After listening recently to Blind Mississippi Morris down at BB's on Beale Street a number of weeks ago, I decided I was going to buy a good blues harp mic, so I could play amplified. I got lucky and found an old JT30 that someone had already done some customizing to. He had added an Amphenol connector and a volume knob. Unfortunately, he did both jobs wrong....
So, I got it home, and played on it, and it sounded/sounds awesome! As mentioned above however, when I opened the mic, I found a wiring mess.... I decided to clean up all the wiring and fix the Amphenol connector which he had simply drilled through and essentially eliminated the need for..
After figuring out the correct wiring for the connector and fixing that, I went after the volume pot wiring and the grounds. Finally, all of that was correct, and I could spend some time on paint!
I sanded the whole mic down to bare metal, and then primed it. A light sanding later, and I was able to airbrush on several nice coats of House Of Kolor Pavo Purple. Some good metalflake in it, so it really looks cool!
When the color was laid, I was able to go in with several light coats of clear, followed by one nice wet coat of clear. After all that was done, I buffed the whole thing out and waxed it. I'm really proud of the result as it turned out quite nicely.
I also ordered a new knob for the volume control, and put a new 'silk' in behind the grill. I cut that from an old cycling jersey which no longer fit me.
Most importantly, the thing sounds great, and I can make some pretty good sounding music on it.
I'm currently playing the mic through either my Vox DA5 or my Stella Cigar Box amp. Both actually sound pretty cool. The Stella setup is crunchier, but simpler, and the Vox has reverb and delay which sound good while playing blues harp.
Lots of fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment