JAMES SPECTRUM GETS TECHNICAL

Beatmag’s regular technical columnist James Spectrum (AKA Jari Salo of Pepe Deluxe) talks 'telecommunications'...

When preparing a historical phrase, it’s usually a good idea to come up with stuff that’s intelligible to at least some extent. People might remember Philipp Reis as the silver medallist of telephone inventors had he stated something along the lines “A small sentence for man ... etc.” or “I just called to say I love you”. But instead poor Phillip’s historic first telephone words were “Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat”, roughly translating as “The horse eats no cucumber salad”. On the other hand, while he might not be that famous, his immortal phrase does make him a hero of a very chosen few, naturally including the team Deluxé.

The long-ruling phone champion, Alexander Bell, has recently been disqualified on the both sides of Atlantic, and now the title ‘Mr. Telephone’ belongs to the Italian Antonio Meucci. The term telephone is based on the combination of the Greek words, ‘tele’ (‘distant’ or ‘afar’) and ‘phon’ (‘sound’ or ‘voice’). While Meucci’s invention, dating to 1857, was the first electro-magnetic phone, the very concept of telephones is very old. Before his major invention, Meucci had actually built pipe-telephones that transported sound through a pipe, a system similar to Chinese Kung-Foo Whing’s, as reported in Peking Gazette in 968.

A simpler form of acoustic phones is the classic children’s toy, the string telephone. By connecting the bottoms of two paper cups or tin cans with string, you create not only a sound-transmitting but also a wonderful sound-processing tool. Just stick a small speaker (driven by your amp) to one end of the phone and a mic to the other, and you have an effect processor that will definitely un-Phil Collinsize anything you put through it, as demonstrated by clip number 1 below.

String telephone is also known as lovers’ telephone. Those eager for curious coincidences may enjoy the fact that an essential part of phones, the microphone, is a result of refused love. A musical prodigy and an inventor David Hughes, while living in Springfield, KY, in mid 19th century, became interested in a young lady Virginia Manlove. Unfortunately Ms. Manlove’s parent decided Dave, then merely a music teacher, was not classy enough for their daughter. Dave packed his bags and moved back to his native country, England, where he soon introduced his first invention, the telegraph printer (forerunner of telex) and later on, the carbon microphone, the prototype of all the microphones in use today. Nothing fuels creativity like good old unfulfilled love!

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AN EXAMPLE OF LOVER'S TELEPHONE

Carbon mics are very cheap, very easy to find (pick almost any old phone), and they usually sound between great and marvellous. Some even better, especially if the small carbon granules inside the capsule are somehow corrupted and not moving as they should. The Icelandic band Múm came recently to Finland to record drums with our friend Samuli Kosminen who, prior to sessions, paid a visit to the Deluxé mic locker to get some tools with a serious attitude. According to Samuli they ended up using our carbon mics, especially the very unstable and distorted one that’s taken from a ‘40s telephone on all the recordings.

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AN EXAMPLE OF A CARBON MICROPHONE

Probably the main reason that practically no-one uses carbon mics nowadays is that they won’t work without external power. However, that’s not really a problem: all modern mixers and preamps feature +48 v ‘phantom power’ meant for powering capacitor mics. This works well with carbon mics too, and the only thing you need to do is soldering a special cable, which takes maybe 10 minutes. See above how to connect the wires.