Wednesday, October 22, 2014

By your powers combined

Needed to replace the spring on an old Buddy Rich kick pedal from the 60's. Used one from a drum brake kit for a '78 Chevy. Works amazingly well, and the spring is WAY beefier. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I am Captain Planet.


Saturday, October 4, 2014

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Seeds From a Dying Garden

By Ice Dragon

Hope you like it.


Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Walkin' the Lonely Road

New track from Colonel Creep and the Electric Boogeymen Written, Recorded, Mixed and Mastered here at the Wrecker. With MAGNETOSONIC sound baby! Dig it.

 

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Recycled turntable tube amp

Made a little tube amp from an old turntable today. Used the amp and the 8" speaker from the player, and the case is from an old reel to reel. I cut down one of the wood pieces from the record player to make the little front panel and the grill is from an old radiator cover. It has the one 8" speaker and then two 4" speakers on the sides, serial wired. Not sure what the wattage is, but it's loud and sounds damn good. It has two 12ax7's, two 6v6's, and one 6x5. Weird little amp. Oh yeah it has a front cover too! Came with the reel to reel.


Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Slingy Tubs

Finally got my Slingerland kick and tom all put together. I bought the shells and built everything up piece by piece. Tom is a Radio King from the 40's, late 60's-ish kick. Take a look at that sexy Set-O-Matic arm!

I used bass drum lugs on the tom since it has the 2 1/4" spacing, and it matches up nice with the look of the kick that way. Had to steal some cotton balls from the Mrs. to pad them and get rid of the spring noise, works like a charm. No reso heads on either, I'm going for a "dead" kind of sound, tight and thuddy.


Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Keepers of the Secret

New song by Colonel Creep and the Electric Boogeymen, with amazingly cool video by Samantha Allen. The sets on this are real slick, check out the moss in there and everything.

Recorded at the Wrecker, with MAGNETOSONIC SOUND



Thursday, May 1, 2014

MAGNETOSONIC SOUND


Ron's Wrecker Service non-patented sound process using Magnetic Tape Transfer with Dual Analog EQ and Compression. Also featuring our secret "Sound-Sparkle" technique. Oh, that Magnetosonic Sound!™




Colonel Creep and the Electric Boogeymen

Written, Recorded, Mixed and Mastered at Ron's Wrecker Service. Colonel Creep and the Electric Boogeymen! WAY OUT! PARTY BEACH!!



Sunday, March 9, 2014

1W "practice" amp

Made this last week, mostly random stuff that I had in my basement. The speaker box is from an old stereo setup I found in the trash a while back, it had a shitty little 4" speaker in it but I squeezed in a 6" I ripped out of an old tube reel to reel that had long since died. Not sure of the ohm's but it sounds way better than the one that was in there.

The amp is built into a little Radio Shack enclosure, has a push button switch for power, I think that came out of the reel to reel too actually. I used an old Fisher Price 9v adapter to power it, just broke open the case and mounted it inside with the amp. For some reason with all my shuffling and knocking it about it ended up putting out like 22 or so volts instead.... Not sure what's up with that. Gives the amp way more headroom and a better sound than a battery does though. I just drilled through the bottom of the enclosure into the speaker box to run the power wires down. That way the cord can come out of the bottom of the cabinet and not the amp enclosure, which I thought would look very stupid. 

The amp itself is a little 1W headphone amp kit, the same kind I used for my reverb box. I added some shitty old caps and resistors to make sure it sounded less sterile, and that's that. Thing is actually really loud, and sounds pretty damn good. I like it a whole lot on theremin and synth, but the clean guitar is nice too. 

Not going to beat an expensive boutique job, but it sounds weird and unique and I should be able to have some fun with it for recording. Spent less than $10 on it too.


Friday, February 7, 2014

Acoustic Reincarnation

I had this shitty old Johnson acoustic guitar sitting around and I felt like giving it a new life. My wife painted it all psychedelic like a while back, and that was cool, but it was getting kinda tired and bored. Stripping all the layers of paint off was a bitch, to say the least. I used Strypeeze to make my life easier, worked great and even got the original finish off as well. I wanted to get it down to bare wood and stain it. I used a "black onyx" stain, and just barely brushed it on, then touched up a few spots with a rag. After it dried I went over the whole thing with a brillo sanding pad, they sell 'em at the auto stores, mine was left over from some bondo work I did on my van. Tailpiece is from an old Kay.

Used the Dremel with a large cutoff wheel to make the hole for the pickup. That was actually really easy. I was very surprised.

Simple wiring on the pickup. 1 Humbucker, 1 Volume, 1 Tone. The pickup is out of a 70's Electra and is very loud. I used a vintage "Sangamo" cap on the tone pot, it's huge and weird but 0.47, so I figured what the hell. New Gibson pickup mounting ring, and I threw on some new Fender strap buttons. Front didn't have a spot for one, so I added that. Vintage style "cupcake" volume and tone knobs, those are real slick. I dig 'em. Probably should have taken more/better pictures as I went along, but oh well. It came out cool, and sounds awesome, that's what really matters. Have at those shitty old guitars! Don't throw 'em away! Reincarnate!

UPDATE: Added a new bridge, a nickel Gotoh and some Grover vintage style tuners with the pearly knobs.... oooh. Very nice. The old tuners were total crap, rattled like all hell and didn't really stay in tune very well at all. Had to cut a rectangular hole for the bridge to sit down in, just dremeled one out. I wanted/needed it to sit lower in the body so that the action would come down a bit. The truss rod is an accident waiting to happen on this thing, so I'm not touchin' that. Worked out pretty damn well, action isn't perfect, but a hell of a lot better than it was. Much better intonation also. No buzzes, no rattles, ready to jam on.









If you click on the scan of Gotoh box and read the back it's hilarious. "There may be unable to do it". Haha.

Here it is all finished and ready to go. New bridge, tuners, and etc.




Friday, January 10, 2014

Mobile Recording Unit


  
Ron's Mobile Recording Unit, roadside assistance. Laying down some tracks for The Mangled Dead at the jam space using the trusty Tascam 424 MKII cassette 4-track. Bass through the DiyRe Ferrite DI, SM58 on the guitar, simple kick-snare-overhead setup on the drums, sent into the Shure M267 mic mixer. Vocals will get done later back at HQ.

The good thing about recording this way is that I get a fairly decent room sound on the drums, and the performance is a lot more energetic. You can get good and rowdy at the practice space, and drink a lot of beer, so that helps.