So I recorded the spoken section of the next dead bug jumping. This went pretty well.
Granted my sleep deprived state may mean that it makes no sense, but it makes sense to me at the moment. I managed this despite the fact that my nice headphones have, of course, disappeared. The new mic / mic stand / pop filter all worked well. It was good.
Then I started trying to record the records.
Oh dear.
I’d not noticed, but even in the preview I can hear it now, there’s an insane amount of hum. Oddly it varies according to the position of the stylus on the record. It varies with stylus position. It’s really quite odd – I am left vaguely wondering if there’s some kind of cable fault. Which would be tedious to rectify.
I’m too tired to fix it, but I’ve spent a lot of time flailing. I’ve dinked with earth connections, I’ve dinked with cables. I’ve cleaned contacts. It’s all done sod all. I suspect I need to try it with my main amp, and see if the hum is deck-related or amp-related, or something else. It’s made more complex by the fact that since the preamp and the deck had no earth, I made the deck’s earth run to the plug; but the cambridge amp is clearly a popper amp, and it has an earth point. But connecting that – that’s likely to create a new earth loop and more humming. This will, sadly delay the show, which is a shame, because I really rather enjoyed it up until I couldn’t coax the humming to stop.
