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Bespoke Music Electronics Design & Build

With a background in electronics and decades of experience working in music recording and live production, I'm able to uniquely offer consultancy and custom build electronics.

Err... what does that mean? Well, there are situations that sometimes arise in the recording environment but more often when performing live, when you find yourself saying "wouldn't it be good if someone made something that does that". You know what I'm talking about, right?

Power Cord with built-in JFET pre-amp
Not just a cable. This is my 'Power Cord' with built-in JFET pre-amp.

Over the years, I've seen so many musicians and engineers struggling with equipment not even aware that there's another way of doing things, that their sound could be better, that the control they want over their sound is achievable.

The number of guitar systems I've come across that are just so damn noisy, guitar sounds shrouded in dreamy effects but with no tone, bands that rely on synchronising a backing track when playing live but have no idea how to keep things stable and bass players who use effects (nothing wrong with that) but at the sacrifice of err... bass are just a few of examples of things I see (or hear) that I shouldn't!

Custom external power supply for two old Line 6 Pro series effects units
Custom external power supply to drive two old Line 6 Pro series effects units.

So that's where I can help. Initially carrying out a kind of systems analysis, there are many aspects of music recording and performing which I can 'fine tune', either by advising you on what to buy to fix your issue or by designing something just for you.

Ultra clean, linear power supplies are a speciality of mine. My own guitar systems are unbelievably quiet and super reliable. So's Warren Cuccurullo's! 🙂

A couple of real-life examples of what I've done; optimising electronic drum sensitivity for (the late) Eric Carr (KISS), building a dc controlled, rack-mounted wah-wah and low-impedance driver for Brian May and complete optimisation of  Warren Cuccurullo's (Duran Duran) Bob Bradshaw guitar rig.

Here's another example of some custom stuff... A few years ago I designed a transformer which was intended for DI purposes. I wanted a really high input impedance, near flat frequency response between 20 Hz and 20 kHz and the best  phase coherency I could get, especially at the low end. OEP built a hand-full for me. Four of them went into the stage box shown providing four conventional microphone inputs and four hi-res DI inputs.

Custom DI / Stagebox at Plasma MusicLet's face it, as musicians, we hate spending money on stuff that doesn't make a noise and yet ensuring that the foundation of the technology we use is secure, frees us up to relax and deliver a performance that others will remember.

Nebula balanced outputs jack board for the Roland MKS-70
This is Nebula, a new jack board for the Roland MKS-70 with upgraded MIDI and balanced outputs.

And here are a few links to some of the stuff I've designed and which is now available for purchase from my on-line store:

  • Aurora replacement power supply for the Roland MKS-80
  • Supernova replacement power supply for the Roland Juno-106
  • Eclipse bounce filter for the Marshall JMP-1 data encoder
  • PML-TX01 replacement power transformer for the Marshall JMP-1
  • Transformer Coupled Interface Type 1 passive 2-channel unbalanced to balanced converter
  • Nebula balanced outputs jack-board for the Roland MKS-70
  • PSU-MDMK1 power supply for the Elektron MachineDrum Mk1
  • External power supply for the Cheetah MS6
  • AT-JX-8P replacement FSR-based aftertouch sensor kit for the Roland JX-8P
  • AT-JX-10 replacement FSR-based aftertouch sensor kit for the Roland JX-10
  • AT-AJ-2 replacement FSR-based aftertouch sensor kit for the Roland Alpha Juno 2
  • AT-D-50 replacement FSR-based aftertouch sensor kit for the Roland D-50

So, got a problem, give me a ring.