It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to spend any time thinking about the studio. Things have been busy, and while I’ve been doing a lot of work in sound, I’ve not had the time or space to get the studio setup in any meaningful way. Over the past several years, while I’m waiting for a space to be available, I’ve been looking for good deals on equipment and searching out equipment I’d like to add to my tool set but not spending too much time with the equipment. Depending on the live sound event I’m working on, I’ll assemble a small rack of gear for specific event and then rebuild that rack in a couple weeks time when my needs change. The end result is little piles of gear all over the place without any organization and it’s become much too difficult to quickly find a piece of equipment I need.
That, combined with a good sized rack I was given a couple of weeks ago, has finally push me to rack up all of my equipment and take stock of what I have. It’s been a lot of fun and has reminded me of many pieces of gear that have been loaned out but not returned.
I have four rack units of various types. Two are 8U SKB road cases. They are fine for carting gear around in my car but not the sort of thing you see on tour. These are the cases that have seen nearly all of my equipment loaded up at one point or another for various events. Right now, one is setup as a minimal PA system with 4 channels of amplification and a 12 input mixer. The other case has all of my effects plus a Kurzweil 1000PX sound module. Not ideal, perhaps, but it’s equipment that doesnt’ logically fit into one of the other cases.
The third rack I have is an old, slightly rusty freestanding unit that I would never bring to a gig. It holds equipment I would not likely want to use for an outside event. I’ve been putting in things like mixing console power supplies and studio utilities like level matchers and the like.
The forth rack, a 27U rolling rack from Middle Atlantic, I was given a few weeks ago. It’s in basically new condition and I’ve been loading in all of my dynamics processors and my growing collection of older recorders. It’s a fairly deep unit and I may be able to rack up equipment on both sides, at least for storage. I have lots of equipment that I don’t need right now, without the studio running, and I think it’ll be safer racked up instead of stacked on shelves.
It’s been fun to look over all the equipment at the same time and I’m also pouring over each item looking for faults I can repair. I’ve ordered a few cleaning products to help remedy and scratchy pots and faders I can find too. Hopefully I’ll have the Tascam M3700 fully cleaned and reliable by the end of winter. I’m still just amazing at the power and functionality of the console.
Robert