Jim's Rants Archives

33 Hot Rod – Built Not Bought

January 10, 2018 by jim

2017 has been a great year. There has been so much going on with projects and new products for Pure Wave Audio. As you can imagine running a few business can be very difficult and time is valuable. I have found that having personal projects really help contain overworking. At the end of project, you have something to show for it. I have been working on building a car for the last year. I did a build school and now have been pre-planning my custom build. This picture is the first of hopefully a few cars I build. It is a 33 hot rod which will be powered by a Corvette LS engine drive train. Besides the color, this drawing is pretty accurate. Of course anything can change at anytime….because I am building it!

Jim's Rants33 Hot Rod, Factory Five, Jim Pavett, LS Engine

DeGrazia News

March 8, 2011 by Joe

Please Remember Me

I did some drumming, percussion, and engineering on a 3 tracks with Domingo DeGrazia that were included on the new Ted DeGrazia Jazz/Big Band compilation CD entitled Please Remember Me, which is available now through the DeGrazia Gallery gift shop.

There will be an official release party for the DeGrazia Centennial Concert DVD on May 1, 2011, at Tohono Chul Park. Mark your calendars now for this all-ages show, featuring the Domingo DeGrazia Band. The show is set to begin at 8:00pm.

Jim's Rants, Sessions, Shows

2010 Comes to a Close

December 21, 2010 by Joe

This has been a freaking crazy year, my friends. Two trade shows, three different performing live bands, nine studio drumming projects, multiple photography projects, two DVD’s released, four new staff members, and a whole new redesign and studio philosophy implementing as we speak. Can you say no sleep? I can. Barely! I even finished 95% of my script for The Studio Edge Vol 2. Seriously? And I have 14 days left till new years. Hmm. What else can I get done? Yikes!

Now that the TSE series has just debuted, I will be doing more clinics. On DVD 2 I will be talking about how to build a studio, including philosophies and implementation. I have already built and filmed a studio as a case study for the appendix of the DVD. And now that I am rolling, I hope to possibly get Vol 3 recorded this year too. I haven’t decided which topic to do next, but I have 8 more outlines ready to go.

Ten Times Gravity

I just spent two days in the studio recording drum tracks for my friends Ten Times Gravity. In the middle of it all, we did a live interview with DJ’s from New York and Ireland using our phone patch system. The station has already taken a liking to one of the releases “When It Comes To The Night.” Now it’s time to follow up with the rest of the album. I ended up using 15 microphones to capture my 7 piece kit. Since the songs will be using loops, real drums, and effected drums, I wanted to have many sound options with the live drums; Room mics, an extra ribbon on kick, MS stereo setup and 6 snare drums with two up at a time. Now that’s options! We spent 6 hrs setting up the mics, pres and session files so all the headphone monitoring, EQ, and routing was already finished. All we had to do, when it was time to record the drums, was open the file, do a line check and start recording. I did 7 songs in one day and two the next. It was very stress-free. I let Chase, my trainee, run the session. We videotaped the whole session and hopefully will be YouTube-ing the results in the coming weeks of making an album. Google Ten Times Gravity for all thier sites.

Educational, Jim's Rants, Sessions

AES 2010

November 15, 2010 by Joe

Bjorgvin, Chase and I stormed San Fran for the AES 2010 convention. Our first stop was the Focal unveiling of the SM9 studio monitor at Broken Radio studios. Two Speakers in one; a 2-way band limited speaker inside of a 3-way full 40kHz bandwidth studio monitor, including a sub. When you flip the switch, the same tweeter and midrange are used so your imaging does not change. Once the unveiling was over, we moved down the hall to Romanowski’s mastering room for a listen with Fab Dupont. We not only heard the new SM9’s but got a glimpse of PT 9 a few days before it was released. In the background was a pair of Focal Grand Utopia’s, a $190K pair of speakers. Next up was a day at the trade show checking out the shocking difference in an A/B comparison with Vovox cables and a full dissertation by Jerg, the owner of Vovox. Then we took a tour of Studio Trilogy, a newly made public studio that was designed by John Stork. Later that night we hit a party there with Chris Lord Alge. We then took a stroll down to “the tenderloin” for a party at Hyde Street Studios. I watched a clinic being put on by Joe Chiccarelli mixing a song on an old Neve while using Mercury outboard gear to sweeten. Sure, we even did the trolley down to Bistro Boudin for their famous bread and meals. Very good. We also attended a two-day panel with Bobby Owsinski about the music industry, and a mastering panel with Doug Sax doing A/B comparisons of real mixes showing how compression destroys mixes. (We keep telling you, but no one listens! Pun intended.) And then the final show-stopper: the SSL Nucleus controller, mic pre, interface and monitor controller all-in-one. Sweet!

Jim's Rants

Getting Back to Basics

August 29, 2009 by jim

As you can see I have not had any time to write. The last few months have been a blur and frankly “way over the top”! 12-14 hr days for weeks on end, including weekends. I has to force myself to leave on vacation twice and it just was not enough to get the body to relax. I took on too many personal music projects this year outside of the normal studio running hours. And what is also true is I will have the most growth and exposure from my endeavors. Sacrifice, sacrifice. Hear is a picture of me catching a big 150 pound sail fish from last weekend in San Carlos. We re-aerated his gills and let him go unharmed. I burned a little stress off reeling him in.

Jim's Rants