The damage done

The original K6 on arrival at 'kiosk hospital' - note the damaged roof.

You’ll recall that the roof was damaged. Carl has found a replacement unit – here’s an excerpt from his latest email;

…with the old damaged roof free from the K6 it was an ideal time to ensure the replacement was exact. This replacement salvaged roof was from an old K6 that was originally located at a local racecourse (Fakenham).

The last picture shows both ‘lids’ being compared.

Here’s a photo walkthrough of the removal of the roof, followed by a picture of Carl comparing the old and replacement domes. Note the cable run in the casting – I’m hoping my K6 will light up the word ‘Telephone’ in all its 1930s glory!

Hello dolly

Carl writes…

With the hole now drilled in the roof it was necessary to remove the 2 ton clasp on the block & tackle to expose the chain link. This granted additional height to remove the domed roof. The chain was then bolted to the roof. Making sure the old bolts securing the dome were free, I carefully positioned the kiosk directly under the gantry, thanks to my ‘dolly skids’. These ’skids’ allow me to move a K6, weighing 750 kgs, with ease on flat smooth ground. With a few grasps at the load chain the damaged roof was lifted clear of the transom rails, to which the roof section was pulled clear of the K6 on the gantry. The K6 was then pushed clear of the beamed gantry.

On the roof it’s peaceful as can be

Superman costume just out of shot...

Back to the phone box story. Carl at Remember When UK has started work again on my K6 (for the full story click the ‘Red Telephone Box‘ category on the right, or go back to the first post. Helpfully, Carl’s emails are practically a blog entry in themselves, so I’m going to paste some of his commentary in here.

[Carl wrote] The roof section is heavy & awkward & as the old GPO papers stipulate, two to three persons, tressles & scaffolding are required for fitting or removal of the dome panel. Fortunately the aid of the kiosk gantry eliminated [the need for] all but one person (me!) and no scaffolding in sight – by boring an 8 mm hole in the centre of the damaged roof.

8mm hole bored in the top of the roof to enable its removal

Superman costume just out of shot…

Don’t worry – be pentatonic!

Here’s a wonderful piece of theatre from Bobby McFerrin, proving a psychological point about the power of pentatonic melodies in songwriting.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

I will try… to fix you

The sync panel from the ADA8000 - my nemesis, until today.

The ADA8000 problem has been solved! Josh came round and took a look at the studio (and also, I might add, gave me an excellent idiot’s guide to tuning drums). We pondered the reasons that the ADA8000 was chucking out digital crackles and pops on input channels 9-16, and narrowed it down to three possible causes.

1. Faulty ADA8000
2. Dodgy optical cable
3. Something we haven’t thought of yet

The ADA8000 was acting as a digital slave to the Digi002 using the ADAT protocol for digital sync, so the Digi002 was to provide audio input channels 1-8 and the ADA8000 channels 9-16, giving me the option of 16 simultaneous inputs (albeit with only 12 of them through the M1F, it being a 12-channel analogue desk).

After various attempts to fix the clicks & pops problem, including rebooting everything with the ADA8000 acting as master, we decided, as a last resort, to try swapping the optical cables. The Digi002 was firing the sync information down its Optical Out, and the ADA8000 was firing audio signals back into the 002’s Optical In. And swapping the cables over completely cured the problem. It turns out that the clicks and pops were not syncing errors – they were corruptions in the audio data coming back into the 002. So it was option 2 all along. Soon I’ll get another (high-spec) optical cable, because although the master>slave info is being carried accurately by the weaker cable, it’s not desirable to have it in there permanently. This is not an uncommon problem, according to Josh – optical cables are not as reliable as some people assume they are, even though they carry digital information.

Headphone amp, ADA8000 and Joe Meek MC2 – gaffer taped for the moment.

So even if you’re not a studio geek (I was actually quite excited writing the two techy paragraphs above), the result of Josh’s intervention is simple – I can now have 16 live mics in the studio during a take instead of 8. To test the studio I’ve tentatively agreed to record one of my grads’ bands in September. They get a free demo, and I get to try out all the inputs properly before I need to use them on a time-sensitive project.

Next… drums!