| Well the Wisconsin winters
are cold and we need a place to hole up in, and so it goes, so
it goes.
With a few weeks to come up with a design
that works in the basement, the frozen ground has been broken. Come late
January I predict, we will be rockin' Midwestern style,
cheese heads and all.
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As old concrete goes, it's pretty
hard. Not the 6000 PSI stuff though. Another good thing -
nothing is straight and square as construction goes. Pretty
cool quarter bubble off.
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| Not sure how it's gonna'
sound yet but it looks good on paper. Another underground
concrete bunker with lots of Owens Corning to the
rescue. This is the moisture barrier going in on the
outside world underground walls.
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The drywall went up pretty easy except for a
couple spots. I saw 7 ft. studs precut at Home Depot and scratched
my head and as it turns out, the whole basement is about 7 ft high. Go
Figger WI style.
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Our underground view of the outside world. Ground
level is at the bottom of the window which is nice.
The window is usually covered with ice when it's below zero.
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This is gonna be the "room" room.
Should be pretty lively and controllable and sound great, once all
the stuff is in the control room and we treat the duct work. |
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Here's the bass trap before being covered up.
It's about 16" deep and about maybe 5 feet across. It got
pretty damn itchy after this doo-dad went in.
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The drywall shell is done and primed with Home Depot oops bin green and this is
the front wall framing in place. Standard 58 degree angling is a
little short but it's what fits the space. |
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| The drywall
in place for the front wall. Tried to keep the window accessible
a little for the summer months but in the end it's covered up. |
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| The electric behind the
racks gets a boost. Wall warts usually eat up all the outlets
so I overdid it a bit. From experience you can never have
enough outlets. We went with two 20 amp circuits, one for the
studio and one for the "room" room with the guitar amps and
stuff. |
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Here's the drop ceiling going in. Was a pretty
tough install with the 7 foot ceiling. I didn't want to eat up the
room so I ran it as close to the rafters as possible. This meant it
had to be installed rail/tile as opposed to all the rails, then all
the tiles. There's about an inch of clearance above the tiles -
ugh!.
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The dead end gets it's treatment courtesy of fake
703 from some office cubicle panels I've been hoarding for a few
years. Finally found a use for'em. It's the old itchy fiberglass
which needs to get covered up quick.
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| Well the wall treatment is
done and looks pretty good. I covered up the insulation with
budget Wal-Mart bed sheets and a power staple gun. The trim
helps break up the wall and needs a coat of white wash.
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| This is the problem area.
It's a little alcove that's kind of unexplained in the plan of
the foundation back in 1947. Doesn't seem to be a real reason
for it to be the way it is. I ended up making the back wall a
small bass trap and we are going to put the slap machines in
here. |
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| I set up a test rig to see
what the room sounds like. Just simple speakers and amp for
now. Still have more diffusers to place but we need to blast
something to the mix position for a while. |
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| Well she sounded pretty good and
in the gear went. Felt pretty damn good unpacking the boxes.
Still got a little odds and ends to clean up but it's alive! |
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Lookin' towards the window
to the room-room. The window turned out good and is a pretty
tight seal sound wise. |
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| The computer/speaker area is
a little tight but it works. I'm gonna swap the
placement of the Tannoy's and the NS-10's to see what happens. |
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| This is my buddy Matt's
favorite view. We're thinking of installing a space shuttle
style sleeping chamber in the cubby hole for those nights
where absolute quiet is all that will do.
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| Behind the racks is pretty
clean so far. Always a problem area, hopefully it will stay
that way. We'll see how long it lasts. |
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