Bone and Arrow

31/10/2023

I'm not dead, I just moved to Hamburg. 🤓

This was my final recordingsession at the Studio in Basel in 2021. It took some time but it's finaly released. There will even be a video which will be realeased on 2nd of November on https://phosphor-kultur.ch

Next release by these awesome guys is already in the pipeline. Stay tuned for mor great music by Mild Crush

Our new single "Seaweed Lookalikes" is out now! 😱

The song is dedicated to the ocean and the wish to secretly disappear with your lover. 💘

Listen on the streaming platform of your choice!

Happy Halloween! 🎃

24/12/2021

The phantom power of the second channel of this Focusrite ISA two preamp cut in and out by itself. Since there's no schematics available and the majority of this circuit is on SMD boards there wasn't much I could do. The relays switch and the lights illuminate. The only problem I could imagine (and fix) was a broken XLR connector. So I resoldered all of them and finally tested by recording my backgroundmusic for a loooong period of time on a Condenser-Mic. How do you check repairs? 🧐

15/12/2021

Spent the day working on a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe made in Mexico. These amps are used by a lot of musicians as an alternative to expensive vintage or reissue Fenderamps. The flexibility gained through ading footswitchable overdrive and a master volume helps to make them a good compagnon in the everyday live. However some parts of it are not as reliable as you would expect it from a Fender amp so these have not the best reputation and this one needed to be modified a little.

1. I switched out the stock speaker for an Eminence Canabis Rex to tame high frequencies and give a tighter low end.
2. I added a jumper wire on the mid control to make the EQ more effective and a bit more vintage sounding
3. I removed a high pass around the reverb control to get a darker reverb sound at lower settings.
4. I replaced the plastic input Jacks with metal Jacks by Switchcraft.
5. Replace broken presence control
6. Filtercaps replaced
7. Plate load resistors replaced

Most of these mods are for personal preference or increased versatility, but the last two are because these parts are known to fail way ahead of their time in this particular model of amp.

01/12/2021

Got a much needed organisational upgrade for the workshop. Now one more for mics and DIs and I will never have to look for anything again.

21/11/2021

Low budget studiotrick #1:
As envious as I am about setup I stay on the poor-mans side of monitoring.

Those Yamaha speakers aren't even NS-10s but Ns-615s which are almost the same but didn't cost half as much (150€). The tweeters are a bit different but you can either adapt with the legendary toiletpaper mod (1€) or switch them out (250€). I just got used to it. (0€) The other speakers are some Denon Hifi Speakers I found when I moved a rehearsal room. They are quite the oposite of the NS-615 and produce almost no mid range. If I can hear everything well in both speakersystems, you can bet your ass it's going to sound well on earbuds, boomboxes and all the other great inventions the Hifi-industry brought us. The biggest downside to all this is, that my ears get tired VERY quickly and I have to take regular breaks from mixing to not mess everything up.

One day, when the money starts pouring, I will defenitely switch out those denons for some KH 310s though...

17/11/2021

Behold the inner values of Renato Matteuccis Hiwatt Custom 100 DR103. A true piece of british amp history. The amp has been moded and unmoded but needs cleaned potentiometers and a full set of new electrolytic caps. The way the wiring is set up in these amps makes them surprisingly quiet.

14/11/2021

This weekend I spend some much deserved time on this Nolan NBP-1. It's a fairly unknown brand from UK that built amps in the 1960s and 70s. This was the first amp I ever worked on. A friend of mine in Germany found it in am abandoned bunker and gave it to me. I took it from rehearsal room to rehearsal room and almost threw it away on the last move. Luckily I couldn't quite bring myself to really do that, so I told myself if I were to keep it I needed to fix it. That process of trial and error and learning the basics of electronics and safety is what got me started on working on amps. It was also one of the most dificult fixes for me yet, as this amp had been moded, then demoded and moded again. I also didn't have orignal schematics and kind of rebuilt it to Marshall 1959 specs. It sounds completely different though.

The design suggests a Hiwatt-amp, but the layout and tubecount don't match up at all. The transformers look a lot like partridge transformers though.

08/11/2021

I take fotos of most of the amps that pass through here, but today I have outdone myself.

06/11/2021

Finished quite a few repairprojects that started piling up at the Studio. A Marshall Valvestate 8004 Poweramp and AVT150H head both had burned out poweramp chips. The Peavey Classic 30 was only finalised as well as the 1976 Roland Jazz Chorus.

27/10/2021

Drumsetup from last weekends recording session with Crush

26/10/2021

After a busy weekend recording with .crush I went for some early morning reamping. It's starting to feel like a studio again.