All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2003 by Roger Nichols.
All rights reserved. Permission for personal reference only, and may not
be reproduced by any method without written permission.
Maintenance & Misery
by Roger Nichols
To me, maintenance is a subject that should be covered in school right along
side of Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic. Maintenance is a way of life for
every living being. If you are a beaver, you have to maintain your whole
dam house. If you are a studio owner you have to maintain your whole damn
studio, and unlike the beaver, it feels like you are never going to get
your head above water.
If you have ever spilled a Coke or coffee on a console, you know what maintenance
is. If you have busted a radiator hose on a deserted highway, you know what
maintenance is. If you have ever been split up from your wife, you know
what separate maintenance is.
The most important part of maintenance is preventative maintenance. Just
like going in to the doctor for a flu shot before the season hits, you can
prevent a lot of the problems that crop up in the studio by performing some
day-to-day tasks that minimize the potential for session stopping catastrophes.
Rotary Club Well Care
Although we take them for granted, DAT machines, Tascam DA-88s, ADATs, Sony
PCM-800s, and the Akai ADAM (don't forget the Sony PCM-F1) are a pretty
sophisticated pieces of equipment. It takes a lot of precision to track
those hair thin tracks across a moving tape with heads rotating faster than
the tires on a Subaru at 60 miles per hour. In this environment, "Cleanliness
is Next to Godliness, I mean High Fidelity." (I must admit that I borrowed
that saying from Stan Freeberg's 1959 recording "A Child's Garden of
Freeberg". Steve St. Croix must have an original copy.) Regular cleaning
of your DAT (or other helical scan) machine is a must. If you wait until
the "CLEAN" warning comes on or the error LED to start flashing,
then it is probably too late. The heads will have become so clogged with
oxide that no amount of cleaning will repair them, and you will have to
spend $200 to $700 to replace the head drum. A once a week bout with the
cleaning DAT (or 8mm or VHS) tape will save you a lot of misery in the end.
Please remember that the cleaning tape should only be used for about 15
seconds, and should not be rewound. By not rewinding the cleaning tape you
insure that a new fresh section of cleaning tape contacts the heads during
the cleaning cycle. The Tascam and Sony machines know when you have inserted
a cleaning tape and go through the process automatically.
----------------------------------Note To Tony...If this is too long, you
can cut out from here to the line below these next paragraphs.
Many times I have heard comments that "the machine doesn't have to
be cleaned, it's digital", or "it doesn't have to be meat, it's
Jack in the Box." A few years ago I recorded a bunch of tracks for
a John Denver album using the Sony 3348 digital 48 track. Lee Holdridge
was the producer of the project, and toward the end John sent me a DAT with
ruff mixes. There were digital clicks and pops all over the record. When
I asked John about it, he said that they had been plagued with digital clicks
on the 48 track, and they were getting worse. He said that they were going
to mix in a few days and needed to fix the clicks. I got two Sony 3348 machines
and the master tapes and spent 36 hours straight tweaking the play machine
from song to song to get it to play back without clicks. I made digital
clones to the second machine and then sent everything back to Lee. A few
days later I talked to Lee and told him that the reason for the large number
of clicks was that nobody had cleaned the heads on the 48 track machine.
He then said that the maintenance staff at the studio told him that I was
wrong and that you don't have to clean digital machines "because they're
digital." During the mixes John called me up and said that the clicks
were still there. After another conversation with Lee, he said that "You
don't think I would use tape copies for mixing, I only use the original
masters." So much for an understanding of digital audio. He mixed from
the click infested tapes and the clicks he couldn't remove by muting faders
on the mix console were removed by edits during mastering.
Partially I blame maintenance personnell for not bothering to find out the
facts about the machines in their studio. Someone told Lee that you didn't
need to clean the machine, and someone told him that you shouldn't use a
copy of a digital tape because it is not as good. Find me that guy and I
will personally drag him out in the street and put him out of his misery.
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If you are a VERY experienced maintenance type person, or you have a friend
with a video repair shop, you can clean the heads on a rotary head machine
by removing the case and using a Chemtronics chamois tip cleaning stick
to clean the heads with denatured alcohol or video head cleaner. Do not
use rubbing alcohol because it contains traces of oil and will leave a coating
behind that will attract more debris than you removed in the cleaning process.
In some states, you can buy 180 proof alcohol like Everclear at the liquor
store. I have been to more than a few studios that use Everclear to clean
their tape machines, and if things aren't going well, they can drink a little
of it to make them feel better. Back to the subject here, have someone physically
teach you how to clean the rotary heads. One wrong move and you will be
replacing the head drum.
The "Duh" Factor
Maintenance and creativity take opposite sides of the brain. When you are
in a studio-for-hire and something breaks, it completely ruins the creative
flow process. When a producer is looking to book a studio for his next project,
the quality of maintenance is way up near the top of the list. I have personally
stayed away from otherwise great studios because the facility was ill maintained.
The worst possible scenario is when you are trying to perform a task in
the control room and you discover some small but annoying problem. When
you call the maintenance staff in to take a look, they say "Well, that's
what you get for trying to do it that way." My next session will be
at another studio.
I rate studios on a little sheet I keep in my Day Timer. One of the columns
is labeled "Duh". If the tech comes into the control room after
being rudely awakened and answers my question with "Duh, I dunno",
then that studio gets a very high rating for "Duh" factor. The
facilities where I can get the most amount of work accomplished usually
have a very low number in that particular column.
I saw a billboard near Burbank airport that says "Safety Is No Accident".
I think that a similar sign should be tacked up in every studio that says
"Preventative Maintenance Is No Problem."
Fun, Fun, Fun
When you here the name "409" and think of the all purpose cleaner,
then the rest of this column probably will be of no interest, but if the
name "409" conjures up visions of '61 Chevys with 409 cubic inch
engines and the Beach Boys, then stick around.
Recently I was lucky enough to get to work on the new Beach Boys (they are
old enough now that I call them the Beach Guys) album that will be coming
out this summer. The probably double album consists of re-makes of all of
the original Beach Boys songs, but with lead vocals performed buy guest
artists. Timothy B. Schmidt sang "Caroline, No" while Jimmy Web
arranged and conducted the string session. The Beach Boys performed flawless
harmonies that will snap you right back to the '60s. Junior Brown sang "409"
and played the solo on his Dobro-guitar whatever-the-hell it is. Very cool.
Sawyer Brown, Lorrie Morgan and James House guested on a few of the tunes
as well. Brian Wilson was there as well, and sang his butt off.
Whenever Joe Thomas, the producer, said "OK, lets put some vocals on
this track," it looked like a traffic jam on a Malibu's Pacific Coast
Hiway as Brian, Al, Mike, Carl, Bruce, and Matt pushed their way down the
hall and out to the microphones. The whole week that I got to work on the
project was nothing but fun. Rick Fritz, Joe Thomas' engineer let me drive
for the week in the new Masterfonics Infrasonic Tracking Room in Nashville.
The console was the new SSL 9000 J with full Ultimation. The studio was
big enough that I could set up for 30 strings, woodwinds, tympani and percussion
and still cut basic tracks with drums, guitar, piano, bass and vocal without
having to move anything. Cool
Ending It All
No, I am not going to shoot myself, I am just getting out of here until
next month. My Yamaha 02R is doing just fine, thank you. My Web Site has
been getting about 5,000 hits per week and is starting to look pretty cool.
There are some Beach Boy photos, links to Steely Dan, Singing Mongooses,
FBI and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. Check out the EQ magazine section.
All of my columns since 1989, and some of my reviews are there. There will
be more EQ stuff added as well as other neat stuff like a copy of the US
law pertaining to contact with aliens (not the ones operating convenience
stores).
NOTE: Roger's Web page is at http://www.digital-atomics.com. Roger's e-mail
is rnichols@digital-atomics.com. The time on Roger's atomic clock right
now is 17:34:21.24356271835463278912001 UTC in case you want to set your
watch.