Soon after I started, I found that the biggest barrier was in my head. It was just not that difficult, and when I finished my first LA2A and I switched it on, that was priceless. You know I had that sound and I did it myself.

This is the Self Recording Band Podcast, the show where we help you make exciting records on your own wherever you are DIY style. Let's go. Hello and welcome to the Self Recording Band Podcast. I am your host, benedikt Hein. If you are new to the show, welcome, so stoked to have you. If you are coming back, if you're already a listener, thank you Glad you're hanging out with us again and this is a special episode, so you might want to watch this on YouTube if you are now on your usual podcast apps Spotify, whatever Because this is a live interview we did at Studio Scena 2023 in Hamburg. We had the honor of interviewing really cool people at the Studio Sofa there. So, yeah, that was really really exciting. It was. Those were live episodes with a live audience at this great show, like this great conference and trade show. We've spent all week there with the team, the Self Recording Band, so this was really exciting and, yeah, they've captured it all and you want to. If you want to see that original capture, that original video, go to YouTube and check out the episode there. As always, I am here joined by my friend and cohost, malcolm Owen Flood. How are you buddy?

Hey, benny, I'm great. Yeah, this is actually the last of five episodes from the Studio's NA conference, but we've posted all of the other ones up until that point now, so if you haven't seen those, we did Warren Hewart, we did Chris Yetter from AudioScape, we did Addy from Hit the Road Music Studio, jason Joshua, and now this one we get to talk to Martin Zobel of Analog Vibes, which is another great chat Absolutely Very interesting.

This was one of like a kind of a surprise thing for me because I didn't really know about him and what he did at Analog Vibes and then so we were. We kind of didn't know what to expect and we obviously prepared ourselves. We are both not really at least so far, not really into like building you know, our own gear or maybe we can solder cables maybe or fix the occasional things what about a pickup on a guitar or something? But both Malcolm and I are not really into building things. But it turned out to be a really fascinating conversation and there might even be like a little challenge in there that I agreed to do so. we'll see, Maybe a year from now. I actually am one of those people who can build gear. We'll see how that goes. More on that in the actual episode. Before we get into this or before we tell you more about it, I want to bring something up that we completely forgot to tell you or like, yeah, forgot to mention in the banter for the previous four episodes. We actually got into like a little car accident. I remembered.

I just wasn't sure if you wanted to mention that.

for sure, it just came to mind, because I have this like insurance car right in front of me, because I had to deal with this today. So we just came back from the studio stage this weekend and now I had to deal with all that crap because on Tuesday, the first day of the actual event, we were driving back to our place where we stayed, which was a cool houseboat, by the way. So, yeah, that's also part of the story. We stayed on a houseboat built in studio. Anyway, we had to travel back and forth every day with my car and on Tuesday, first day of studio setting, after the networking event and I was sober, by the way, so don't assume that I was drunk or whatever but we got there, yeah, we went back. It was dark, it was a big city, it was a big city. I was changing lanes, it was raining. Long story short, I didn't see another car that was right behind me, in my blind spot, basically, and so I accidentally hit that car. Nobody was injured, so not a big deal. Everyone was cool about it, but it's annoying as hell. It was annoying, yeah, and I had to call the insurers today, which, I have to say, they did a phenomenal job. I've never had that experience. I don't want to say which company it is, but honestly, I just called them. I didn't have to wait. I was immediately talking to a human being. It took five minutes or so and everything was handled and done and it was a very pleasant experience and this is not the case oftentimes. When you talk to insurance companies like that, yeah, definitely.

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm glad to hear that. Like, obviously that's such a pain for you, your car and you have to deal with the insurance thing, but I do love that as a team. The four current team members of the self-proclaimed band have the shared experience of getting in a car crash in Hamburg. Yeah, that's absolutely true. It's a great story, absolutely true.

Also I picked up, I really picked the right car to bump into, so it's going to be pretty. It's a pretty expensive thing because it was like an AMG Mercedes thing with custom paint job and the full deal, so there's no way I'm going to be able to pay that by myself. So I mean I could maybe, but it's probably not a good idea. So we let the insurance handle that, which means my insurance is getting more expensive, but yeah, anyway, oh, that sucks. Yeah, it was two bouncers in there with like gold chains and everything. They were on their way to a job. They had this really nice Mercedes and, yeah, now it has a few scratches and dents, sorry, anyway, with the exception of that, everything went pretty well this week, though it was very, very good. For a few moments we thought we broke something else, but we turned out we didn't.

I'm glad this didn't happen.

No, everything else was really good and we had a great time at the studio Houseboat. There's going to be content around that too. We've captured dozens of hours of content at this event, talking to many inspiring, amazing people. One of them is Martin Sobel that we're going to introduce to you on this episode. So, yeah, back to the topic here. It's a Martin runs a company called Analog Vibes and he, as far as I understood, he did it as a hobby and at some point there was a demand for it. He was like shipping out these units that he built and so he kind of had to start a business, but he was like, yeah, doing it anyways, like and just enjoying it, and then it turned into a big community. I was surprised to hear those numbers I can't remember, but he's saying it on the podcast, like how many people are in there at this point. And so what he does, I think, is he gives you either full kits that you can buy and then assemble and build your own pieces of hardware Analog Gear or he gives you like a chassis and a starting point in the list of things, of parts to buy, and then a really detailed great like manual and step-by-step instructions to follow along with and he makes it really, really easy even for complete noobs to build an Analog Compressor, for example. You know Analog Gear, so it seems to be a really intimidating, daunting task to build something like that, but they really put a lot of effort into making this as easy as possible for you. They guide you every step of the way, they have a great community, you can ask questions, they have these manuals. So he really made a point of saying that it's a mental barrier more than anything, and with the right instructions, the right mentor, everyone can do it. And yeah, very interesting.

It was super cool. He's been very clever about removing, identifying the pain points for people that are curious about trying something like this, but what those like barriers of entry are and then trying to either remove them or provide resources that make it over something you can overcome quite easily. It was a very fascinating chat. It's always interesting learning what somebody like Martin, who makes he can make all his own gear really hardware and what he is looking for from them and why. What the motivation behind all of that work is right, like why bother, and I really liked his perspective. It was a fascinating chat.

Yeah, absolutely Totally, and it's also how he got into. This was fascinating. He was pretty successful with his own band, I think, at some point. So he shared a story about that, like about recording in a big studio and hearing the nice gear and then from there on he was like chasing the sound. He heard there and he didn't know how to get it, and this was what, like this, was the beginning of his journey, and, as far as I understood, he at this point didn't know anything about building gear as well. He had to learn himself first and go through that journey, and then he now helps you know, he now makes it easier for you and helps you not make those same mistakes.

Yeah, very, very fascinating, and so yeah, yeah, definitely in our DIY kind of spirit.

Yeah, exactly, I know for a fact that there's a few people in our coaching community and probably even more, way more in our general, like family here on the email list and the Facebook group and everything who are actually building their own gear or maintaining your own gear, fixing it. This is also something Martin touched on, where he was like if you just build one piece and you dive in and learn the schematics and all of that, it's not about that piece, it's about the process and that can actually be fun, but it's also about like learning how the tools really work and how to also fix them, because some people like myself, I have a couple of nice units here that could use some maintenance and I have been kind of avoiding it for a while now because I don't want to ship them and it's like these what happens if it gets lost or gets broken? Shipping stuff out and if I were, if I would have the skills to just open it up and fix it quickly, then that would be amazing actually, and this is also what you can learn by doing this. So, yeah, anyway, I have a new challenge here. You're going to hear it on the podcast and enjoy our conversation with Martin Sobel. Hello and welcome to the Self-Recording Band podcast. I'm your host, benedikt Hein, and we are live podcasting here from the Studio Szene event in Björnful, hamburg. We are here at the Studio Sofa the people that sound in recording. Let us use this and it's been very great the past couple of days and we've got some very cool guests here. And, yeah, I'm here with my co-host and friend, malcolm Owen Flutt, as always Last day. Can't believe it? Yeah, absolutely. And our guest today is Martin Sobel from Analog Vibes.

Yeah, hello Martin, how are you? Thanks for having me. Yeah, great, great to be here. It's been a great show so far. Awesome, awesome, great to have you.

Great to have you. Yeah, also thank you for coming here, live and joining us here, in front of the sofa Really really cool. Great to be here today. So glad you're here. So yeah, today, like our show, is about helping musicians record themselves in their jam spaces and home studios and help them get better sounding, exciting sounding records there, and we know that part of our community is also not only into DIY recording but also into actually building DIY gear. So this is a very relevant topic for us and I'm very glad we have you here and also Malcolm, and I, to be honest, don't know too much about that side of the thing, so I can only speak for myself. But I can like fix a cable, you know, or like swap out a pickup on a guitar. But that's about it.

Yeah, if I have to, yeah, exactly.

So we're very glad to have an expert here and to tell us something about it all. So maybe just give us your quick backstory, like how you got into building your own gear and how it all started and what you're doing in Analog Vibes.

Well, you know, I'm a musician, I've been touring and recording for many years and when I started out I was just working all in the box, you know, because I'm a digital native. That's all I had, that's all I knew and that's all I could afford. So I had all these plugins you know about, you know LA2As, pultex and whatnot, and I kind of had to believe that they sound like the real deal, you know. And I had no way to prove or verify that. And when I had my first bigger record deal, I had the chance to go to Los Angeles and record in the studio where everything was present and I'm a lead vocalist. So, yeah, that was really an absolute eye-opener. You know, I had the sound on the cans, was just like a record, and I was so inspired, you know, and of course I performed completely differently. It was like magic for me, you know. And then, yeah, from that very moment, it was obvious I couldn't go back and use that Pultex plugins or LA2As. It was just not giving me that sound. You know, I heard and, yeah, that's basically how it all started because I just was hunting for that sound and obviously I couldn't afford to spend 13K, 14k for a used Pultex, you know, it was just not it.

So I tried. Sorry, when was that that was?

2010.

Okay, so there weren't this many like clones available as well back then?

No, but I tried some you know, and it was just not giving me the sound you know. I actually tried many, and so I started to find out. You know, try to find out what was actually making that sound, what was the magic, you know, and so I'm a very persistent person. So I kind of tried to find out who were the guys that were. You know that have the knowledge. So, and yeah, for the Pultex, for example, I found Chris Preston, who's been servicing Pultex equalizers in the States for the last decades and yeah, and I was kind of, you know, really asking him about everything you know, what's in there, what capacitor is, and I was just trying to find out what is fact, what is fiction and what is actually doing the sound. So I spent about one year only studying the Pultex you know, and then I started to build my first own LA2A from scratch and I had so much respect because it's too gear, there's high voltage present and it's point to point, you know. But then, soon after I started, I found that the biggest barrier was in my head. It was just not that difficult. I mean, if you just focus, you know.

Follow instructions. Yes.

And so, and when I, you know, finished my first LA2A and I switched it on, man, you know, that was no-transcript, that was priceless. I had that sound and I did it myself. So that's how it all started. And then I just figured it's all the knowledge I gathered there. Some parts of it was from the DIY community. I mean, I talked about it yesterday here on stage. It was really tedious because you have so much information and you have to navigate all the way through. You spend so much time. And then I figured, since I knew that it was not that hard much more easy than I thought At first sight, I decided if I could kind of curate that knowledge and make it accessible, others could do it as well. And that's how the idea of analog lives started.

actually, Awesome, perfect, thank you. So to me it's a two-part thing. One part of it is understanding the schematics and how these pieces of equipment work, but the other side is actually knowing how to build something, which tools you use, how to solder that part of things. Do you have a background in electrical engineering or anything like that.

No, not at all. I'm just a musician and there's a lot of passion in it If I focus on something and there's a goal. I'm like in a tunnel, so I do it as long as I get there.

Do things go wrong at the beginning, of course, a lot went wrong.

I had to troubleshoot a lot. I'm always telling the people that are in the VIPES community now, because I feel like their biggest nightmare is they have to troubleshoot something. I get it. Sometimes it's a pain, but you have to go through it. That was always the moment when I learned the most about how this particular piece of gear actually works, and I think, from a musician's or a creator's point of perspective, that's critical To know how the gear that you're using actually works. I'm like a painter and I have to know my color palette, of course, so that completely changed my way of creating music. Also, I have to just emphasize when I tried all these plugins back then, like in 1176, for example, it took me so long to get my head around how this thing works, because you have the mouse and you can always dial one thing at a time, and when I had the analog gear in front of me, it was haptics that was going on and I could close my eyes, and that's critical, because this is what actually is going on. You have to listen for something and not check the WAV files or whatever.

Being able to do it in real time, just multiple parameters at once, it's a huge advantage.

Of course a lot of things went wrong, but it's not rocket science, it's just big capacitors. It's doable really, and I think if you just manage to translate the schematics, which many people don't even know to read including myself at the beginning if you translate it it's really just more or less painting by numbers, and that means I couldn't develop something like that myself because I'm not an electronic engineer. But I can build something that's already there and from there on you learn things and then you can start to modify. Of course that sometimes happens by mistake.

Well, benny and I, just 10 minutes before we got to meet you, martin, I asked Benny, have you ever tried to make anything like a guitar pedal or gear like that? And we both said no. It seems like a daunting barrier of entry, it's intimidating and you'd have to spend a lot of time to get good enough. Is that the case, or is it actually way easier than we did?

It's in your head and to me. I understand how the gear works. I've been using it for so long and it's all I do every day. It's my job. I know how it works. I also know quite a bit about how it works internally, but I still can't build it, or I believe I can't build it because I don't know how to operate the tools properly and what do I even need.

I hear you. When we started to build this community which actually also happened not on purpose, because I just posted stuff on the internet and then people kept writing me emails from all over the world we started to build these chassis that are really authentic, faithful recreations. So, to make it easy, you don't have to drill and everything. I really get it and I've been talking to the community, and the community by now is more than 7,000 people in the Anlargibes community, and whenever we come up with a new project, I try to find out the pain points, what is holding you back from doing it. And this is exactly what I hear. So I decided at some point to make a guide that covers all the basics, everything you need to know, the precautions, how to discharge capacitors, how to measure stuff. I included links to sovereign tutorials to really take you by the hand, and I just put it on a website for free for everyone, so everyone can just download it and find out for themselves. Then you can only decide if you do the next step and try to build something. I have to say that many people that built our Tube Opto Compressor, which is actually an LA2A, they haven't even built a guitar pedal before. That's amazing, and so far everybody has made it.

That's awesome. I think we skipped a step. You were learning and then you made your own LA2A, but then when did Anlargibes become Anlargibes? And really just for people that don't know what is Anlargibes.

Yeah, Anlargibes was founded because I am an artist and in Germany we have. I'm registered as an artist. I'm not allowed to make any money with anything else than music or arts. But then, after all these requests came from all over the world, I found myself in the studio foyer just packing boxes for people in San Francisco, in Sydney and whatever, and I found, okay, I have to create a business here Create a business here because, yeah, so then we founded Anlargibes. And then, because I had many friends and connections in the audio world by then, I found friends that have a warehouse and they are actually doing all the distribution. So I didn't have to do it in my studio because I actually wanted to make music. So, and now Anlargibes is actually all about enabling musicians or producers from all around the world to get their hands on the gear they have always dreamed of. And the claim we have for Anlargibes is build your legends. Of course, that is a certain you know. It's very attractive because if you do it with something that is unknown, you probably wouldn't have this intrinsic motivation to do it. But I mean, I wanted to have an LA2A so badly, so you go for it, you know. And if it's accessible it's even easier to do it. So Anlargibes is all about, you know, enabling empowerment. That's actually the main factor, and I only realized that later, because in the beginning I thought they had just parts and boxes, you know, and then people wrote me emails that were so grateful. People were kind of giving us original parts from back in the days they had in the garage. They just said do something about it. You know, I have a gate stay level in the studio. It's broken and I was from a producer in Los Angeles and he just sent it to me and said you know, if you fix it and if you make a project out of it, you can keep it. Wow, so, and this is that's incredible. So it's empowerment is the main thing.

Thank you. So you said something in the beginning that I found interesting and I think it's. I think I can imagine people being interested in that too. You said there was a difference in the sound you were hunting for, basically, and something you could hear in the actual gear that was missing in plugins or cheap clones and stuff. So what was that actually? Can you put your finger on it? Can you describe that? Because a lot of people, I think, have never heard the analog gear and they're wondering what do I even listen? What do I have to listen for? Like, is it worth it switching? Aren't the plugins good enough? And if I have it, if I turn it on, is there is going to be a world of a difference? Is it a subtle thing?

So what is it? Yeah, I mean it's actually, I would say, making no compromises, no shortcuts, not just you know every following the original schematics down to the very last capacitor, and even then, for the Pultik, for example, I tried different styles of capacitors for the high end to find out how they sound differently like polystyrene, polypropylene, like all these things and just trying to hear what made the sound and found out why the original Pultik used a lot of polystyrene capacitors because they have a very soft, you know, you just can turn it in and it's really opening the sound, while polyester, for example, is becoming harsh. I just had to find that out and I know some people would probably hate me for it, but plugins.

I mean they're good.

No, I mean they're really good, you know. But just last, the week, before last week, I had an artist at the studio and he was asking me, like you know, martin, you know, just between us, you know, besides all the analog vibe stuff, is it really such a difference between the analog gear and the plugins? And I was just saying, hey, bring you, you know, bring your friends, we make a session at the studio.

We appeared and so they came.

They came last week and we did it and we had the UED plugins silver phase, gray phase and that's all these things I have at the studio. It's the different revisions from different years with different components, and they were, you know they were saying they can't be serious about saying that it's sounding like the real thing. It was not even close. I mean, depending on how far you go. We had like tend to be gain reduction with an L2A you can do it easily. It's so transparent.

The more you push it, the more obvious it gets. We had that conversation with Chrisietta from Audioscape where we were, like you know, the plugins. At some point many of them like they crap out, they just fold, they collapse at some point, and the more you push it, the more obvious it gets. But I also think that plugins are still good. I think the really the difference to me is on the way in is like when you are able to commit to sound on the way in on your recording chain. You have good analog gear. That really helps. And if you do that then you can also stay in the box easily in the mix, in the mixing phase, and so I think for a lot of recording artists it's not only the sound, it's the way you operate it. I think I use an analog gear piece of gear differently than I use a plugin. Whatever it is, it's like if I can touch it I'd make different decisions. It feels different and on the way in it's like you commit to a sound and it's unique, exactly. And that's a big part for me.

And the musician, like you mentioned earlier, responds to what they're hearing. Exactly that's what I wanted to add.

That's the inspiration of the sound that you have on your ears when you're recording, and that also makes a huge difference. And I would also say if you have a good recording chain, that's a major bonus. I mean, most of the audio processing I'm doing at my studio is like 90% is analog, but because most of it is actually on the way in and when I'm working in the DAW, it's like I treat it like a tape machine actually and then just use plugins then to pull something and maybe gate something and stuff like that. Yeah, and I don't really want to bash plugins at all. I was just saying it's difficult to claim they are sounding exactly like the real deal. I mean, plugins are really, they have their point and they are really good, and the world nowadays you couldn't imagine without plugins because of recallability and everything.

But to be fair, two pieces of hardware also don't sound the same. So that's the thing. It depends on what they exactly modeled. If you take like two, three, four, five, whatever 1176s from different eras, they won't sound the same. That is true.

But that is true, but they all have the same signature. And going back to the example I just mentioned, the LA2 that was not even in the ballpark it was like what the LA2 is doing. You can check it out that the DIY area. Back there we have a silver phase from 1967 replica. It's painstakingly being recreated and what it's doing to the train engines it's incredible. It's so round and deep. It's just deep, you know, and the plugin is not. It's thin and it's sharp. The train engines is completely different, but still, of course, all the analog pieces, they have tolerances in the components. Of course they sound a little bit different, but the sound signature is always the same.

So I would be interested in hearing if you agree with this. One piece of advice that I often give people is Many people spend quite a bit of money on like many different things that are kind of you know, compromised or like kind of cheap, so they would buy. I won't say any brand names or whatever. But they would buy like a rack full of cheap compressors and a few the cheap preamps or whatever, and I always say like it's better to have one really great chain and spend that money there instead of like having many different pieces that don't really do the trick because I think plugins are better than cheap gear but, like, really good analog gear is better than plug-in. So I would say, have one really cool chain and you can record multiple things through it. So, for example, an LA to a, a good preamp. That together, especially if you build it yourself, is actually pretty accessible for many people. It's pretty affordable, and some people spent that same amount of money on like five, six, seven different pieces that aren't that great. So would you agree with that? Yeah, totally.

Like you said before, it's also about making a decision. You know, and that's what I learned when working in the studio with George full wood, fully forward, he's a regular legend. He was the bass player for Peter Tosh, he was the producer of my two of my albums. Yeah, and I he was really a mentor, because when I started, as you know, in the box, I was kind of I'm in the record, was that because I was perfect? But it was that. And when we were there, he was all about making decisions, you know, committing to something and and then just making music. You know, that was all about the vibe. And he, you know, repeatedly kept telling me, you know, it's not about perfection, man, it's about the vibe. And he was friends with Bob Marley and he always said, like you know, bob was not the greatest a singer, it's how I'm expressed, you know. And so I think that's that's the key, key factor, you know, and I had really learned, had to learn, the heartbeat, because I was, you know, as a singer, you're always kind of, you know, picky, and yeah, can we do it over again? And he's, you know, the first thing we recorded in the studio. It was just one take and that was it, you know. And the magic was there. And then I remember my guitar player was saying yeah, but fully, I play a mistake. There's, there's not gonna be another take. All right, there's not gonna be another take, that's it.

Now after, did it take you some time to get used to that? Of course it did, and now are you like, hey, it is good yeah.

I mean he can't, I mean he fooled me you know when? Because when I recorded the first song, he said like Martin, don't worry, it's only scratch vocals. You know, we won't keep it later.

Yeah, yeah, he kept all of them. He kept all of them and I was like but I made me perform differently because I was so relaxed absolutely.

Felt it.

Yeah that's a great trick. So how do you get into this, like if someone's interested now in trying to do it finally and overcome that mental barrier that we all have? What's the best way to get started? Like what? Would you start with a guitar pedal, something simple. Or can you just start with the LA to? And if so, how? Like what's the first step?

Yeah, like I said, many people that you know build the LA to a, or that we call it the tube after compressor, because that's what it is, and they haven't built anything before yet. So the first thing I would recommend is, if you, if you really want to make a start, you can go to analog vibes, calm and download this starter guide. It's for free and then you can, you know, find out for yourself, because there's tutorials for everything which started to use and how these are all these components look like, how to treat them.

How much is it to?

build like an LA to a, I would say depending, depending on the, depending on the components you use, because some people, you know, in the past they, they, they were hunting for original transformers, which I did as well, but they've been, you know, ridiculously expensive on last years, so I would say between like 1600 and upwards, you know, and when we make full kits, which we make once in a while, I mean how analog vibes works is we only have like the chassis, kids, and we have step-by-step guides and we have tutorials about how these things work and To really, you know, enable these people. But every year roundabout, we make we call it a build your legend series and we choose one of the projects and we make a full kit including all the parts everything. So and we do that with the community and that gives us a different position also for the in terms of suppliers. You know, for the Silver phase, for the 1967 silver phase, we had a MI in the States winding the, the transformers for us to original specs. So and for even the parts are made by a new supplier to original specs, because Modern logarithmic parts, they, they work differently, they go steeper too fast, mm-hmm, and makes the working range of an I like to really hard. And that's what we can do. If we do this, build your legend series.

So are these also like 1500, 1600 euros, or is more than?

yeah, it's a little, it's a little more. I mean, 1500 was the starting point, you know, but like I said, they're upwards. There's you know, you can.

Go all the way just for perspective. What is a brand new LA to a at the?

moment. I mean that particular silver face is not available. Brand.

The last time.

I checked on reverb calm was 13,900 dollars yeah which is ridiculous. And our kid was, it's only always these building legends series are limited editions. That works other ways. So we in, we get in touch with the community and we let them know there's something coming up, and then I take them to the studio with me and I show them how this thing works and how it sounds, you know, and I give them a lot of information. And then there is a certain period of time, like always, like 10 days, where we collect, like a Crowdfunding, we collect the orders and then we manufacture so and then we know exactly you know how many, how many kids we need. So, and because it's just a side project I'm not, this is not my main business, and so that's working perfectly but all of these pieces, then, are limited editions, and this 967 limited edition was seven in 49, excluding taxes, and Then you have everything and it's like painstaking painstaking 49. Yeah, it's great like you know, model after the 1967 silver face.

Great, that's great. And another big factor is time. I mean, like for myself, for example, I'm a full-time mixing engineer, always pretty busy. We have the surf recording band in addition to that, and then I know in our community there's many hobby musicians who have a day job and then whatever time is left they create music and they have all these things to worry about and family and whatever. And so people are probably wondering like how long does it take me? How much time do I have to put into building such a thing? Is this a year-long project or more than that? Can I do it in my spare time?

Yeah, I mean the most time you usually spend sourcing parts With our analog wipes projects. We have to. You know, we try to take this thing out of the equation. You know, like if you just buy the chassis kit, you get a bill of materials with links to the shops and retailers. We can purchase this, the stuff. So it's really not the thing I'm lying. Yeah, it's free mind, and with the full kids, of course, you get everything in the box. And I mean, depending on you know how skilled you are, like I, I think for me in LA to I take two Afternoons of work and then it's done. But if you, if you're not that skilled, probably Takes you a week.

Still, because I mean, time is money and you always think, like you know, when you do it for a job you always think is it worth to doing it myself? But if that's the case, it's totally worth it still.

Yeah, and it's. You don't do it, probably during the job time you're doing this. You know, and it's also fun project because of the process right, because of the act of creating, and it's like it's always is.

If you do, if you build something yourself, you're way more proud of it at the end of the day, and you, like I, said that's.

I just said empowerment factor. You learn things, but the major empowerment thing is you know. I mean you can imagine, you know. Lego is for kids. You know the same thing you build something, you create something and with the gear you have the metal level because you create something and then you create something with that. What you created. So it's incredible. You know, it's really the moment when I switch on the first LA2A and the view meter light up and the needle goes up. It's like Christmas, you know. It's like you can't put it in words. I always compare it to that. You know that movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks when he tries for days to make fire and then finally makes it and he's jumping around like crazy. I have made fire.

That's exactly the I have made fire moment. You know, everybody can relate. I mean everyone who's ever built. Anything is like you can't buy a chair or you can make your own chair. Which one will you like more? Okay, you know or like you can't buy tomatoes or you can grow your own and then be super excited that you have your own tomatoes.

whatever you know, it's like the only thing, though you have to be aware of it's addictive.

Yeah, you know you won't.

you can't just say I try it and then I you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's funny. The other thing that I think our audience in particular would be interested in is taking it a step further and modding something to be unique to what they imagine, which I would imagine comes after a certain level of experience. But is that something that your community dwells into as well? Yes, exactly.

Sometimes, like I said, by mistakes, sometimes on purpose. With the Poltik, for example, I was really trying to find these capacitors, like I said, you know, and I choose. For one of the units, I chose the ones that were sounding nicest to my ear, just personal preference, you know. But also sometimes things happen by mistake. We had one of our community members. We were building a tube mid-range equalizer, which is the Poltik MEQ-5, and there's some filter coils in there and he by mistake started together two elite wires of that coil that were not supposed to go together, and all of us, but it sounded great. So he measured it and he found out that the high peak EQ was becoming a high shelf, oh. And so he was posting it in the community and everybody was like, wow, yeah, it's working. And then on my MEQ I was just including a push-pull switch like its peak, its shelf, you just can't, and you have a piece of gear that can do more than the original.

Yeah, it's just your workflow, Still the same signature. So when you build one of these and let's say, after a while, for whatever reason, something breaks, or you know, left right or I don't know if you have stereo pieces. If it's all no it's all right. Okay, like, say, something breaks or needs calibration or whatever. Are you then also able to do that yourself?

or do you have to send it somewhere for service? Then no for sure, once you've built it, you know how to fix it. Yeah, of course I mean something.

It's a great bonus too, because if you have other gear, you might be able to service it For sure, that's you know it's all going on in that empowerment thing you know, it's really, we just had it.

When we came here, the Poltec 10 kilohertz was not working. I mean, we're from southern Germany, we drove all the way up here and it's it's well. It was too many to fix, you know it was really simple and I mean in the beginning. It can take you some time to troubleshoot something, but you get quicker and you know it's.

Where are you in southern Germany? Because I'm there as well, Tipping in. Oh, that's not too far actually. So I'm going to announce something here because I like a good challenge and that's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. So I'm going to give myself a lot of time because I don't know when I'll have it, but I'm going to announce now that, like 2024 at the latest is the year when I'm going to build my first compressor, like my first LA2 or whatever I'm going to be choosing, but my first piece of gear, and I'm going to keep the community updated on that, how that goes.

But I'm going to hit you up and I'm going to build my first one, yeah.

I want to do it now, so yeah that's going to be.

I can only encourage everyone. I mean, like I said, the major barrier is inside here and the most important thing is to make the first step.

Yeah, awesome. So before we get to the end here, does anyone have questions for Martin?

What was the most rewarding piece of gear you ever worked on and why?

Wow, that's a good question. I think the most rewarding and even surprising piece of gear was the Universal Audio 176 Limiting Amplifier, which is a Varamu compressor, because I had no clue how the sting will sound and I was actually just building it because the community wanted us to do a 176. And I had very little information. I had the original manual with schematics and the print of the PCBs and I had photos. So my friend and I who's doing the construction work on the chassis? We just tried to find something we can reference to and from there we measured everything else and then we built the 176, and it took me quite a while because even there was mistakes in the schematics, probably on purpose, I don't know, but I found them and I fixed it. And when I switched it on for the very first time I had no clue. You know how this thing will sound. So and it sounded so amazing and I had never heard anything like it before in terms of sound characteristics. So I just put a guitar through it like acoustic guitar, and then I put the release to fast release and I was just starting to fly and I was just what is going on, you know, and this was something special because the LA2, I knew kind of where it was going and also I could ask people in the message boards how this thing is built and everything. But with the 176 I was all by myself. And then we shipped out a batch of 80 kids and there was somebody from San Francisco and he had an original one and he got in touch with me and he said like you know, that PCB is eight millimeters too long, that you made, but are you kidding me? You built it from photos and then it just measured everything in his original and sent back to us for your next revision.

You know now you have it. That's killer. That's killer. 176 is my favorite compressor.

I've ever used as well I just love them.

Awesome.

Good question. Any other questions?

I got one. Where should people find you? Oh yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah, analogvibecom. And here on the studio scene we're just in the DIY area back there where people can also solder stuff. You know like we brought some small projects that you can do within 30, 40 minutes, like a reamping box or a cloud lifter. But yeah, other than that, analogvibecom.

Awesome. And what about your music?

Well, that's the thing. I just, you know, step back with the music, working more in the studio, and I have kids now and I found out that touring the world is not the way to go then and then we created the studio and we created like a big area around the studio. It's like a co-working, co-creation area, and many new ideas came up there. I think that's too much to talk about all this right now, but there are many startups kind of evolved from there, and I'm actually a designer, so I went in there as a designer and helped creating things.

Awesome, awesome, thank you. Well, thank you for joining us live here, thank you for watching the stream if you're live now online, and thank you for listening later if you're listening to this on the podcast. And please, everyone, big round of applause for Martin Tilba. Thank you so much Thanks for having me.