When I first purchased my MPC2500 I noticed a few flaws with the actual build of the machine. The cheep feeling jog wheel was not up to my standards especially after coming from my MPC2000 which has the best jog wheel concept out of all the MPC’s I v used. The MPC2500′s jog wheel looks and feels cheep, not to say my mod makes your MPC look better, but you will save some money in the end.
The major flaw with the jog wheel on the 2500 is the uneven distribution of pressure on the ring underneath the jog wheel. The dip in the original jog wheel is for you to place your finger and spin the wheel, pushing down in one spot causing uneven pressure. You could either spin the data wheel like a giant knob and not use the dip for your finger, this would preserve your data wheel or you could reinvent the data wheel like I did.
First you will need a roll of Duct tape (gaffers tape holla at Mr. Wall!) , A dial off of a radio or some kind of round object that has an extended center at the bottem to rap tape around it.(check pictures) You could also get creative and find or cut a peice of wood to fit the curcumfrence of the ring underneath. I made a short video of my MPC2500 Data wheel Mod. Enjoy.
When I do shows with The Chronic, or if I m on a solo show mission I always travail with up to 2 backpacks. My “gear” backpack is made by a company called Kensington and can be purchased at Future Shop for around $100, or you can buy it online here for a bit cheaper. The first thing I noticed with this backpack is it has a special padded pouch inside to protect your laptop from the other contents inside your bag. Inside the main compartment of my bag contains my trusty Macbook and my Vestax vci-100 with an overlay from Djtechtools. In the second compartment of my bag I keep an M-Audio firewire 410 sound card that I got used at Long & Mquade for $200. I also keep an Akai Mpd16 in the second compartment just incase I m inspired to make beats. In the smaller outer pocket of my bag I keep 2 firewire and 2 usb cables along with the adapter to my notebook. This fits everything comfortable and I have the 2 side pockets to put loose items that make my pockets a mess.
The Second Backpack I bring along with me is a small backpack you can purchase from most army surplus stores. This usually holds my trusty Lenovo s10 netbook a.k.a. my “hackintosh nano” for internet use when i m traveling long trips. I also pack my iPhone, portable charger and regular charger in the small bag, key for tethering it to my Lenovo s10 for internet access anywhere.
In any case the key to packing is knowing what you need and what is luxury then sort out what you are going to bring. Don’t be cheep on the purchase of your bag this might be a matter of life or death for your expensive items and your back. As well keep your items close by you at all times, I prefer to sleep, eat and shower with my backpack on. Happy backpacking and be safe!
Last month I had the pleasure of doing some small renovations to my studio. Not making music for a month would be more then half the battle, but I braced my self and hoped for the best. First thing I did was research on some acoustical treatment. I had some acoustical treatment prior to the renovations which was just some egg crate foam and a few foam bass traps. With the egg crate foam I still felt my mixes didn’t translate well when I would play them in a car or small stereo. After reading “how to set up room” By Ethan Winter of RealTraps, I knew my room needed some adjustments. I Had a small budget which I could have gone right ahead and bought the newest, coolest piece of gear I v been craving, but after I set up my room properly it has probably been the best investment I have made yet in my studio.
First task I had to tackle was getting the foam off the wall that I had glued on with spray adhesive. I took a hairdryer and just heated up the foam until the glue got sticky and gave away from the wall. I was still left with lumpy chunks of glue on my wall so for about half a day I scraped and sanded glue off my wall, never again will I glue anything anywhere on my walls.
Next It was onto filling in all the dents in the walls and picking out the floor. In most big budget studio’s you will see a combination of carpet and hardwood, I chose to go all dark brown hardwood because myroom is only 14ft. long and I can put down a small throw rug. After picking out the wood I picked out the colour of paint and I got on with it. The wood I went with was called engineered because it is made of a few thin peices of wood glued together, perfect for basements where there is a lot of moisture. I first put down a sub floor with a material called Dricore. Dricore is an easy to work with sub flooring system that has air flow underneath to keep moisture from building up underneith your sub floor so your hardwood doesn’t buckle. When the sub floor was finished it was on to the actual hardwood floor which was just tongue and groove. My homie Chris really helped out with the flooring doing all of the cuts because I m horrible at measurements.
After finishing painting and putting the floors in it was on to getting my traps up that I got from my homie Bryan Pape at GIK Acoustics . Bryan was a super help with getting the traps I needed so my room could sound the best it could on a small budget. I ended up getting 12 traps in total ,4 tri traps for the corners covering anywhere from 50Hz to 5000 Hz making not only a great low end absorber but as well it does a great job with hi end, 6 242s 4 inch panels for early reflections (2 on the ceiling, 2 on the side walls and 2 behind my monitors) and 2 244s 6 inch panels for the back wall reflections. After placing the first 4 tri traps in the corners I immediately noticed a difference in the low end response in my room, it was more defined, more controlled and the over all clarity was amazing. I then hung the rest of the traps and was amazed at the bigger stereo image and detail I never had when I just had the egg crate foam.
In the end the effort was well worth it, I have already mixed one song in my room and notice superior results. I mixed the song faster with the new treatment in my room because I was able to pin point frequencies that were causing unwanted rumble in my kick drum and bass that I was not able to hear with the egg crate foam. I am always looking for ways to improve my mix and buying the proper treatment plus placing it properly was well worth the investment and time spent, now I gotta get back to the mix.
When I do shows with The Chronic, or if I m on a solo show mission I always travail with up to 2 backpacks. My “gear” backpack is made by a company called Kensington and can be purchased at Future Shop for around $100, or you can buy it online 
