The Halfway House...

So, I got everything I needed to rack up this V376 cartridge I bought, then I discovered that the Par-Metal rack chassis I ordered is, uh, too good for the job? Something. The aluminum top and bottom plates are so thick that the V376 (which is a tad bit wider than normal TAB modules) wouldn’t fit.

So, my only recourse is to go to a 2U rack, and maybe throw some other jank in the rack (EQ, comp, whatever) to fill it out. Or sell it. Or something. Until that heady day when I make up my mind occurs, I threw it in a lunchbox. Literally. I was casting about for a temporary enclosure, and came upon this little steel lunchbox I bought to keep Stuff in (because one particular facet of my nascent obsessive-compulsive disorder is that I can’t walk by a display of small storage solutions without buying at least one.) It was the perfect size, so I got out the ol’ rotary hardware editor (otherwise known as a Dremel) and knocked some V376-shaped holes in it.

As you can see, there is quite a bit of infrastructure for a single cartridge, at least if you want to have all the normal features of a mic pre. On the left (bolted to the lid of the lunchbox) is the JLM AC/DC power supply. On the upper right, you see the JLM Go-Between, which provides pad, phantom, and phase phlip duties. On the lower right is the JLM D.I. module, which piggybacks on to the Go-Between via that little ribbon cable (no more coax!). That power supply will easily do four Telefunken/TAB/Siemens/Neumann/Whatever modules, and as many as eight if they’re not heavy draw units (like the compressors.) So, this is kind of semi-lame, but until I figure out what the fuck I’m gonna do with this bad boy, it’ll work.