Marking the Bevel

So. First step is to mark off and cut bevels on the front of the now-wooden-frame that you just glued. There is only one tool that can really do this well and safely. It’s a bandsaw. Get one, rent one, do something, but I really wouldn’t try cutting these bevels with any other tool.

The bevels

Cut your 1/8″ particle board so it’s just a little smaller (~3/16″ on each side) than the outside of the frame. The reason why you want it smaller is so that, when the tile’s finished, you don’t have particle board sticking out past the sides.

Cutting Cloth

Now, get your cloth, and cut a square that’s a little bigger (~4″ bigger on each side) than the frame. Iron it. I know most of us reading this will be dudes, but ironing is a good skill to have, and it makes ALL the difference on this project. Last thing you want is a huge crease down the middle of your foam tile.

The foam in the frame

OK, now get the foam, and make sure it fits in the frame. If it doesn’t, cut the foam with some scissors.

Put the foam and particle board aside for a sec, and put the frame on the cloth.

We’re basically going to be wrapping the frame like a Christmas present, and leaving the back open, so we can put the foam back in.

Wrapping the Frame

It will be tricky, and your first couple tiles won’t come out looking too great, but after a few, you’ll get the hang of it. Wrap up two sides, and then staple the extra from the inside.

Wrapping Corners

Next thing that will be a HUGE help is to cut some excess cloth off, as I have done in the ‘wrapping the frame’ picture. That will make folding nice corners waaay easier.

Mine came out pretty decent. It’d be nicer if those wrinkles weren’t there, but considering I’m a dude, they came out pretty good! The trick is to try to line up the fold with the corner of the frame. It’s tricky, but possible. Once you’ve got it, staple it down from the inside.

Gluing the Back On

OK, now we can put the backing on. Put the foam into the frame, and get the particle board, a nail gun (staples work too, but brads are nicer) and some aerosol glue. Sniff the glue——–just kidding! find a well-ventilated area. You know the drill. For the glue, you can use 3M Formula 77 or Formula 80 (? – the green can) glue, or special Auralex Foamtak glue. I’ve used both with no problem.  The Auralex stuff costs waaay more, though.

Coat both the foam and the bumpy side of the particle board with glue, wait ~30 sec, and then assemble. While holding it down, use the nail gun to nail the particle board to the frame.

The Finished Product

Once you’re done, drill a 1/4″ hole 1.5″ down from the top, right in the middle, hammer a nail into a nearby wall, and hang the tile on the wall. Voila!

The process is a little time-consuming, and quite tricky, but the end result looks very nice. Especially compared to what the raw (nicotine-yellow / ultramarine-colored) foam looked like!

So we're going from this.....

....to this.

The materials you’ll need are some ok-quality 8′-long 1x2s (they don’t have to be perfect, but builder-grade furring strips don’t quite cut it — you also need them to be exactly 2″ wide which furring strips are not), the foam (duh), some 1/8″-thick particle board, and some nice-looking, thin fabric. Add to that some tools and glue, but I don’t want to list all of that, down to how many nails you need. That’s not the point.

1'x1' foam tile

OK, first, cut the foam into manageable sizes. I made my tiles 1′x1′, 2′x2′, and 1′x2′. That way, there’s a nice variety. Makes things prettier in the end.

Now, you’ll want to cut the 1×2 into whatever lengths you’ll need…four 2-footers, two 2-footers and two 1-footers, or four 1-footers. The closer you get to perfect measurements, the better, but remember it’s all going to get covered up by the cloth, so don’t spend hours trying to get these cuts perfect.

Marking off the lap joint

Now, we’ll cut lap joints on either side. Quick math lesson, but if you want a lap joint using a 2″x3/4″ board, you’ll need to cut a notch in each board that’s 3/4″x1″. Here’s the setup, and the finished product(s). As you can see, I’m making more than one tile, not one weird octagonal one.

The cut lap joints. Next step: glue!

As you can also see, I like using Titebond II glue.  It dries fast, is pretty strong, and doesn’t do weird stuff to the wood.

Note that all of the boards look the same, and that they have the lap joints on the same side. It is SO easy to put the lap joints on the wrong side, and then you have to buy new wood. Not fun.

OK, now, using plenty of clamps, glue it up, and then measure the diagonals of your tile, to make sure it’s square. Both diagonals should be the same length. If not, bend/twist/torque the tile until they are.  Then let dry.

Clamping hte frame

And I’ll see you again when the glue’s dry.

Actually, one thing to note. I mentioned it before, but you don’t need to make the frame look like it’s made by a master cabinetmaker. It’s going to be covered by fabric. Make sure things aren’t too far out of whack, but if they’re off by up to 1/16″, it’s not the end of the world. The fabric will hide it.

OK, gotta run some errands and wait for the glue to dry. Peace out!

The TC-PDT's Krone head

ok, so I got my punchdown tool yesterday, and spent a little while (2 hours – HA!) punching some audio cable down. I think I gave the thing a pretty decent workout.

First of all, I’ll say it’s waaaay better than the screwdriver I was using before. It punches wires down very nicely, with a lot less effort and problems than the screwdriver approach.

That having been said, there’s good reason why the TC-PDT cost $16 and the one from Full Compass that I’d mentioned before cost $170. it’s a little tough to tell in the photo (sorry about the bad focus—cell phone pic), but it’s got a little chisel blade on the side of it, that’s supposed to cut off the wire, so it’s flush with the side of the punch block. It doesn’t work all that well. It sort of cuts off the wire, but kind of leaves it hanging, and if you punch the wire down at the wrong angle, you can shave plastic off the punch block itself. Whoopsie.

From what I’ve seen, the $170 tool has a little wire cutter at the end that snips off the wire, like a pair of scissors. That seems to me to be a better design. That having been said, $170 for a tool that I’m going to use probably another ten times ever would be just a wee bit impractical.

All said, I’d say the tool is really good for the money.

A Punch Block

OK, so my radio station moved, and they didn’t need a couple extra Krone punch blocks and a really nice big (3′x6′!) desk.  So, I took the punch blocks, and my brother helped me grab the desk. And then, because our band’s studio has been in pieces for about a year, we figured it might be cool to redo it using the desk as an editing desk, and, of course, using the punch blocks.

First of all, note that some of this stuff (in particular using a screwdriver to punch wires down) only works on Krone punch blocks.

Second, note that you’re probably going to get a better punch down if you use a punch down tool. Same way cutting wood works a lot better with a saw than with a hammer.

Third, (and this is partly why I used the screwdriver approach) I had trouble locating a nice cheap punch tool. Full Compass sold one for $70 (tip not included, and about $100 extra). I talked to my rep at Full Compass and he told me that they’d only ever sold one of those, so he suspected they weren’t the way to go. After a bit of googling, he suggested this from Newegg, for $16. Obviously, it’s more cheaply made, but theoretically, if you’re not a broadcast engineer, punching stuff down every day, you should be able to get along with the cheap tool. When it arrives in the mail, I’ll try it out and see.

So basically, what I wanted to run is balanced audio from the board to the blocks, and then balanced audio from the blocks back out to other stuff like an EQ, DAW, and a bunch of ports where you can plug instruments in.

A TRS Plug

First step, make the plugs. Sorry, I didn’t get a shot of how I made an XLR plug. They aren’t hard to make. My biggest issue with making any kind of connectors is I’m not good at working with tiny stuff, so it takes me a while. But after about 5-6 TRS plugs, I was pretty much clipping along. No pun intended.

Once I had the tip made, I threaded it through the table, to the punch blocks, and punched it down. For those of you who haven’t punched stuff down before, you don’t have to strip the wires.

Tinning the ground wire

I found that, because the ground wire was bare and stranded,  it was a lot easier to punch down if I tinned it with a little bit of solder first. Then using a 1/8″ Craftsman flat blade screwdriver, I just forced each wire into a slot, bare, black, red, bare, black, red (aka ground, cold, hot).

Punching down with a screwdriver

The reason why I mention that it’s a 1/8″ Craftsman screwdriver is because, as I said before, some screwdrivers won’t work. I tried two other screwdrivers before I found that the Craftsman worked. I think it was a combination of slot width, and the fact that the sides of that particular screwdriver’s blade were grooved, which seemed to help keep the screwdriver from slipping out of the slot I was trying to punch the wire into.

I haven’t had the opportunity to run audio through the setup yet and see how it sounds, but so far, I’m really impressed. For about $65 worth of cable and connectors and two free punch blocks, looks like I’ll be able to make a whole studio. Pretty legit.

Totally different note, I need to write up how I’m making some old disgusting studio foam look schnazzy again. Next time I’m making some, I’ll try to remember to take pictures.

Top view of cable routing

Pretty, ain’t she, at least so far?

For those who can't read really fuzzy cell phone photography, the model number is RS60112A600N.

I just ended up getting another board, but my band kind of needed a good studio board, so I figured I’d try fixing the volume slider. The worst that could happen is that I’d fry the already unusable board. The best that could happen is that I’d have a fully-functional board at the end of it.

The red box is where the new pot is (on the other side of the board). It's a little scuffed up from so many solderings and desolderings, but it works perfectly fine!

Well first I tried sticking two 10kΩ potentiometers in the corner, up by the main outs, and seeing if I could wire them up so they’d work. No such luck.

A few months later, I got my hands on an old Behringer board that had been hit by lighting, and I thought I’d pull one of the main sliders out of that (it had two, for left and right) and stick it in the Phonic. That sort of worked. Now I had the right channel of my board working. Better than nothing, but still, my band needed a full stereo main out. I mean, a rock band in mono would be kind of lame…

The new slider is the one on the far right. It's a slightly different color too.

finally (and this is almost a year later), I broke down and bought a new slider from Mouser for $4 (plus $7 shipping — OW!) and tore my board apart for the third time.  Just for the record, it’s an A-taper 10kΩ dual 60mm slider, made by Alps.

And then, with a couple screwdrivers, pliers, some patience, and a whole bunch of desoldering braid, I stuck the new pot in.

And of course, the last thing to do is to test the thing, then assemble.

Just a test of the board. Worked great through both left and right channels. Perfect.

And that about took care of it! It worked like a charm. Now to finish that relay rack….my buddy Tim wants to see that with some ‘Kahn Industries’ decals on it….I’ll have to see what I can arrange.

Your band wants to record a hit, but how? You’ve tried your parents’ tape deck and it didn’t work. How do the pros do it? Bad news. The pros do it with a lot of money. But there is a way to do it without having a multi-million dollar budget.

These days, most recording is done digitally, or on a computer. So, if you have a desktop computer, or a laptop with a bit of space on the hard drive, you are in luck. Otherwise, you can build a computer for a very reasonable price. My band built one for $385. It had a 40GB hard drive, 1.56GHz AMD Athlon XP processor, and 512MB of RAM. We found a monitor that was being thrown out, and used that. You don’t need a fancy computer to record audio. The only thing I’d change if I were building a new computer is I’d get a much bigger hard drive. But if you’re willing to store most of what you do as CD backups, a 40GB drive is just fine. [It's hard to find a 40GB drive anymore...just shows you when I wrote this!! HA!]

if you have a laptop, you’ll probably want to look into getting a PCMCIA sound card like the DigiMark Pocket VX 220. Most laptop sound cards aren’t good enough to record with, so you need either a USB card (ok) or a PCMCIA card (better). [Firewire is even better, but Firewire cards can get very expensive.]

Next, you will need a small mixer. It only needs enough inputs for one person’s instrument and one microphone. My band uses a Behringer Eurorack UB1002FX. It has two mono inputs (one mic and one guitar), and four stereo imputs for things like keyboards. We got it for about $75.

Get a good microphone. Usually, the more expensive you can afford, the more expensive you should buy. My band uses a Shure Beta58 that we got for about $150, but if you can afford a $600 multi-pattern large-diaphragm condenser, get one. It will help your sound. [I also recently bought an Audio-Technica AT2020 for about $80. I HIGHLY recommend it if you're looking for a cheap, nice-sounding condenser.]

Buy a set of good speakers. Decent studio monitors cost about a thousand dollars but I have gotten away with using a Phillips minisystem ($150) and some $20 Sony headphones [which later broke and now I'm using $40 Sennheiser EH150s].

Recording software can be the most expensive item on your list, if you let it be. Or you can let it be the cheapest. My band uses a package called Audacity which is free. We got it from Stanford’s PlanetCCRMA website, which offers a comprehensive group of Linux audio packages for recording. We also got a bunch of free effects plugins from PlanetCCRMA. Audacity also runs on Windows for those who prefer. Otherwise, you are looking at $500 to thousands of dollars for multi track recording software [Adobe Audition is a great broadcast editing suite, and runs about $350].

Set up your studio where you can (where you won’t get too much noise or complaints of noise) and record one track at a time. My band usually does drums first, then main [rhythm] instrument, then other instruments, then vocals. Make sure your ‘vocal booth’ is reasonably quiet. We use my (small) room with some winter blankets over the doors to the outside and to the bathroom [this will be changing soon---we're building a real studio!!]. Try to get rid of any reverb in it, and also try to get rid of any resonant frequencies (notes that sound louder than others when sung for more than a couple seconds). You can usually do this with blankets and pillows, but if you can afford it, you might be interested in special acoustical foam and bass traps. [I got some for free when a broadcast school got gutted for a new tenant to move in.]

When you’re in the studio, take time to listen to tracks and see if you really want to keep them. You are not a pro, so it will take you some time to produce professional sounding audio. It took my band several years of studio experience to be able to throw a track together in a couple hours. Our first recording took a day for a 5-minute song. At the end, we didn’t like it and we re-recorded it. Several times. I’d estimate that it took close to 40 hours of studio time to record our first 5-minute song.

ok…that about covers it for my re-posts. I’ve got a couple other things that I might eventually post up, and yes, I know, I still need to finish my relay rack. I’m procrastinating, which those of you who know me know I can be very good at.

All right, you finally have enough songs to make a CD! Now what?

First, you’ll need a name for the CD. If it’s your first, you might self-title it. That saves the work of coming up with a good name for the CD. Otherwise, a song name, recurring idea, song lyric, etc., might work.

Set a release date. If you have all your songs recorded, two months from now might be good. Three months would be even better. No rush that way. Don’t even think about releasing the CD until you have at least 3/4 of your songs recorded.

Next get permission for any songs you will have on the CD which aren’t yours. This can sometimes take some time and a bit of money. Usually, you’ll pay 9 cents per song per copy. You’ll have to decide how many CDs you will make. Make it reasonable. If you are Auntie Dot and the Comfortable Chair, it won’t be smart for you to make a run of 10 000 CDs. If you are the Black Eyed Peas, a run of a hundred won’t be too smart.

Either do your artwork yourself or get someone else to do it. Make sure that all the artwork has some sort of common theme. Our CD uses a photo of some neat clouds.

look at where to sell your CD. I highly recommend CDBaby. You’ll probably need a UPC code for your CD as well. CDBaby sells you one for about $60.

Get your CD manufactured. We used DiskFaktory, but there are many other manufacturers out there. If you followed these instructions, you will already know how many CDs you will be making, so I’ll skip explaining it here. However, here is one clarification. If you are getting a hundred CDs made, duplicate them. This means you will get CD-Rs from the factory which will run on 99% of CD players. If you are making a lot of CDs (1000 or more), replicate them. That way, you’ll get real audio CDs which will work in all CD players. Don’t replicate small runs. It’s too expensive. You’ll end up paying more than $5 per CD, when a duplicated CD would cost you about $3. A replicated CD from a large run will cost you about $1.

So you have a great idea for some music and so you want to start a band. But how? What makes the difference between Metallica or the Who and Auntie Bea and the Doilies (or any other no-name band)? Here are some guidelines for putting together a band that will work out. And, since most of us can’t afford a million-dollar studio, here’s how the band can work out for cheap.

First, choose the members of your band carefully. My band consists of me and my brother. We both have similar goals for our band and we both know how to set realistic goals. The last thing a band needs is one guy who thinks that his song (which consists of one note repeated over and over again) and his dress style (uncomfortably reminiscent of the Beatles) will make the band a legend. You want to find people who have a similar vision for the band and similar (realistic) goals. Make sure you don’t get a bunch of yes-men who will do whatever you tell them, unless you are already very experienced with bands. You will benefit from other members’ constructive criticism. Also try to get members who will be able to make practices. My band consists of me and my brother (who lives with me), so we don’t have to worry about the problem at all!

Choose equipment carefully. Each member should buy his or her own instrument and parts, or better, already have an instrument. There are a few items that everyone will need to chip in on, such as recording equipment and performance equipment. It’s a bad idea for one guy to own all the equipment because he will basically own the band. “Don’t like what I’m saying? Fine, well I quit. And I’m taking the mics, PA system, mixer, computer, and your instruments.” Also, don’t feel like you have to buy top-of-the-line right off. It will make a difference if you record vocals with a $100 or $1000 mic, but your audience probably won’t be able to tell the difference. Wait until you can afford the $1000 mic and then buy it.

so what equipment do you need? If you are only recording your music (and not performing it), get a computer (either use a band member’s or build one for cheap – see the Linux HowTo (not up yet) [which I never ended up writing. I highly recommend Ubuntu because of its great support on the Ubuntu forums] for instructions], a mic (My band uses a Shure Beta58, which we got for about $150), a small mixer with a few effects (I highly recommend the Behringer Eurorack UB1002FX, which we got for about $75), and your instruments. Also make sure to get some decent speakers for your computer. I use a Philips minisystem which cost about $150.

If you are performing, you need a mic for each vocalist and acoustic instrument (AudioTechnica XM1s are dirt-cheap, we got ours for $20 each), a mixer which has enough space for all the mics and all the instruments you will plug into it, speakers, monitors (speakers that let you hear what you’re playing), amplifiers for the speaks and mons, and cable. You might also need a CD player. My band’s performance system cost me about $2000. We bought it for $1500 and then added some extras.

Who cares about recording? Your band wants to perform! You have seen the setups that big bands use, but there is no way you could ever afford them. Is there any way to perform without spending thousands of dollars?

The technically correct answer is no. My band managed to pull off a performance setup for about $2000. Which technically is thousands. But hey! it’s not $20 000.

The first thing to ask is how many instruments do you have and how many vocalists do you have? In my band, we have three instruments (plus an acoustic instrument) and two vocalists. So we need three mics (one for each vocalist plus one for the acoustic instrument), two guitar (mono) inputs and one keyboard (stereo) input. We also use a CD player for extra tracks that we can’t perform (like extra harmonies). That brings the total up to 3 mics, 2 stereo, and 2 mono. Mics usually run off XLR cable, and guitars and keyboards run off 1/4″ phone (or TRS) cable. CD players sometimes run TRS and sometimes run RCA. So, we needed 3 XLRs, 4 TRS and 1 stereo RCA. Go to your local audio dealer with these numbers and they will show you a mixer which might work for you.

Ask yourself (realistically) how large your typical audience would be. For us, we didn’t see catering to a crowd any bigger than 500 people. And that was an overestimate. We ended up needing two 15″ speakers. Tell your dealer this number too. They’ll show you a speaker/amp setup which will work.

Just a side note, there are two ways to amp your speakers. One is to buy an amplifier and run the output of your mixer into that. The other is to buy a power mixer, one with an amp built in. We used a power mixer. It works, but if you see your band ever needing to expand a bit, I’d suggest getting the amp separately. Either that or get active speakers (speakers with a built-in amp). These options cost more, but they are more expandable. If you’re planning for the day when you play the Astrodome, don’t get a power mixer.

What if you are in the situation my band is in? 2 vocalists and 6-part harmony? How the heck do you perform your music? What my band did is to burn a “Performance CD” which has all the tracks that you won’t perform. That way, you can’t be accused of lip-syncing, but you won’t have to figure out how to sing more than one note at once.

Get a good sound guy. This can be the toughest thing to do on this page. You have two options. 1) get a guy who is familiar with your music and knows what kind of sound you’re interested in, or 2) YOU do sound and write down all your settings and teach someone how to set up the mixer for your settings and how to fight feedback if it occurs. My band did #2. It works reasonably well, although, I suppose #1 is a bit better.