Well I have finally begun the serious work of building a Mobile Command Center. Some equipment that will enable me to bring yesterday's world of tomorrow to a venue near you. I have done a great deal of speculation and planning, trying to figure out how best to do this. Here is what I have come up with so far.
First of all there has to be a sine wave generator or two. The Eico unit in the photo was secured for this very propose. I have it and another small-ish solid state generator that could work. I also have a really old tube driven RCA that sounds beautiful, but I would worry about how robust it might be if I racked it up. Make no mistake. This stuff will be in a rack when all is said and done.
So I will have the EMW 200/300 combo in place of my large format modular.
First of all there has to be a sine wave generator or two. The Eico unit in the photo was secured for this very propose. I have it and another small-ish solid state generator that could work. I also have a really old tube driven RCA that sounds beautiful, but I would worry about how robust it might be if I racked it up. Make no mistake. This stuff will be in a rack when all is said and done.
So I will have the EMW 200/300 combo in place of my large format modular.
I toyed with the idea of using one of the reel to reel machines, but I found this Akai cassette machine in perfect working order and it can be racked up. Since processed field recordings are a big part of the Atomic Shadow sound I had to figure a way to bring those sounds to the picnic. I had an Electron Octatrack that I bought for the purpose, but found all of it's promised powers were locked behind an impenetrable user interface. Every time I turned it on and opened the manual I ended up feeling suicidal. So off it went to Chicago where my pal Tony Scharf (Noise Theorem) is getting along with it just fine. In it's place I have a Roland SP-404sx. The 404 is a simple loop player with some decent effects that can mangle a sound in real time.
The system will be rounded out with a POD effects unit on the floor that will be the dedicated processor for one of the sine wave machines. There will also be a Moog ring modulator, Strymon El Capistan, and a couple of other secret effects and generators. I figure a couple of plug strips and possibly a patch bay and I'm done.
I plan to house it all in a couple of metal rack units that I got from one of my sources. They are about 14U tall and I will bolt them together. There is a table with wheels that will hold the finished system and it will allow me to roll it around the Command Center and cross patch it with the big system.
The system will be rounded out with a POD effects unit on the floor that will be the dedicated processor for one of the sine wave machines. There will also be a Moog ring modulator, Strymon El Capistan, and a couple of other secret effects and generators. I figure a couple of plug strips and possibly a patch bay and I'm done.
I plan to house it all in a couple of metal rack units that I got from one of my sources. They are about 14U tall and I will bolt them together. There is a table with wheels that will hold the finished system and it will allow me to roll it around the Command Center and cross patch it with the big system.
I am planning to use this setup in a video in the next couple of days. Stay tuned...
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