TEMPO TT 2010-A

Direct mp3 download or play:  Mimi

Mimi

Direct mp3 download or play:  Lili Marlene

Lili Marlene

Direct mp3 download or play:  Tiger Rag

Tiger Rag

Direct mp3 download or play:  Stumbling

Stumbling

Direct mp3 download or play:  Waiting For The Robert E. Lee

Waiting For The Robert E. Lee

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TEMPO TT 2010-B

Direct mp3 download or play:  The Old Soft Shoe

The Old Soft Shoe

Direct mp3 download or play:  Frere Jacques

Frere Jacques

Direct mp3 download or play:  To Each His Own

To Each His Own

Direct mp3 download or play:  The Whiffenpoof  Song

The Whiffenpoof Song

Direct mp3 download or play:  Lullaby Medley

Lullaby Medley

I found this 12-inch LP record at a thrift store in Seattle several years ago. It looks and plays quite well, except it has a lot of surface noise. I noticed the mention of an instrument I didn’t recognize on the label. I put the record away, and all but forgot about it. During the last year or so I started learning about a keyboard instrument called a Novachord. I discovered it came out in 1938 and is considered to be the first real electronic music synthesizer made by Hammond many years before Moog. I understand the Novachord has well over 100 vacuum tubes, and only a few working units exist today. I like these web sites (here and here) for starters to learn more about the Novachord. You’ll find some interesting YouTube videos, too.
I noticed that some of you responded favorably to my last post of organ music, so I thought you might enjoy that record from the thrift store with that strange instrument. I had forgotten it was actually a Novachord until I recently looked at the record again. A few years ago, I recorded this record onto my computer as two .wav files, one for each side of the LP and stored them on a separate drive.  I transferred the files to my computer where I made separate files for each song. Then I did pop and click reduction for each song using Adobe Audition. Amazingly there were over 20,000 clicks or pops removed from each individual song! Despite all of that, the record sounds less scratchy, but I wish it could play somewhat better.
I do apologize for lost comments due to problems with the site after August 23, 2010 and now.  Please comment again!

I like saving money by not buying new clothes or cutting my hair. As you can see, I like electronic equipment. Behind me, from the left are JBL bullet tweeters a 2402H and 075, an H. H. Scott A 426 integrated amplifier, and a Marantz Model 23 AM/FM Stereo tuner. On top of the Marantz is a modified Radio Shack communications speaker and a home built sub woofer volume control and high pass filter. Next to the amplifier and tuner is a Pentium 4 computer, and sitting on top of the computer case is a wi-fi antenna, an external hard drive, and an off-air digital TV antenna. On the right side is a Samsung Syncmaster T260HD LCD monitor with built-in analog and digital TV tuner. On the far right is an Iiyama Vision Master Pro 502 21 inch CRT monitor which I got free on Craigslist. I know this sounds like a lot, but all of this stuff is either second hand or obsolete.
I think I may be back, pot belly and all. Be patient, “DUMB /How Dare You?” will gradually be getting back to normal.

I guess if you disagree with this, I’ll be asking, “How do you like your darts?” For more cleaning product containers balanced on top of each other or connected together click here and here.
This post was originally put up in July of 2010 and any comments were unfortunately lost. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.

Now Showing Back Cover!

Here is something I look at several times a year ever since my father bought it for me in 1966. Also, I’m trying out my new scanner, a Canon 5600F. How does it look?

Stereo/Hi-Fi Directory 1966 back cover

Now with Schematic and Specifications

Click HERE for a high resolution schematic diagram and HERE for the specifications. Unfortunately the schematic is so small, a lot of the values of the components are unreadable. It does actually look this way in the instruction booklet. The specifications page is quite clear.  More information about this amplifier was requested and I hope this helps.

Click for large image

This was purchased in the early 1970’s by a friend in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the late 70’s or early 80’s my friend sold it to me and I used it in my audio system until 2002. When I moved from California to Seattle in the fall of 2002, I packed the amplifier in its original box. It stayed untouched in my garage until late 2007, when I unpacked it and started using it again. This is the amplifier I’m referring to in the post “075” on this site and it does still work perfectly. I can remember when I was in Cal Hi Fi,a stereo hifi shop in Pleasant Hill, California, where these and similar stereo amplifiers were sold. The sales person referred to this as a “sexy” amplifier.

A426 schematic diagram (go to top of page to view or download high resolution image)

A426 specifications (go to top of page to view or download high resolution image)

Direct mp4 download or play:  JBL 2402H-05 Bullet Tweeter

This is how this speaker works as a microphone. I simply connected it to a microphone input on my mixer (with the phantom power off) and set the input gain to maximum. I’m surprised at how much it still sounds like a tweeter, even when operating as a microphone. I expected it to have more bass response, considering the diaphragm is 1 and ¾ inches in diameter. You may also notice the recording picked up a radio station in the background. This was probably due to the lack of shielding, and the speaker was never meant to be used as a microphone.

JBL model 2402H-05 Bullet Tweeter

JBL model 2402H-05 Backside

Direct mp3 download or play:   BRM 11-19-2006 (Quack)

Here is another baby room monitor (BRM), I recorded from inside my house. For more details on how I received these signals, check out my other posts on baby room monitors. I don’t have much else to say about this except Quack Quack Quack!

Direct mp3 download or play:  K-Mart is Coming

This is the radio commercial, probably from the early 1970s, for the grand opening of this and other Kmart stores. The tape is from a collection of radio commercials I found at a radio station in the late 1970s.  This store is located at the intersection of Contra Costa Boulevard and Chilpancingo Parkway in Pleasant Hill, California, and was a favorite shopping destination of my parents. Often on Saturday afternoons, my parents baby blue 1974 Ford Maverick would be present in the parking lot, usually on the north side of the store in the lot adjacent Chilpancingo Parkway. They would enter the store using the garden shop entrance. My father thought that by parking in this parking area rather than the main parking lot, there would be less of a chance that someone would ding the finish on the Maverick.

Kmart-Pleasant Hill, California

Kmart-Pleasant Hill, California (garden shop entrance)

Kmart 1970s

Kmart Grand Opening Tape

Direct mp4 download or play:   Tulip Tree Sound

MY TULIP TREE IS BLOOMING, HAPPY EASTER

Now with the sound of a strange bird in my neighborhood.

Direct mp3 download or play:   Easter 1986 Part 1

Part 1

Direct mp3 download or play:  Easter 1986 Part 2

Part 2

Now, for your listening pleasure, I have an entire C-60 cassette tape of my family and myself on Easter 1986.  I recorded this on my Sony TC-D5M cassette recorder using a Sony ECM-939LT one point stereo electret condenser microphone. This get-together took place at my grandmother’s house in Santa Rosa, California. I know this was source material for “The Willsaphone Stupid Show,” because of a short piece of splicing tape is still attached to the tape box. I’m quite sure it was placed there by Don Joyce when “The Willsaphone Stupid Show” was being worked on years ago to show the tape had been copied. There are lots of toilet flushing noises and other odd sounds as well.

Here’s another version of the imaginary creature I call “The Super Cosmic Goose.” This version is probably the strangest. Notice the dark purple beak on the rear head is curved so it cannot open. Maybe it could even be considered “psychedelic.” You may be thinking that I must have taken drugs in order to come up with something like this, but I’m afraid this is not the case. I think I created this in the 1970s, and it is simply part of something I have thought about for some time. There are three other versions to compare here, here, and here.

Direct mp3 download or play:  Spot # 1
Spot # 1 Vancouver Island’s largest shopping centre – 2,736 parking spaces, mostly covered!

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Direct mp3 download or play:  Spot # 2
Spot # 2 “Shop at any one of the downtown stores displaying the big “D” on the door.”

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Direct mp3 download or play:  Spot # 3
Spot # 3 The store of the day: W & J Wilson.

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Direct mp3 download or play:  Spot # 4
Spot # 4 Downtown bonus days # 1 – “Victoria has never had it so big.”

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Direct mp3 download or play: Spot # 5
Spot # 5 Downtown bonus days # 2 – “The biggest sale Victoria has ever been party to.”

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The original tape

Here are a couple of views of the radio station where I found this tape. The top is a Google Earth image of the transmitter shack and three antennas of radio station KATD in Collinsville, California. Collinsville is near the Sacramento river delta area, northeast of San Francisco. The bottom image shows the transmitter shack (the small white building behind the trailer) and three antennas to the right. I don’t think the old trailer has any relationship to the radio station. In the middle or late 1970s, a friend of mine had a job checking the transmitter and recording meter readings. In those days, the station was called KKIS (K-Kiss). On several occasions, he invited me to accompany him to this location. One time, either inside the building or outside in a dumpster, there were a lot of open reel tapes. They looked as if they were to be discarded, so I grabbed a bunch of them, and one of them was “Downtown Victoria Spots,” most likely from the early 170s. By the way, two other tapes  from this find are featured on Negativland releases. On track 19 (start at 30:31) on the first record, listen for “The office of Civil Defense has issued the following message” from an Emergency Broadcast System tape. On the second Negativland release, “Points,” listen to “A Nice Place to Live.” The voice starting out with “Greetings from the Los Angeles County Fair, etc…” is another one of the tapes from Collinsville.

W & J Wilson Clothing Store featured in spot # 3

A few images of Victoria, BC

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Direct mp3 download or play:  Downtown

Lastly, here’s a rendition of “Downtown” by the Ray Conniff Singers.

Direct mp3 download or play:  Me Sneezing

This is dumb, but I just had to let you hear the sound of me sneezing. I recorded it on a Sony ICD-SX700 voice recorder on February 14, 2010, Valentine’s Day. I was sitting in a vehicle in the Walgreens parking lot on Rainier Avenue South in Seattle and I started to sneeze, repeatedly.

Direct mp3 download or play: Part 1

Part 1

Direct mp3 download or play:  Part 2

Part 2

Direct mp3 download or play:  Part 3

Part 3 With Effects

During the fall and winter of 1997 and 1998, I made several recordings of falling rain at my home in Martinez, California. The rain was some the most intense I had ever witnessed. California was in the midst of an El Niño.
These were made using a DAT recorder, and with a similar setup to recordings I’ve made more recently in Seattle. The main difference, however, is the distance between the two microphones was much greater (over 100 feet). One of the microphones was mounted on an aluminum pie pan, which I hung in a bush on the hillside behind my house, and the other microphone was mounted under the eaves of my house near a downspout.
I used RG-59 cable TV wire, complete with fittings for the more than 100 foot run from the pie pan microphone to my mixer.  Because of my job as a cable TV technician, I had access to this type of wire and it worked quite well for audio.
The recordings are quite long and probably somewhat boring unless you really like ambience. In addition, my recording technique uses lots of compression, and tends to show itself with a lot of white noise coming up at times. The audio level noticeably increases and decreases on quieter parts and louder parts, respectively. With that in mind, I hope you can imagine what a really wet day in California can be like.

Electret condenser microphone mounted on pie pan

Pie pan and microphone hanging

Backside showing “F” fitting

Direct mp4 download or play:  The Weatherman

Here’s a little film I found on the internet. It’s a bit goofy (like me) and hopefully, it will make you laugh.

Go to Ustream and I am “weatherman test.”
Thank you for listening. I’ll leave a message here if and when I do this again.

Direct mp3 download or play

Here is a recording I made sometime between 2000 and 2002. It’s a box that plays an actual tiny vinyl record of laughter. My parents probably bought it in the early 1970s. I remember using the same microphone that I used for recording my stomach noises.  It was connected directly to the microphone input of my Hewlett-Packard Pavilion PC.  While recording the laugh box, it was beginning to malfunction and finally stopped.

I do actually mix Formula 409 with Fantastik! The 409 is usually on top being poured into the Fantastik. I don’t know why it works out this way. Maybe it is because Fantastik is often a dollar or more cheaper than Formula 409.

Can anyone spot the bottle in this picture that is neither Formula 409 or Fantastik and tell me what it is? Here’s a hint: It is not duane reade.

I can never get enough Formula 409 and Fantastik, or that other brand.

Direct mp3 download or play:  New Year’s 2010

Here is the audio from my outside microphones for New Year’s 2010. I started recording at 11:51 PM on December 31, 2009, and stopped recording at 12:30 AM on January 1, 2010.

This is the microphone for the left side. Note the foil taped to the cable in an effort to keep birds away.

This is the microphone for the right side.  I had to remove the tissue paper being used to reduce wind noise because birds kept pecking at it. In addition, the cable running to this microphone was damaged by a squirrel and it is more than 15 feet shorter. The microphone still works quite well.

Direct mp3 download or play: Christmas 1978 Part 1
This recording is from the same session that was used on the first Negativland release. For example, “This is Negativland, reminding you to get ready for the Love Canal at Lovecourse 49,” which I had my grandmother read was part of this session. All of this tape was made in the kitchen at my home in Martinez, California. On this recording there is a discussion about grocery bags, followed by my grandmother reading “Are we not men? We are Devo.”  Then my mother sings and after that there is some more talk about “Devo.” The last part of the tape features “Goggles,” one of our cats coming into the house and causing our other cat “Sassy Sister Suzy” to become upset. She can be heard hissing and growling.
I can’t remember for sure which cassette tape recorder was used for recording but I think it was either the Superscope C-104 or the Norelco 1530. I will eventually have a picture of the Norelco.  I also recall putting one of my Sony F-98 microphones on a makeshift stand that was meant to hold a bird cage, and then I set the stand on a table in the kitchen.You may have noticed this is called “part 1,” but there likely isn’t any other recording.