Bellacaster guitar. First time with strings on.

Your three things today

Ivy Audio has some really fantastic instruments for Kontakt. Voice, piano, and drums. The vocal samples are particularly nice and usable.

Check out the Arabesque by Tabletop Audio.

The Intonator for acoustic guitars. Honestly I wish they'd just make bridges with fully adjustable bridges for acoustics.

Nuts To You

I have spent way too much ink on these pages on guitar strings. But good golly it makes a difference.

But now I've made a video where I demonstrate 3D printed compensated nuts with uncompensated bone nuts, and Martin vs DR strings. Oddly, I'd completely forgotten that I'd already decided I didn't like Martin strings.

Microphone kits

Sweetwater did a 50-vocal-mic shootout. It's pretty dang interesting actually. Like these things usually go, some of the most expensive microphones are "meh" (I'm lookin' at you Telefunken) and some of the cheapest ones are pretty nice (Rode seems to go out of their way to do things the right way but also Audio Technica is pretty solid.) $329 gets you a ribbon mic kit from Austin DIY Ribbon Mics. That's with the Cinemag transformer. The T-47 from Micparts is only $369. And I think their tube version is only about six hundred. But honestly, will these mics sound any better than a cheaper Rode? I doubt it. I mean, I've been listening to my AKG C12A lately, and boy it sounds good. But so do my Rode NT1A's. And so do my Oktava 012 small-diaphragm mics.

Building a microphone would be amusing, I'm sure. And having a ribbon around might be fun and good times. But I'm not sure I'll be getting that much more, you know, of the stuff -- the dreams are made on stuff.

Your Tools and your Pie

Stereo Tool can work on the Raspberry Pi. Post processing for broadcast primarily.
Traktion also works on the Pi.
Women in ambient music. 

There are a strangely large number of bands called Diatomaceous Earth on Facebook.

All Trussed Up and Nowhere To Go

After many hours I finally discovered that as my Martin D-28 is a pre-1985 guitar (1980, specifically), it has no adjustable truss rod. I did everything, I even dropped my cell phone down inside with a flashlight to take video. It was like looking at video of the Titanic or some sort of verite horror movie. Anyway, no available truss rod.


That is a video demonstrating the lack of available truss rod. Could be from a horror movie, I don't know. Warren Ellison is a luthier in Vermont.

Pearl Studios

Pearl Studios is a rehearsal studio surprisingly close to where I live.

Floot is Oot

I tried to repair a cheap flute by putting new pads on it. This did not work.
It did, however, make an aesthetically pleasing mess.

Problems included the screws for the swivel-rods that connect the keys being so old they fell apart while unscrewing, and a need to shave down the cork which I was unwilling to do because of how frustrating that is.

European vs American threading

There is one irritating difference between US and European audio. The standard threads on mic stands. I mean, why is this?
Most boom poles and the like use the Euro standard.

What's the difference? Charles Poynton lays it out for you.

"Europeans don’t use a metric (SI) thread but a 3/8‑inch diameter thread – British Standard Whitworth (BSW), 16 tpi. The Whitworth standard specifies a 55° flank angle (typical of pipe threads), not the 60° angle of the Unified Thread Standard (UTS) or the the ISO metric screw thread. Abbreviated: 3/8″-16.
Many microphones having 5/8‑inch mount are shipped with an adapter that screws into the 5/8‑inch (“American”) threaded hole, and offers a 3/8‑inch diameter (“European”) threaded hole. Colloquially, this is a 5/8″-27 to 3/8″-16 threaded adapter."

The Opera

The story of the opera is basically Apocalypse Now, but it takes place in a world where the robots have won the war and now a combat android has to go to the New York City Containment Zone to kill an android that is systematically wiping out the last vestiges of the human race.

CNC Guitar Tutorial - Flipping over a 3D body

This dude makes some beautiful guitars. kozmguitars.com

It took me a while to comprehend the geometry starting with his glued-together block of wood. Boy these guitars look comfy.