Analog is great. In this day and age of ITB recording, computer DAWs and plugins, analog still has a place. I’m not knocking ITB mixing, I do it frequently. There is however, an allure to pushing faders, twisting knobs, and seeing the glow and swing of a VU meter working. I am privileged to have some good outboard gear, and a great analog console, a Trident Series 65. Having an electrical engineering background, I really enjoy learning and tinkering with circuits and such. So over the past few months, I’ve taken on the task of doing all the necessary maintenance (re-capping, etc) and also doing some cool upgrades to my old console.
To start, I built a custom power supply for the audio rails. The stock power supply for these consoles is weak for anything other than the 16 channel versions, (mine has 36ch / 24 buss), so this upgrade really opened the console up and let it breathe. It allows the channels to get all the current they need to perform, and also opens the door to do things like op-amp swaps (to get some different flavor from the preamps / make the board perform better) and other things.
Stay tuned for more news and pics from the project. It will be on-going (when I can find time between playing and sessions).
