Home
About Za
Links
Archives
|
A Musical Blog
- 02/27/04 Music:
Today i found a double disc compelation of french music. C'est Magnifique. Well alright that was a lie, out of the fourty songs on the whole affair i found ten worth owning. A couple of those were really really worth owning. Of particualr note are Ce N'est Rein (trans: This Is Never) by Julien Clerc and Thai Na Na (trans: Thai Na Na) by Kazero. A short excerpt of Thai Na Na is here (downlaod link to disc) or you can buy a comlpilation that includes it here compliments of amazon.fr. And though there are no samples of Ce N'est Rien you can see on The Essential Julien Clerc.
This really begs the question why aren't there more french imports into the american music scene? Kazero deffiently could have given Flock of Seagulls a run for their money. Well, i for one am going to go ask my local indie radio station to buy a copy of the disc and start playing Thai Na Na.
- 02/26/04 Music:
In order for this to make sense i should first explain that i have an obsession with old audio equipment. I often pickup old (read: busted) speakers just to salvage the crossovers, and have been known to cruise thrift stores looking for old childrens tape decks to make crude pre-amps and/or portable amps out of. It is this latter habit that i want to go over today, we are going to learn how to make nifty megaphones with only:- 1 old childrens tape player
- 1 1/4"(m) to xlr(f) cord
- 1 1/4 inch socket
- 1 microphone
- some solder
- and a switching button
The first step is to open up you brand new tape deck, it should look soemthing like this. The only wires we are going to worry about are the wires coming from the batteries, the wires coming from the tape head, the wires going to the speaker(s), and the switch wires. It might be tricky to tell the difference between the tape head and it's erasing counterpart, but fear not, the tape head looks like this while the thingy that erases the tape prior to recording looks like this. And how do you identify the switch wires? Well there will be two of them, typically the same color (not black or red), and they will be attachted to a switch that flips on when you press the play button. You can identify that switch by dissasembling the tape deck, as i have done here. Now cut all the wires going from the actual tape deck into the amp, take special care to leave the wires coming from the head and switch long while cutting all the others to the base. Good, finally you get to unscrew and remove the tape deck from the unit so it looks like this. Halfway there.
We start this stage by grabbing that 1/4 inch socket, a glue gun, some solder, elctrical tape, and a soldering iron. Place your 1/4" socket in one of the spool holes left empty due to the tape decks absence now solder the wires that came from the tape head to it, be sure to solder the black wire to the ground and the colored wire to the tip, like so. Wrap some elctrical tape around it, and glue it in place with glue gun. Repeat that in the other spool hole with the switch button using the switch wires (the order of wires doesn't matter there) and when you are done screw shut the whole assembly so it looks like this.
Congratualtions you are now all done. Buy this mic and this cord and you can stick it to the man like this guy.
|
|
