Consensus Madness 7"

 Consensus Madness will be putting out two releases this year that I have been part of. First is this 7" on Iron Lung Records, which I recorded and mixed last year. Up soon is a cassette of new material featuring a slightly different lineup, which I mixed this past summer. 

Canal Irreal Session

This Spring I had the privilege of working with Canal Irreal on a new LP. Being a huge fan of their first record, and since they're all longtime friends, it was a treat to be in on the process of making this one. Scott Plant will be mixing the record, and Jonah Falco is on board to master. On the main day of tracking, ComEd decided to shut down power to our neighborhood for six hours! Luckily the band took it in stride and we played a few hands of rummy while waiting for the game on signal.

Riesgo LP now out on Extinction Burst

 Happy to report that the Riesgo LP, Remolino De Muertos I recorded two years ago is finally seeing its official vinyl release. It's great to have this see the light of day. I love Arturo Fresan's cover art for this one!

Another Permanent Residue Tape

 One of my 2022 sessions just came out on cassette. Permanent Residue's second tape, "S/T Tape #2", is out on Dead Broke Rekerds. Enjoy!

Summer 2022 Updates

After the slump times of COVID, summer 2022 is looking more and more like normal for Secret Chamber Studio. 

Mix and mastering for the RIESGO LP is finally wrapped up, and the physical product will hopefully see the light of day this year.

I've recently done a recording for the new band CONSENSUS MADNESS featuring Bryan of PRIMITIVE TEETH, Sara of UDUSIC, Kevin of ENDLESS COLUMN, and Nick of DROID'S BLOOD - needless to say this one is going to be great and is already slated for a label release in the near future.

I'm partway through a new recording for PERMANENT RESIDUE at the time of writing.

I don't think I have posted that the recording I did for JAROCHICANOS back in 2019/20 did finally come out on vinyl. It was mastered by Carl Saff here in Chicago and sounds great.

I've decided to raise my rates a little bit this year. Not so much that I am going to be as expensive as a commercial studio, and still in line with the means of DIY bands. Reach out for specific info if you have questions.

I have some potential projects for fall in the pipeline, which I am excited to share when the time comes. I'll also be going into the studio with EXEDO later this year, and for once I will be leaving the recording to someone else!

Riesgo LP Session

 In December 2021 I had the first session in a long time at Secret Chamber. Riesgo, whom I'd selfishly hoped would put out an LP for a long time, reached out to see if we could work together. We sorted out the protocols, and came up with a plan. Tracking all instruments and vocals took place on one day. As of this writing, the mixes are being finalized. Can't wait for this one to come out!

Ibanez Eco Shifter Oscillation Mod

 It's been a while since I posted anything here... COVID times were pretty fallow at the studio. Things are looking a little more lively again though, and I did make an additional modification to my Ibanez Echo Shifter pedal that I thought might be useful to someone.

I have already posted about this pedal and how I fixed the broken speed slider. I've recently been swapping things around on my pedal boards - I keep one for bass and another for guitar - and the echo shifter has been earning its keep lately on the guitar board. It certainly isn't the most full featured analog delay out there, and it's kind of big, but I really like how it sounds and it has stayed in rotation while other delays haven't. I've also noticed recently that Ibanez has come out with a new version of this pedal the ES-3 - which has this mod I am about to describe built in! Along with speed control for the modulation which is nice.

The mod I am going to describe is my attempt to make the oscillation circuit more useful during guitar performance. Stock, this is engaged with a small toggle switch and adds gain to the regeneration circuit, leading to runaway repeats and cool warped sounds that are what makes analog delay so sought after. I like to use this selectively, and not for entire songs or even parts. The toggle switch is kind of hard to manipulate with your foot. I wanted to be able to control it with a stomp switch. My first thought was to use a switching TRS jack and a momentary stomp switch in a remote enclosure, which would take a lot of work and parts. I am glad I sat on that idea for a while, because now having owned and used this pedal for several years I realize I never use the tap tempo feature, and in fact would prefer not to have that function on a footswitch at all, too easy to accidentally hit it in a live setting.

I realized that I could re-purpose the tap tempo switch to serve as a momentary stomp-friendly switch for the oscillation circuit. This involved cutting the traces to the switch, and adding some flying wires back to the original toggle switch. Due to how the toggle behaves, this has one limitation: the LED for the osc circuit will not light up when using the stomp switch to activate it, but will still light up if you use the toggle to turn on the osc.

Step 1: open up the pedal, and find the smaller circuit board (connected with the three wires) that holds the two foot switches. Cut the traces that lead to the tap tempo switch. I used a dremel tool with a cutoff wheel, but you could use a file, a knife, a handsaw, whatever.

Step 2: get two short pieces of wire, and solder them from the outermost two contacts of the oscillation toggle switch to the two solder pads of the tap tempo footswitch. There was some heat shrink insulation on my toggle switch that I had to remove first. It does not matter which of the two toggle contacts goes to which side of the tap switch - it's just a normally open SPST switch so whichever way will work.

That's all there is to it. When you're done you should have new wires that look something like this (the twisted blue ones):

Having used the pedal with this new modification, I really like it. It's so easy to add a little swell of delay feedback at the end of a lead part or whatever, I may risk over using the gimmick.

Someday I would like to try out the ES-3 to see if it sounds as good as the ES-2. I am a little skeptical about the multi-function tap/oscillation switch... other pedals that I have used with these sorts of controls have been difficult for me. But, if it's reliable, could be a great way to go especially since they have added speed control for the modulation.