DIY attenuators
The Muddy Basin Ramblers (http://www.muddybasin.com / https://www.facebook.com/muddybasinramblers) recently recorded their new album at Soundkiss Studios ( www.soundkiss.tw / www.facebook.com/soundkiss ) here in Taipei. Part of their gear consists of a vintage ribbon microphone fed into an old tube pre-amp, and unfortunately this was proving to be a bit difficult to control. According to Alex from Soundkiss, “ That OP 6 is a beast of a pre amp- it is always eager to distort and get dirty sounding. Without the attenuation, I have had to ride the gain control between 0 & 1 on the dial to get a usable tone, and a fraction of an adjustment can make a huge difference.” So today’s post is about how we made some attenuators to go between the mic and the pre-amp in order to calm things down a little bit. Firstly a little definition may be in order. An attenuator is basically the opposite of an amplifier. Its purpose is to reduce the amplitude of an electronic signal, without distorting i...