The Week of March 6th

I suppose I should post about what I'm going to do this week before I've already done it. It's already Tuesday night. Ryan The Assistant and I have been doing fun things like vacuuming and making microphone cables. There are two days of studio down time before the studio is booked every day for the next six weeks, so we are doing things like defragmenting hard drives and archiving sessions. Tomorrow, Soren Wittrup will be dropping by to show Ryan The Assistant how to clean switches on the studio console and we will be making a game plan for what to do to finish the rebuild on the console. From here, I can either go down the path of Soren Wittrup or talk about the console. First, let's talk about Soren. Soren is from Denmark. He was imported to Chicago in the early 90's by recording engineer Steve Albini to be Steve's tech guy. When I was in the band of my youth (The Coctails) I met Soren while we were recording at Steve's studio with engineer Bob Weston (DJ Carrie Weston's hubby). Soren was smoking and rebuilding an old LOMO microphone from Russia. He would talk over my head about electronic stuff that I could not comprehend, but he thought I could (I can actually grasp some of what he is talking about almost 12 years later). He is now a freelance tech guy and I hired him on a service contract over a year ago to completely rebuild my MCI recording console. Of course, it is taking much longer than expected, but the results have been amazing. Soren doesn't just fix things, he improves them. He has modified the EQ section and the microphone preamps. He has also restored and rebuilt all of my guitar and bass amplifiers, my Optigan organ, my stylophone and my shop vac. Everything at the studio works and is in top form. He will be showing Ryan The Assisitant how to do simple component replacements and cleaning so we can get this thing finished. The MCI console was purchased about two years ago from some dudes in Austin. I was surfing ebay and came across an auction for an MCI 636. They said that the board was formerly owned by the Hit Factory in New York and that "I've Had the Time of My Life" from the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack was recorded on it. Despite it's cheesy past, I decided to buy it. This console cost $100,000 new in 1980. I bought it for $3,750. My parents were visiting my mother in law in Austin when I found the console. Since they had already rented a trailer to bring back some furniture that had belonged to my wife's grandparents, it was good timing. They picked it up on the way out of town. They drove it up to Chicago about a week later. The console weighs about 1000 pounds. I'll be in the office on Wednesday from 10 am - 2 pm, Thursday I'll be in for a few hours at the end of the day to check messages and Friday I'll be around from 10 am - 2 or so. Ryan The Assistant will be answering the phone every day, so call any time and I will get back with you.