Scavenger hunt - work/play station
Posted: 27 Apr 2020 5:32 am
My wife allowed me to bring my steel up from the frigid basement to a window view spot in the living room during the lockdown to save heating costs. Using an old laptop I decided not to sell, I have made a work/play station using whatever I could find in the basement and garage. Started with a free stool from the "Boutique" at the dump (transfer station) I added an enlarged top (boat plywood) to it with a lip to keep steels from rolling off the edge and breaking toes. Also made a magazine rack style mount for the USB interface out of wood I've been saving. I'm mostly an acoustic guitar guy, so my amplifier selection is limited to a Roland Cube that sounds great thru the speaker but remarkably horrible thru the headsets, and the little Vox VT-20x doesn't give the steel enough gain. So, for the first time ever I downloaded the free limited feature DAW software (Ableton) that came with my Focusrite USB audio interface. The preamps in the Focusrite 6i6 are nice and clean, then I use Ableton for the amplifier and reverb plugins and now have decent steel sound in my headsets that I can live with. The old MacBook Pro dumps all audio to the Focusrite USB output so I can play along with BIAB, iTunes, Youtube and random MP3's, etc, all in the comfort of my headphones. I can also record PSG with this rig. Pretty sure the headphones are the reason I haven't been directed back to the basement. Lost one day of practice making it, but practice a lot more in a warm room with a view.
