as night follows day, sales will stutter. So what? Nobody’s gonna die through microphone deficiency (well, maybe Dill Katz will toss and turn a little…)

Gearheadz have had it easy in the last few years. With a (deliberately) weak US dollar and the Chinese equipment invasion, prices have actually plummeted in the last three years. I can well remember many premium US brands costing up to 25% more three years ago than they do today (Manley and GML come to mind. Other UK agents have been greedy and merely regard cheaper imports as a way to make fat profits. I mention no names, but these importers know who they are.) And this trend may even continue. Why?
UK interest rates are amongst the highest in the developed world and they’re not coming down. Indeed, they may even go up as the basis upon which they are set is determined by inflation rather than the state of the economy. Although the government is muttering about 3 or maybe 4% inflation on the horizon, the reality is that we’re going to see almost twice that shortly. This is in part due to rising foodstuffs but a more important factor is the weakness of the pound against the Euro, making many of our imports up to fifteen per cent more expensive (witness rising European mic prices as an example). So what will happen is that interest rates will rise, bringing investment into the UK and in turn strengthening the £ against the US$$ (which in any event will slump over the next few months as the US economy stutters and Bush devalues the dollar to keep exports and jobs afloat as an election ploy).

It’s a mess, but there is an answer.

In my opinion, a lot of the gear around today is overpriced and over elaborate for purpose. I’ve long praised certain brands and pieces of gear that are both affordable and capable of uncompromising performance – Chameleon Labs, Edax, APS, Universal Audio, Brent Averill, Midas and many more. SSL are about to launch a cute analogue mixer at a relatively sensible price point and hopefully this will be a sign of things to come from other high end manufacturers. For years, audio designers have been pushing out gear aimed at vanity rather than performance. Now is the time to re-examine the basics and produce equipment that combines performance with price. And we, the users, need to fall back on our skill, talents and ingenuity rather than assuming that if we pay big bucks, the results will somehow be automatically better.

So tread warily. Buy recycled (serviced and refurbished used gear). Check the spec and not the price ticket. Get your wiring install sussed and fix those faulty bits of outboard. The majority of my customers can make great records with what they already have. And if gaps need filling, be cost-conscious.

I’ve never had dosh to splash about. My gear was always carefully assembled to a budget and according to my actual needs. And that’s not a bad training ground for advising others. Maybe that’s why I spend more time advising my clients how they can save money and get the best from what they have rather than hammering their credit cards. And maybe that’s why I drive a clapped out old jalopy rather than flit about in a new Beamer like so many other (nameless) audio dealers.

Eccentric