Sept. 18, 2021

Greg Heumann interview

Greg Heumann interview

Greg Heumann joins me on episode 46. The focus of this episode is all about gear, as I talk to the founder of BlowsMeAway Productions. Greg has released an album of his own and uses his knowledge of playing harmonica to understand what is needed to make great harmonica products.The first product in this line was the volume control which later on Jason Ricci asked Greg to develop into the actual mic, which led to the Ultimate Series of mics. He also hand crafts beautiful custom wood microphone...

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Season 1 Diatonic Harmonica Blues Harmonica Harmonica Customiser

Greg Heumann joins me on episode 46.
The focus of this episode is all about gear, as I talk to the founder of BlowsMeAway Productions.
Greg has released an album of his own and uses his knowledge of playing harmonica to understand what is needed to make great harmonica products.The first product in this line was the volume control which later on Jason Ricci asked Greg to develop into the actual mic, which led to the Ultimate Series of mics.
He also hand crafts beautiful custom wood microphones and grills which can include your own initials and designs.
On top of this Greg also makes his very own mic element, which is included in his successful smaller diameter ‘Bulletini’ microphone.

Links:

Gregs website:
http://www.blowsmeaway.com

All About microphones guide:
http://blowsmeaway.com/all%20about%20harmonica%20microphones.pdf

Videos:

Workshop video of creating wooden mic and metal grille:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbYGs58nW2g

Nic Clarke playing wood mic:
https://youtu.be/HBflXFYi1kE

Hermine Deurloo playing Ultimate SM58:
https://youtu.be/zBxEWyGrbmA

Mark Hummel playing the RackIt with Bulletini:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBg3D6xZmUQ

Harpin’ By The Sea festival 2021:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysr5Pep81QU

PT Gazell interview as part of Seydel Overtones:
https://youtu.be/2FdkEYT6ggs

Email:
greg@blowsmeaway.com


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

00:56 - Greg is the owner of harmonica gear company, BlowsMeAway Productions.

01:33 - Plays harmonica himself, which he picked up after classical training on the Oboe

02:15 - First started learning from a Jon Gindick tuition book and cassette

02:31 - Lessons with Dave Barrett led to development of first product: volume controller

04:30 - How Greg first started his harmonica products company, with the help of his dad

05:41 - Jason Ricci asked to build his volume control into the mic to create the Ultimate Series of mics

06:40 - How Greg was able to give up the day job to start selling harmonica equipment

08:21 - Where he developed the skills needed to produce the harmonica gear he sells

09:25 - Some of the skills from his previous work helped in getting Blows Me Away Productions going

10:12 - Greg uses his own knowledge of the harmonica in developing the products

10:24 - Has released an album called Duracool

12:06 - Some of the problems Greg wanted to solve from his own experiences of playing

13:09 - Early considered developing a monitoring system but it wasn’t the right thing

14:37 - More on the volume control and the benefit of these

18:19 - Custom wood microphones, how they’re made and advantages they bring

21:40 - The wood used for the microphone shells

26:03 - People sometimes provide their own wood, with sentimental meaning to them, to make a mic from

27:00 - The wood mics also come with custom grilles, which can include letters and symbols

29:38 - Waiting time for a custom wood mic

30:09 - Greg developed his own mic element, called the Heumann element

31:04 - Bulletini microphone contains the Heumann element

32:18 - How Greg came up with the Heumann mic element

33:47 - What makes a good mic element

36:11 - How does the Bulletini element compare to vintage elements

38:56 - More on the Bulletini mic

40:21 - Modern Green bullets don’t have a very good mic element

41:15 - Ultimate series of mics: the Shure SM57 and SM58

44:59 - Greg also sells the Bulletizer, to allow cupping of SM57

46:07 - RackIt harmonica rack with Bulletiser mic for a cupped distorted sound

49:17 - BlowsMe Away also sells Wireless mics for harmonica

50:12 - Used to sell restored Kalamazoo amps, but these are hard to come by now

51:21 - Many top professionals endorse Greg’s products

51:49 - Greg has written an “All About Microphones” guide

53:25 - 10 minute question

55:25 - Greg’s harmonicas of choice

56:25 - Mics and amps of choice

56:58 - Effects pedals

57:46 - Future plans

WEBVTT

00:00:00.226 --> 00:00:02.388
Greg Heumann joins me on episode 46.

00:00:02.649 --> 00:00:08.679
The focus of this episode is all about gear, as I talk to the founder of Blows Me Away Productions.

00:00:09.580 --> 00:00:16.952
Greg has released an album of his own and uses his knowledge of playing harmonica to understand what is needed to make great harmonica products.

00:00:17.774 --> 00:00:27.268
The first product in this line was the volume control, which later on Jason Ritchie asked Greg to develop into the actual mic, which led to the ultimate series of mics.

00:00:28.225 --> 00:00:34.753
He also hand-crafts beautiful custom wood microphones and grills, which could include your own initials and designs.

00:00:35.454 --> 00:00:43.384
On top of this, Greg also makes his very own mic element, which is included in his successful small-diameter Bullettini microphone.

00:00:43.985 --> 00:00:49.531
So listen up to hear what Greg can share of his vast knowledge on amplified harmonica.

00:00:50.713 --> 00:00:50.814
MUSIC

00:00:52.962 --> 00:00:55.183
Hello, Greg Heumann, and welcome to the podcast.

00:00:55.463 --> 00:00:56.045
Hello, Neil.

00:00:56.484 --> 00:01:06.993
We have a little bit of a different approach today as you are the owner of the company Blows Me Away Productions, which produces lots of great harmonica microphones and other equipment.

00:01:07.194 --> 00:01:07.775
That's me.

00:01:08.075 --> 00:01:08.596
Fantastic.

00:01:08.615 --> 00:01:08.876
Yeah.

00:01:08.896 --> 00:01:11.518
So we'll be getting deeply into talking about gear today.

00:01:11.558 --> 00:01:16.162
Before we do that, let's talk about your journey to your creation of your company.

00:01:16.182 --> 00:01:17.963
And you're based out of California.

00:01:18.183 --> 00:01:18.644
That's right.

00:01:18.683 --> 00:01:22.927
I'm up in the wine country about 70 miles north of San Francisco.

00:01:22.927 --> 00:01:24.834
And have you always been based around there?

00:01:25.034 --> 00:01:32.861
Well, I grew up and spent the first 50 years of my life a little further just south of San Francisco in the suburbs of San Francisco.

00:01:33.153 --> 00:01:35.096
You are a harmonica player, yeah?

00:01:35.156 --> 00:01:36.796
How long have you been playing the harmonica?

00:01:36.996 --> 00:01:38.778
I started in my 40s.

00:01:39.138 --> 00:01:46.144
I was actually an oboe player when I was young, from the time I was in second grade up through early college.

00:01:46.486 --> 00:01:48.167
So I was a classical musician.

00:01:48.227 --> 00:01:52.950
I learned to read music and I got an ear and I learned how to finger a woodwind instrument.

00:01:53.230 --> 00:01:58.575
But it wasn't really for me and I didn't know it at the time because I was just a kid.

00:01:58.596 --> 00:02:09.665
I just knew I was supposed to be an oboe player, except I had an awful lot of clues I realized much later in my musical career that what I really was drawn to was blues and jazz.

00:02:10.086 --> 00:02:15.270
So I don't know, 20, 25 years ago, I was working in an office, but I was always singing and whistling.

00:02:15.350 --> 00:02:23.478
And somebody gave me a C harmonica and the John Gindic book on how to play country and blues harmonica.

00:02:24.018 --> 00:02:25.819
I got hooked really, really fast.

00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:27.781
And that's what started me with harmonica.

00:02:27.901 --> 00:02:28.382
Fantastic.

00:02:28.401 --> 00:02:28.581
Yeah.

00:02:28.602 --> 00:02:31.764
So you had this John Gindic book, as you say there.

00:02:31.784 --> 00:02:32.586
And

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Thank you.

00:02:46.786 --> 00:02:47.066
Right.

00:02:47.205 --> 00:02:53.831
That led me to, you know, I started playing in the car to the cassette tape that came with that Gindic instructional material.

00:02:54.051 --> 00:02:57.155
And then I would listen to the radio and try and play the C harmonica.

00:02:57.194 --> 00:03:01.258
I had no idea why it seemed to be okay with some songs and not others.

00:03:01.278 --> 00:03:10.687
And somehow or other, I don't recall how, I learned about these harmonica masterclass three-day sessions that Dave Barrett was putting on.

00:03:10.926 --> 00:03:17.953
So I signed up for one and I was just blown away at the whole experience and how much I learned and how generous with their knowledge.

00:03:18.032 --> 00:03:19.014
So many people were.

00:03:19.155 --> 00:03:21.396
So I started taking private lessons from Dave.

00:03:21.497 --> 00:03:26.703
He's about an hour and a half drive south of me when I was living there in San Mateo.

00:03:26.983 --> 00:03:30.526
And I went every other week for a couple hours for close to five years.

00:03:30.907 --> 00:03:32.929
Marvelous teacher and learned a lot.

00:03:33.128 --> 00:03:36.252
Was this before Dave had his online teaching website?

00:03:36.332 --> 00:03:36.592
Yes.

00:03:36.793 --> 00:03:39.575
Bluesharmonica.com came after.

00:03:39.616 --> 00:03:44.360
But it was Dave who helped me figure out what my first product would be.

00:03:44.382 --> 00:03:49.747
I was kind of casting about for something to build and I had a need on my own microphone.

00:03:50.027 --> 00:03:54.973
Feedback was always a problem and I needed a volume control and I asked him if there was such a thing.

00:03:55.252 --> 00:04:05.764
And he showed me that old Switchcraft volume control that had been discontinued already for 20 years and they were unobtainium, super expensive collector's items that really didn't work that well.

00:04:05.905 --> 00:04:08.026
And I thought to myself, I could make something like that.

00:04:08.247 --> 00:04:14.152
And I prototyped it and Dave then became my first customer and he sold those vintage volume controls.

00:04:14.252 --> 00:04:15.875
I still sell that product today.

00:04:15.914 --> 00:04:17.197
I haven't raised the So

00:04:17.757 --> 00:04:19.079
just going back a little bit more.

00:04:19.119 --> 00:04:21.901
So like you said, you had a day job in an office.

00:04:22.221 --> 00:04:24.665
I think you've got a degree in computer science.

00:04:24.685 --> 00:04:30.610
So you're working in computing side of things, were you?

00:04:30.951 --> 00:04:37.257
That's right.

00:04:38.579 --> 00:04:39.641
Yeah.

00:04:46.608 --> 00:04:47.668
supplemental income.

00:04:47.809 --> 00:04:57.579
But mostly it just was because I could, once I had produced something that I knew worked for me, I figured other people would be interested.

00:04:57.819 --> 00:04:59.000
And Dave concurred.

00:04:59.081 --> 00:05:02.064
So I just started to make this little volume control.

00:05:02.105 --> 00:05:04.067
I didn't think I was going to start a business.

00:05:04.226 --> 00:05:08.391
But in order to make that volume control, I had to buy a lathe.

00:05:08.612 --> 00:05:10.793
My father was a hobbyist machinist.

00:05:11.093 --> 00:05:11.935
I had no idea.

00:05:11.954 --> 00:05:15.999
He told me, you can get lathes relatively inexpensively these days.

00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:21.184
And so I would I was able to buy a lathe for my own shop and start making volume controls.

00:05:21.463 --> 00:05:24.706
That led me to making the low impedance volume control.

00:05:24.906 --> 00:05:34.014
And again, my dad, he's no longer with us, by the way, but he was wonderfully inspirational and creative and gave me the skills I needed to get started.

00:05:34.194 --> 00:05:36.276
He said, you know, you can turn wood with that thing.

00:05:37.038 --> 00:05:40.761
So I started to make the wood microphones and I started to become a

00:05:46.882 --> 00:05:53.437
Thank you.

00:05:53.922 --> 00:05:58.346
I

00:05:58.365 --> 00:06:01.148
started to use this XLR volume control.

00:06:01.247 --> 00:06:10.596
If you ever saw his live performances, he was using an RE-10 microphone and my volume control and a Samson wireless transmitter plugged into the end of that.

00:06:10.737 --> 00:06:12.757
It was like swinging a baseball bat around.

00:06:12.918 --> 00:06:17.141
And with all of those XLR connections in line, it got wobbly and unreliable.

00:06:17.302 --> 00:06:19.084
So he had tape all over it and everything.

00:06:19.163 --> 00:06:23.067
And he contacted me and said, can't you build that volume control into the mic?

00:06:23.427 --> 00:06:40.204
And at first I told him no several times but ultimately i engineered the ultimate series mics which allow me to build a volume control in and replace the barrel of sm57 or sm58 or 545 from sure and he used those for several years

00:06:40.485 --> 00:06:50.896
so you started doing the harmonic equipment as a sideline to your job i take it then at some point you were making enough money to be able to give up the day job and commit yourself full-time to this

00:06:51.156 --> 00:06:56.923
well to be honest i was fortunate to be working at a company around the dot-com boom.

00:06:56.942 --> 00:07:01.427
They went public and I did have a little bit of stock options.

00:07:01.528 --> 00:07:03.550
And so I had a little bit of a nest egg.

00:07:03.831 --> 00:07:08.396
And so I was able to stop working for a while and kind of do my own thing.

00:07:08.675 --> 00:07:13.040
It took a couple of years before it was making any sort of reasonable money.

00:07:13.081 --> 00:07:15.983
It took two to three years to get to that point.

00:07:16.204 --> 00:07:27.555
But with the addition of more products and people responding and liking them and the advent of the internet that let me sell them and the continued expansion of the product line, the revenue kept going up.

00:07:27.696 --> 00:07:35.163
And so I was able to stay out of the tech industry and just do this wonderful job working out of my garage.

00:07:35.463 --> 00:07:37.266
So I'm a really, really lucky guy.

00:07:37.567 --> 00:07:39.309
Yeah, definitely living the dream there, Greg.

00:07:39.389 --> 00:07:42.351
So you've started Blows Me Away Productions, I think, in 2004.

00:07:42.372 --> 00:07:43.153
That's

00:07:43.593 --> 00:07:43.812
right.

00:07:44.113 --> 00:07:45.815
I actually look back on it.

00:07:45.896 --> 00:07:50.781
And to some extent, I see it as a series of happy accidents in developing new products.

00:07:50.880 --> 00:08:06.617
But they were all developed as ways to leverage my skill set and with my understanding of what the harmonica community wanted in support of playing amplified and so I you know I certainly made some reasonably good guesses about

00:08:06.677 --> 00:08:27.360
that picking up on the comment you made there that you picked up a lot of these skills from your dad who you know had a lot of these practical skills like a lot of the older guys that I'm the same with my dad yeah he seems to know how to do all these things plumbing and things I have no idea how to do so I always turn to him so you do all these things yourself now don't you I I think, like you say, you bought a lathe, you know, you turn the wood yourself.

00:08:27.459 --> 00:08:38.851
And so these skills you didn't have before at all, you know, fixing, creating a volume pot and then cutting up a microphone and attaching it, you know, are these things you just learned yourself as you went along?

00:08:39.472 --> 00:08:46.681
So from very young, my dad was always, he always had some sort of hobby in the shop, including electronics.

00:08:47.081 --> 00:08:50.605
If you're of a certain age, you'll remember a brand called Heath Kit.

00:08:51.085 --> 00:09:00.154
They marketed kits with components and circuit boards and cases and stuff, and you could build your own radio or some sort of test instrument.

00:09:00.335 --> 00:09:10.145
I think I was probably 10 years old when he started buying me a Heathkit here and there, and I built projects, and it taught me to solder, and it taught me a little bit about electronics.

00:09:10.446 --> 00:09:17.653
Certainly the technical skills, both operating the lathe and the milling machine, and some of the electronics I learned from him.

00:09:17.673 --> 00:09:22.097
And of course, as you come up with new challenges, you figure out how to do them.

00:09:23.078 --> 00:09:35.011
So a It was in my career, even though I had a degree in computer science, my jobs were always in sales and marketing liaison between technical people and sales and marketing people.

00:09:35.231 --> 00:09:40.618
And so I learned a lot of marketing skills, communication and web design and so forth.

00:09:40.878 --> 00:09:44.522
My website, if you look at it, looks like it was designed in the year 2004.

00:09:44.542 --> 00:09:49.307
And that's because it was and my skills haven't advanced from there.

00:09:49.847 --> 00:09:51.250
But it's easy to maintain.

00:09:51.330 --> 00:09:52.910
And it's all static HTML.

00:09:53.251 --> 00:09:59.018
So the skills have come from throughout my career the value of customer support and customer service

00:09:59.437 --> 00:10:27.067
yeah and i've certainly heard good things about your customer service that's a real plus for you that you know people are always really happy that you you know you're good communication and you really help them out with what they want and obviously what you do which we'll get into is it can be heavily customized so just talking a bit more about your knowledge of the harmonica i think um you know as a harmonica players you know we like to think that the people we're buying stuff from know about the harmonica which you do yeah you've got an album out you know you're a good player you know Got this album out with your band called Blue State, called Duracool.

00:10:43.469 --> 00:10:44.129
What about that album?

00:10:44.149 --> 00:10:44.971
When did that come out?

00:10:45.030 --> 00:10:47.474
And I think you also play saxophone and sing as well, don't you?

00:10:48.001 --> 00:10:48.442
That's right.

00:10:48.643 --> 00:10:54.167
I started to sing because when I first started performing out, my only outlet was jams.

00:10:54.668 --> 00:11:03.195
And if you weren't the guy who was calling the song, you didn't have a lot of control over what key it was in or what kind of groove it had or how long a solo you might get.

00:11:03.514 --> 00:11:07.078
So I started to sing at a self-defense so I could play more harmonica.

00:11:07.499 --> 00:11:15.065
And it was after I started the harmonica that I recalled one day in the high school band room, I had picked up a saxophone.

00:11:15.265 --> 00:11:21.633
And because I had really a strong lip from playing oboe, I was able to get a nice tone out of the sax.

00:11:21.832 --> 00:11:23.755
The fingering is very similar as well.

00:11:23.995 --> 00:11:26.240
And I had always been kind of curious about that.

00:11:26.279 --> 00:11:33.830
So I went and rented a saxophone and figured out I could play it well enough to play along with some blues, incorporated that into the band work.

00:11:34.129 --> 00:11:36.974
The album came out about 10 years ago now.

00:11:46.658 --> 00:11:47.619
It's been that long.

00:11:47.639 --> 00:11:53.964
I think my harmonica playing actually has improved since then and my understanding of tone and everything else.

00:11:54.043 --> 00:11:55.745
But I'm also very proud of that album.

00:11:55.806 --> 00:11:57.086
I think we did a good job.

00:11:57.427 --> 00:12:00.629
Yeah, and great to get it out there and get something down on the record, isn't it?

00:12:00.870 --> 00:12:05.274
So at this point, obviously, like you say, you started playing harmonica in your sort of 40s.

00:12:05.354 --> 00:12:09.217
So is amplification something you're always really interested in?

00:12:09.278 --> 00:12:14.501
Like you said, you wanted to solve some of the problems you had and that's what led you to looking at some of the products that you've released.

00:12:14.962 --> 00:12:15.602
Absolutely.

00:12:15.623 --> 00:12:21.609
I mean, I went through everything that everybody else goes to, we almost all start at jams.

00:12:21.970 --> 00:12:25.352
So the first thing I couldn't understand is why I couldn't hear myself.

00:12:25.594 --> 00:12:31.179
I had this amplifier, I had a couple of different amps, and they were loud as heck in my living room.

00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:33.601
And then I would go to the jam and I couldn't hear myself.

00:12:33.982 --> 00:12:37.807
I would turn the amp up and turn the amp up, and then I was fighting feedback all the time.

00:12:38.147 --> 00:12:41.370
I now understand much more what was going on then.

00:12:41.409 --> 00:12:45.855
And that is that that's a much, much louder environment than your living room.

00:12:46.135 --> 00:12:49.198
And you need a lot more power to hear yourself on stage.

00:12:49.418 --> 00:12:56.326
There are other ways to hear yourself on stage too, like having you in the monitors, but that's fraught with other problems.

00:12:57.006 --> 00:13:00.171
And at most jams, there's nobody running a soundboard.

00:13:00.291 --> 00:13:01.892
So it's really not a great solution.

00:13:02.133 --> 00:13:09.100
Anyway, it was again, sort of solving my own problems first that led me to my first products.

00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:15.386
One of the things I worked on then, what if I could hear how I sounded out front from the stage?

00:13:15.706 --> 00:13:17.288
I worked on any monitor.

00:13:17.749 --> 00:13:19.291
At that time, it wasn't wireless.

00:13:19.630 --> 00:13:27.539
Trying to see if I could develop a system where I put a microphone out where the audience was and fed it into a little amplifier and into headphones.

00:13:27.559 --> 00:13:34.226
I actually had all that working, but I came to the conclusion that it was just too complicated to set up to be a good product.

00:13:34.386 --> 00:13:43.596
And the other thing that anybody who's tried this will know, if you put anything in your ear when you're playing harmonica, all you're going to hear is the harmonica.

00:13:43.736 --> 00:13:45.938
At least it becomes significantly louder.

00:13:46.159 --> 00:14:14.009
And I'm very sensitive to how loud i am in the mix with the band i don't want to be overpowering i want to be heard and i want to be at the appropriate level for the song in the mix and once you put something in your ear unless you have a monitor mix engineer running the monitors at the side of the stage who can really really set up the mix in your in your monitors they are not a good solution to this problem either you just need enough amplification to hear yourself in the first place

00:14:14.450 --> 00:14:18.614
so again you know he picks up on these things that practically you wanted to solve yourself.

00:14:18.754 --> 00:14:25.381
That led you, as we've touched on already, to you setting up the Blow Me Away Productions, a company which you've had since 2004.

00:14:25.422 --> 00:14:33.971
So we've talked a little bit about the vintage volume control, which is the first one you've done, which is basically the ability to add a volume control to a dynamic mic, wasn't it?

00:14:34.270 --> 00:14:36.974
Were they first for the Shure SM57?

00:14:37.173 --> 00:14:43.740
No, the first ones had the vintage style screw-on connector that so many vintage microphones have.

00:14:44.000 --> 00:15:01.700
So they were for high impedance mics that had that screw on connector and of course it was pretty easily adaptable to quarter inch connectors then the the low impedance control came a year later that has the three pin snap in xlr connectors we see on all the modern vocal microphones

00:15:02.480 --> 00:15:13.052
and a lot of people have an understanding that adding volume controls to microphones removes some of the output but that isn't the case is it if you do it right there's no free lunch but

00:15:13.452 --> 00:15:17.837
the advantages outweigh the disadvantages disadvantages significantly.

00:15:17.878 --> 00:15:23.182
And if the volume control is properly matched to the microphone, the loss is minimal.

00:15:23.342 --> 00:15:26.025
So yes, it will steal a tiny bit of output.

00:15:26.206 --> 00:15:35.937
It turns out to be much more of an issue with crystal and ceramic mics than with mics that have dynamic elements or Shure CRCM elements.

00:15:36.216 --> 00:15:42.943
The higher impedance the element, the more sensitive the microphone will be to what it's connected to.

00:15:43.184 --> 00:15:45.988
And a volume control adds a bit of a load.

00:15:46.248 --> 00:15:54.437
So So I actually offered my control in two different impedances, one set up for dynamic mics and one set up for crystal mics.

00:15:54.777 --> 00:15:59.741
And in that way, the impact on tone and output is truly minimal.

00:15:59.982 --> 00:16:01.644
And of course, the advantages are huge.

00:16:01.683 --> 00:16:10.052
There are so many nice things about having a volume control, one of which is if feedback happens on stage, you turn your volume control down.

00:16:10.092 --> 00:16:16.780
Of course, everybody looks at you because you're the harmonica player, and they think that it's you, and you point to your volume control Yeah,

00:16:16.801 --> 00:16:18.261
absolutely.

00:16:18.282 --> 00:16:20.485
And like you say, a lot of advantages to having volume control.

00:16:20.705 --> 00:16:23.047
Obviously, you can turn yourself up in a solo.

00:16:23.086 --> 00:16:30.215
So, you know, you're coming through a bit stronger in the solo, different keys, got different levels of sound and the lower keys don't cut through the same.

00:16:30.274 --> 00:16:32.037
So be able to turn those up a little bit as well.

00:16:32.057 --> 00:16:35.120
So yeah, lots of advantages to having a volume controller.

00:16:35.340 --> 00:16:35.980
Absolutely.

00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:42.248
And not to mention that the conditions change with the tune you're playing and with, you know, how big the audience is.

00:16:42.548 --> 00:16:47.994
Usually when a band is playing a hard rock and number, The volume gets a lot louder.

00:16:48.033 --> 00:16:49.375
Everybody's up and dancing.

00:16:49.416 --> 00:16:54.221
Their bodies are absorbing some of the sound and it can be louder.

00:16:54.402 --> 00:17:02.692
And then you play a slow ballad and more people sit down and the room gets quieter and everything is suddenly more audible.

00:17:02.732 --> 00:17:05.236
And you might want to be able to turn down a little bit for that.

00:17:05.256 --> 00:17:10.001
Another reason is simply that you're trying to get everything you can out of your amp.

00:17:10.041 --> 00:17:13.086
So you haven't turned up to the hairy edge of feedback.

00:17:13.185 --> 00:17:18.590
But, you know, mid tune, you want to go back to your amplifier and make an adjustment to one of the knobs.

00:17:18.631 --> 00:17:21.113
Well, if you get within a foot of it, it's going to feed back.

00:17:21.192 --> 00:17:29.720
But all you have to do if you have a volume control is turn it down first, go back, make your adjustment, walk back out to your performance position, turn your mic back up.

00:17:29.941 --> 00:17:30.560
No feedback.

00:17:30.881 --> 00:17:31.701
Works out really well.

00:17:32.041 --> 00:17:37.247
And I imagine the volume controllers are, you know, not the most expensive things to buy as well.

00:17:37.267 --> 00:17:39.388
So quite an easy thing to add to your arsenal.

00:17:39.449 --> 00:17:39.669
Yes,

00:17:39.949 --> 00:17:40.490
absolutely.

00:17:40.930 --> 00:17:45.054
I find throughout our hobby or profession.

00:17:45.193 --> 00:17:49.479
There's a little bit of expertise and a huge amount of mythology.

00:17:49.679 --> 00:17:54.604
And one of the pieces of mythology is that, oh, volume controls rob your tone.

00:17:54.824 --> 00:18:05.155
Well, volume controls used to rob your tone when the only volume control on the market was the Switchcraft control, which was 100 kilohm pot and people were using it with crystal mics.

00:18:05.316 --> 00:18:06.777
This is 40, 50 years ago.

00:18:07.157 --> 00:18:11.041
And so very early harmonica players would complain about that.

00:18:11.301 --> 00:18:18.910
And that complaint carries for to this day, people pass it down without having actually experienced and understood it themselves.

00:18:19.431 --> 00:18:23.015
So yeah, so we'll move on now to talking about your custom wood microphone.

00:18:23.194 --> 00:18:27.219
If people haven't seen these, these things are a real thing of beauty, yeah?

00:18:27.459 --> 00:18:37.230
You basically take different types of wood, you treat it, we'll get into that now, and they come out with beautiful stripes on them, different colors, and they're light, and they just look so beautiful.

00:18:37.490 --> 00:18:42.255
Let's talk about those and how you came up with the idea of making wooden shells for microphones.

00:18:42.275 --> 00:18:44.758
You know, obviously they're usually We use the traditional metal shells.

00:18:44.778 --> 00:18:46.920
You know, what made you think about using wood initially?

00:18:47.461 --> 00:18:48.582
Probably a few things.

00:18:48.842 --> 00:18:58.112
For one, there was a fellow named Fritz Hassenpush, Fritz the harp mic man, who was making wood microphones for harp before me.

00:18:58.732 --> 00:19:00.034
Wonderful, wonderful guy.

00:19:00.153 --> 00:19:03.958
Unfortunately, he died fairly young, but not before I got to know him.

00:19:04.259 --> 00:19:08.403
His mics were not kind of the same precision level that mine are.

00:19:08.482 --> 00:19:09.703
He used a wood lathe.

00:19:09.825 --> 00:19:12.907
I use a metal lathe, which allows me to be a lot more precise.

00:19:13.008 --> 00:19:14.128
But he did neat work.

00:19:14.189 --> 00:19:15.990
So that was part of the inspiration.

00:19:16.010 --> 00:19:23.940
And it was partly this notion of having bought a lathe and my dad reminding me that, you know, you can turn wood with that thing.

00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:25.421
And so I gave it a go.

00:19:25.461 --> 00:19:34.770
And at first I was, I just made the shell and I made it to fit a JT30 grill because I had no idea how to make a grill.

00:19:35.071 --> 00:19:37.954
And then I tried to make some wood grills.

00:19:38.075 --> 00:19:39.276
I did that for a while.

00:19:39.296 --> 00:19:41.258
They turned out to be a little bit fragile.

00:19:41.618 --> 00:19:53.731
And so I started making my own grills because the JT30 grill, if you remember, it's kind of lumpy and bumpy and it has those two ears on the side for the screws that hold it to the JT30 shell.

00:19:53.791 --> 00:19:57.375
Well, I didn't want those and I had picked this up from Fritz.

00:19:57.414 --> 00:19:58.656
He was doing the same thing.

00:19:58.717 --> 00:20:00.338
You have to grind those off.

00:20:00.378 --> 00:20:05.763
Once you do, you expose cast metal with bubbles and the plating is not there.

00:20:05.804 --> 00:20:07.425
And so they don't look very good.

00:20:07.445 --> 00:20:08.686
And then you have to paint them.

00:20:08.768 --> 00:20:12.912
And at that time, we didn't have these epoxy paints that you could buy.

00:20:12.912 --> 00:20:19.739
in a spray can so the paint didn't hold up very well to the rigors of banging a harmonica on the microphone grill.

00:20:19.919 --> 00:20:22.962
So I started making my own grills and it just kept evolving.

00:20:23.022 --> 00:20:26.086
I had a customer who said, can't you put a volume control in one?

00:20:26.507 --> 00:20:32.792
And I was intimidated by trying because it takes a lot of skill and I tried and tried and made that happen.

00:20:32.992 --> 00:20:39.559
But all of those aspects, I've made over 800 wood mic between then and now, starting in 2006.

00:20:39.740 --> 00:20:42.083
I just keep getting better at it.

00:20:42.222 --> 00:20:45.066
It's one of the things that I really enjoy about it.

00:20:45.207 --> 00:20:51.073
There's kind of this process in my brain that is constantly running, going, I wonder if I could make this faster.

00:20:51.113 --> 00:20:53.075
I wonder if I could make this more accurately.

00:20:53.134 --> 00:20:56.638
I wonder if I could make it more efficiently, more precise, whatever.

00:20:57.058 --> 00:21:00.782
And so I'll try little tiny changes, but they all add up.

00:21:01.124 --> 00:21:03.905
And so I get better and better at it all the time.

00:21:04.186 --> 00:21:09.031
And the result is these wood mics, they're wonderfully lightweight, which helps.

00:21:09.311 --> 00:21:16.663
The wood tends to be a They warm up people's tone a little, which almost everybody appreciates.

00:21:16.903 --> 00:21:18.185
And they're beautiful to look at.

00:21:18.226 --> 00:21:20.368
And so I call them playable art.

00:21:22.492 --> 00:21:22.814
¶¶

00:21:33.410 --> 00:21:46.320
Yeah, and the wood that you use, because I think you use different sorts of wood and try and get this rare wood from around the world.

00:21:46.381 --> 00:21:48.482
Do you know what the wood's going to look like before you do it?

00:21:48.563 --> 00:21:50.845
Or, you know, obviously you use the same wood sometimes, so you do.

00:21:51.025 --> 00:21:55.348
Or, you know, how did you come to, you know, mating these really, you know, shells out of this wood?

00:21:55.449 --> 00:21:57.671
That just really came from trying it.

00:21:58.332 --> 00:22:02.295
There's a retail chain in our area called Woodcraft.

00:22:02.315 --> 00:22:03.375
So I was actually able to get a wood from Woodcraft.

00:22:03.375 --> 00:22:08.161
able to go into that store and see different woods I'd never seen before.

00:22:08.421 --> 00:22:13.906
So I bought a lot of my first pieces of wood at the woodcraft store and I would try turning them.

00:22:14.147 --> 00:22:35.871
I knew I wanted to use hardwoods because the mic had to be durable and it was not long before I could really begin to predict that the straight grain, even if there's color contrast in it, on the side of the mic, which has this parabolic shape, it creates these beautiful concentric elliptic sections of grain and they're really pretty.

00:22:36.131 --> 00:22:43.137
That really came about from just doing it and seeing and I started keeping my eye out for exotic wood.

00:22:43.398 --> 00:22:49.224
So you don't do anything else to the wood except turn it and it comes out naturally like you don't colour it yourself at all?

00:22:49.444 --> 00:22:51.186
I really don't like staining.

00:22:51.207 --> 00:22:52.008
I have done it.

00:22:52.387 --> 00:22:56.813
But when you stain wood, the stain only penetrates a very, very short distance.

00:22:57.113 --> 00:22:59.115
So you can't stain before you turn.

00:22:59.155 --> 00:23:01.038
You have to stain afterwards.

00:23:01.458 --> 00:23:04.361
I just, I love the natural wood so much.

00:23:04.480 --> 00:23:07.403
You know, I had somebody who wanted a blue stripe.

00:23:07.964 --> 00:23:14.992
So I turned a piece of wood I had laminated out of dark wood on the sides and a very light, like ash, wood in the center.

00:23:15.212 --> 00:23:17.234
And now you go to try and stain that.

00:23:17.275 --> 00:23:21.740
And the problem is now that the stain wants to bleed from the light wood to the dark wood.

00:23:21.799 --> 00:23:23.000
It's hard to control the edge.

00:23:23.240 --> 00:23:24.702
So I don't do that too much.

00:23:25.063 --> 00:23:32.771
I have experimented with different materials and compositions of multiple materials and laminating multiple colors of wood together.

00:23:32.971 --> 00:23:40.159
And I also I also found a supplier of wood that in the industry is called diamond wood or spectra ply.

00:23:40.199 --> 00:23:41.540
There are several names for it.

00:23:41.941 --> 00:23:43.823
These are thin sheets.

00:23:43.923 --> 00:23:50.931
They're three sixteenths of an inch, usually sheets of wood like birch that are dyed under pressure.

00:23:51.030 --> 00:24:01.122
So the dye goes all the way through the three sixteenths sheet and then they're laminated together in big blocks and they sell that laminated wood with multiple color stripes in it.

00:24:01.221 --> 00:24:23.846
You can see these on my website on blowsmeaway.com those do that parabola thing just beautifully but unlike staining at home because of the process they use the color goes all the way through so even though you're starting with a rectangular block you can keep shaving more and more wood off of it until you've turned it into the shape of a microphone shell and it still has all of the color in every layer

00:24:24.105 --> 00:24:34.116
so as you said people can look at your website and they can choose when they're ordering one of your mics what they want it to look like and it will look more or less like the pictures on your on your website Yeah,

00:24:34.778 --> 00:24:39.162
there's, you know, every species is different and every piece of wood is different.

00:24:39.722 --> 00:24:48.752
Very, very popular wood that I use is Cocobolo, which is a beautiful, darker rosewood, comes from Latin America, Central America, Mexico.

00:24:48.772 --> 00:25:02.146
So there are actually multiple species and they all look a little bit different, but they all have the nice characteristic of contrasting grain colors that range from dark brown to light brown to purple to orange to yellow.

00:25:02.166 --> 00:25:04.630
And they can be really really spectacular.

00:25:04.650 --> 00:25:10.935
I also, whenever, you know, every once in a while, I just see a really nice looking piece of wood that I've never even heard of before.

00:25:11.517 --> 00:25:14.599
But if I think it's going to make a nice microphone, I'll buy it.

00:25:14.921 --> 00:25:27.614
The one time every year that I make mics that somebody didn't actually order is when I'm going to the spa convention and I'm going to show some mics there so people can see what can be done and see what these mics look.

00:25:27.673 --> 00:25:30.396
So that's often when I'll try a wood I've never tried before.

00:25:30.537 --> 00:25:51.500
And a lot of times I discover, gee, this is a beautiful of wood and I'll try to get more of it and so it's happened that way too and over the years I've developed a lot of sources the woodcraft store near me doesn't exist anymore there is one that's 100 miles away I go to every once in a while but I have a lot more online sources for various woods and then sometimes I get wood that I just never get again.

00:25:51.539 --> 00:25:57.425
It must be so satisfying working with wood like that when you work with something from the earth like that it's so satisfying isn't it?

00:25:57.685 --> 00:26:07.517
It really is I'll tell you also one other source that speaking of satisfying that I just love is every once in a while, a customer will say, hey, I have some wood that's special to me.

00:26:07.777 --> 00:26:09.898
Can I have you make a microphone from it?

00:26:10.099 --> 00:26:20.711
I remember one got some of this wood from his grandmother's house that they were remodeling and he salvaged some wood from it and he wanted a microphone made from it.

00:26:21.010 --> 00:26:25.215
Another guy had a pecan tree fall down in his backyard.

00:26:25.256 --> 00:26:26.096
Huge thing.

00:26:26.136 --> 00:26:37.689
And he wanted to remember the tree and he found some nice section of wood in it and he cut it out with a chainsaw and he sent it to me so I'm happy to make microphones for people out of wood that's special to them too.

00:26:37.969 --> 00:26:55.428
Superb and there's a great video which Dave Barrett made of you in your workshop and I'll put the link onto the podcast page and it shows you on your lathe and also making the metal grills which we'll get onto in a second but you've got a lot of kit now in that workshop of yours a big lathe and you've got this special cutting metal cutting machine for the grills.

00:26:55.827 --> 00:26:59.692
Right a milling machine actually I have two lathes and two milling machines now.

00:27:00.192 --> 00:27:24.479
So let's get into the grills now you touched on that a little bit earlier on another the really cool thing about your wood mics is that you can make custom shapes in the grill of the of the microphone so you can have say your initials put in there or some shape that's special to you i saw a cool one of a shark fin on your website so you've got this machine which does all this kind of intricate cutting which means you can pretty much put whatever shape or lettering or whatever onto the grills of the microphone yeah

00:27:24.920 --> 00:27:33.608
yes uh within limits the the tool bit that does the cutting is an eighth inch and so it's very low resolution.

00:27:33.888 --> 00:27:38.733
But within the constraints of that, I'm able to personalize grills for people.

00:27:38.834 --> 00:27:48.505
The way I sell my mics, you know, there's a base price, which gets you a fully functional, great sounding wood microphone with an aluminum grill, but you can add features.

00:27:48.684 --> 00:27:59.355
And so I have some canned designs, various grill designs that you can choose from for one price, or I can develop a custom design with you for a little more money.

00:27:59.636 --> 00:28:02.759
That's done with the advent of a CNC milling machine.

00:28:02.799 --> 00:28:08.332
When I first started, all I did was straight slots, and then I added a device.

00:28:08.491 --> 00:28:10.075
This is for machinists out there.

00:28:10.095 --> 00:28:16.588
I had a rotary table, which allows you to spin work, and therefore you can make a curved cut in a surface.

00:28:16.848 --> 00:28:18.833
But I wanted to do people's initials.

00:28:19.233 --> 00:28:24.578
And you can't do like an S very easily on a rotary table.

00:28:24.898 --> 00:28:28.122
Fortunately, my dad had his old milling machine.

00:28:28.162 --> 00:28:36.989
He was still alive at that time and he was getting too short or it was getting too tall for him to reach up to the top of it, which you need to do when you change tools.

00:28:37.250 --> 00:28:43.934
And so he bought a smaller milling machine and he gave me that first one, which had been converted to be operable by CNC.

00:28:44.175 --> 00:28:46.617
So I began to teach myself how to use that.

00:28:46.837 --> 00:28:50.902
And that allowed me to do these personalized grills with people's initials.

00:28:51.301 --> 00:28:51.942
Yeah, superb.

00:28:51.962 --> 00:28:53.064
And they look great.

00:28:53.163 --> 00:28:58.450
And you've got some stories of some of the interesting, you know, some of the more interesting grills you've had to make.

00:28:58.569 --> 00:29:00.852
I read one about having a sort of sergeant.

00:29:01.173 --> 00:29:01.712
Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:29:01.772 --> 00:29:03.535
He was a police sergeant in New York.

00:29:03.796 --> 00:29:08.941
He had retired after 40 some odd years, and he wanted a police themed microphone.

00:29:09.101 --> 00:29:10.201
It was his idea.

00:29:10.241 --> 00:29:13.705
He wanted the sergeant stripes on the grill plus his initials.

00:29:14.047 --> 00:29:18.510
And there was also this, you know, the blue and black color scheme of the police.

00:29:18.731 --> 00:29:32.006
There were blue and black inlays in the side of the shell which i did for him and it's always really rewarding to be able to deliver something that somebody dreamed up and really wanted that way so there have been some interesting grill designs

00:29:32.506 --> 00:29:47.201
great that is so customizable you know with the wood and the grills and you know cool to have your name you know your initials on on the grill i know you had quite a long waiting list previously um i think you managed to catch up a little bit during the pandemic didn't you so um is a waiting list uh reduced a little bit

00:29:47.561 --> 00:30:05.060
it hasn't changed much it's still running about five to six months from the time you put a deposit down on a mic to the time i build it and you get it that is just to be clear that's only for wood mics you know i have four different lines of microphones and it's only the wood mics that have that kind of delay everything else is pretty much off the shelf

00:30:05.561 --> 00:30:22.539
okay so when you started making the wood mics i think you said in 2006 so we'll get into talking about elements now so were you putting in old elements at that point we'll get into the bulletini now so um were you putting in old elements initially in Yes, you're

00:30:22.579 --> 00:30:23.381
exactly right.

00:30:23.800 --> 00:30:31.068
For the first many, many years, I designed these mics to accommodate kind of the standard Shure CR, CM elements.

00:30:31.469 --> 00:30:38.297
And I collected those and supplied them, you know, black label CR up to modern CM elements.

00:30:38.517 --> 00:30:40.858
And I found a few other elements that would fit.

00:30:41.019 --> 00:30:49.008
Turned out a brush crystal would fit in there, although the mics are a little bit too small to house an A-static or a Shure crystal.

00:30:49.008 --> 00:30:54.614
crystal and still have room for a reasonable thickness of gasket to give it good shock absorbing.

00:30:54.733 --> 00:30:58.778
And you want good shock absorbing on a crystal or it's going to break the first time you drop it.

00:30:59.038 --> 00:31:03.442
But yes, those wood mics to this day are still available with a choice available.

00:31:04.084 --> 00:31:07.428
You came out with a Bulatini microphone, I think in 2015.

00:31:08.269 --> 00:31:12.413
So that is a smaller microphone, so it fits better into the hand.

00:31:12.633 --> 00:31:15.957
And as you said earlier on, it's something that is available straight away.

00:31:15.997 --> 00:31:24.005
So people don't have to wait for the beautiful customization you're No, I actually

00:31:24.045 --> 00:31:27.848
developed it first and started offering it in my wood mics.

00:31:28.130 --> 00:31:38.221
It just happened to be a side effect of the nature of that element, which is quite a bit smaller in diameter, that it would fit in this shell that I use for the bulletini.

00:31:38.320 --> 00:31:42.224
None of the other elements we've been talking about would fit in a bulletini shell.

00:31:42.724 --> 00:31:44.646
Earlier, I referred to happy accidents.

00:31:44.728 --> 00:31:48.912
I think that was one of them is that this element lent itself to instance.

00:31:48.912 --> 00:31:52.916
in this considerably smaller diameter shell.

00:31:53.037 --> 00:31:54.719
And that's what became the Bellatini.

00:31:55.119 --> 00:31:59.586
So, you know, the elements is this kind of holy grail, you know, how do you get these good elements?

00:31:59.665 --> 00:32:07.035
And, you know, you go back to the sort of the black label ones, which are the oldest, and then the white labels, and then it goes through the history of the different elements through the time.

00:32:07.075 --> 00:32:09.719
So the older ones are kind of the sought after ones.

00:32:09.739 --> 00:32:12.142
You know, how the heck did you come up with a new element?

00:32:12.221 --> 00:32:18.490
I mean, you know, talking about developing these skills you have for your business, you know, creating an element for a harmonica microphone, how did you dream that one up?

00:32:18.753 --> 00:32:19.615
luck.

00:32:21.155 --> 00:32:23.478
And I just, I'm an experimenter.

00:32:23.678 --> 00:32:30.584
So I was always trying, lots of people would ask, can you fit an SN57 or a 545 element in one of your wood mics?

00:32:30.844 --> 00:32:32.185
And the answer was always no.

00:32:32.226 --> 00:32:43.214
Those are too long and you can actually disassemble them and take the element out of its cartridge in the case of an SN57 or 545.

00:32:43.355 --> 00:32:49.800
But at that point, it becomes much more susceptible to handling noise and much more susceptible to damage.

00:32:49.881 --> 00:32:57.930
They're actually pretty fragile things until they are protected and encased like they are in what they call the capsule for a 57.

00:32:57.970 --> 00:33:05.438
So I was experimenting and had a couple of different vocal mics sitting around that were in production.

00:33:05.938 --> 00:33:10.983
I haven't disclosed and won't where I get the element that I start with for the human element.

00:33:11.183 --> 00:33:14.027
But when I played it, I heard something I liked.

00:33:14.406 --> 00:33:15.828
Its output wasn't right.

00:33:16.048 --> 00:33:49.144
First of all, it was low impedance, so I had to add an impedance matching transformer then its output was actually too strong and I did a little more electronics work to get the output level right and I actually make some mechanical modifications to it too which affect its bass response and it turned out that the result was this element that had really nice bass boost and rolled off the highs naturally that makes it good for harmonica players for the same reason that vintage elements do so I want to back up and talk about vintage elements for a second.

00:33:49.424 --> 00:33:58.294
If you are an engineer, your goal is always to improve the specifications of a product or reduce its cost or both.

00:33:58.615 --> 00:34:14.231
And if we look at the way the first, you know, black label CR element was made compared to the last CMs, there were a lot of small improvements in the materials used and the production used that increased the frequency response of the element.

00:34:14.452 --> 00:34:17.434
That was considered a good thing from an engineering perspective.

00:34:17.454 --> 00:34:21.139
They increased even It's sound pressure level tolerance.

00:34:21.199 --> 00:34:25.103
That is, it could tolerate louder sounds without distorting.

00:34:25.222 --> 00:34:28.065
That was seen as a good thing from an engineering perspective.

00:34:28.427 --> 00:34:32.411
And those things actually work against us as harmonica players.

00:34:32.570 --> 00:34:36.295
We are all, especially when we're new, plagued by harshness.

00:34:36.574 --> 00:35:01.693
So beginners and intermediate players frequently are turning the treble all the way down and they're turning the bass all the way up so that they can get that bigger, fatter sound they've been hearing little by Walter or Kim Wilson or whoever is their favorite harp player get from a microphone and an amplifier.

00:35:09.025 --> 00:35:14.170
the old elements make that easier on us, but the old elements are getting rare and expensive.

00:35:14.311 --> 00:35:16.952
The modern elements make it much more difficult.

00:35:17.012 --> 00:35:19.094
They have extended high frequency response.

00:35:19.454 --> 00:35:22.097
They don't distort as much when you cup them.

00:35:22.237 --> 00:35:23.858
So they're not such good candidates.

00:35:24.139 --> 00:35:35.349
Well, the human element kind of gave back these vintage tendencies of better base response, less treble, and still would break up relatively nicely when cupped hard.

00:35:36.028 --> 00:35:59.574
That made it function much more like a vintage element and much less like a modern day element and yet it was something i could actually produce in volume i've sold many many thousands of those which makes collecting vintage ones to do the same thing impossible you can't offer a mic with an element that you can't depend upon the supply of right so it worked out really well

00:35:59.813 --> 00:36:09.985
that's a question i think a lot of people will have you know you know people think these these old elements for you know the holy grail of the black label elements but obviously bulletin has done really well it's It's got great sound.

00:36:10.065 --> 00:36:13.748
And, you know, so, you know, how does your element compare to the older elements?

00:36:13.768 --> 00:36:15.291
You're happy that it stacks up against them.

00:36:15.490 --> 00:36:17.713
Yeah, I actually have a little flow chart.

00:36:17.793 --> 00:36:20.996
I can send people that, you know, how to choose an element.

00:36:21.016 --> 00:36:23.960
The human element has more bass than any of the others.

00:36:24.199 --> 00:36:25.621
That's just hands down.

00:36:25.681 --> 00:36:26.722
It has a nice bass.

00:36:26.963 --> 00:36:31.447
That means that it helps just about any small amplifier.

00:36:31.608 --> 00:36:38.896
And if you've had much experience with harmonica amplification, you know that small amps are generally pretty crunchy anyway.

00:36:38.896 --> 00:36:44.021
So they don't necessarily need a boost in crunchiness or distortion.

00:36:44.202 --> 00:36:51.188
They just need a boost in bass, and that boost in bass actually does help generate a little more distortion.

00:36:51.369 --> 00:36:58.556
So for almost any player, if you're playing through a small amp, the human element is as good as anything out there, I think.

00:36:58.777 --> 00:37:02.782
If you play through a large amp, then you need a little more help with crunch.

00:37:02.842 --> 00:37:14.074
Large amps are a little cleaner because they play in their clean range until you're using a The human element does not have quite as much crunch as a good black label CR.

00:37:14.173 --> 00:37:20.960
It has about as much crunch as a single impedance CM, which was a later generation Shure element.

00:37:21.260 --> 00:37:24.844
So if you're a really good player, I'm going to come back to why that matters.

00:37:25.204 --> 00:37:29.389
And you really like crunch, you might prefer something like the black CR.

00:37:29.690 --> 00:37:33.735
If you're an average player, you're probably going to find the human element will make you sound better.

00:37:34.014 --> 00:37:37.639
And the difference between those two players is cupping skill.

00:37:37.798 --> 00:38:16.199
We have all been told that to get good tone amplified you have to cup the microphone but that's kind of the end of the sentence and we don't explain what that really means and it turns out that really good cupping skill is elusive it takes years to develop but when you have it it has this wonderful effect of naturally rolling off the highs so you don't sound as harsh as the next guy using the same element would and actually increasing the bass a little bit so a pro with really good cupping skill can take even a modern microphone and make it sound somewhat warm and mellow through a big amplifier.

00:38:16.500 --> 00:38:19.342
And a beginner or an intermediate player absolutely can.

00:38:19.864 --> 00:38:32.577
It really depends on your own level as a player and your experience with how well you can cup a microphone that determines whether you're going to like a crystal or a black CR or the human element better through a big amp.

00:38:32.858 --> 00:38:42.068
Like you say, one of the things of these elements that they're becoming harder to come by, you know, they're expensive and they're underlying Yeah, particularly if you're buying one off eBay, you don't know what you're getting.

00:38:42.108 --> 00:38:47.653
So to be able to come to you and get, you know, an element, you're very confident and the bulletini gets a lot of great reviews.

00:38:47.693 --> 00:38:52.298
People can just look on YouTube and find lots of people giving very positive reviews of the bulletini.

00:38:52.398 --> 00:38:55.001
So the bulletini is entirely the human element, is it?

00:38:55.402 --> 00:38:59.405
Yes.

00:39:08.655 --> 00:39:11.438
Ella and I make gaskets to fit it to other shells.

00:39:11.699 --> 00:39:23.532
So if people want to retrofit a JT30 or a sure green bullet or a Turner microphone or a T3, there's a few other shells that the human element is available to install in those as well.

00:39:23.811 --> 00:39:31.199
But nothing is combined that element in such a wonderful, small, easy to hold lightweight shell than the bulletini.

00:39:31.300 --> 00:39:33.762
And that's why it has been so successful.

00:39:33.862 --> 00:40:03.918
I think it's really gratifying to me and kind of amazing every time it happens you see people ask about gear on facebook groups whether it's harmonica gear harp tone junkies or harp players or modern blues harmonica there's dozens and dozens of harmonica related groups on facebook and whenever somebody asks about a microphone there'll be six or eight people who will respond unless somebody asks about the bulletini at which point there's almost always 50 or more responses and almost all of them are very positive

00:40:08.641 --> 00:40:17.438
uh

00:40:18.914 --> 00:40:23.918
Let me just add one thing, because since you mentioned the green bullet, people need to know.

00:40:23.958 --> 00:40:27.762
When I started playing, somebody said, well, you've got to get a green bullet.

00:40:27.822 --> 00:40:29.603
That's what harmonica players use.

00:40:30.083 --> 00:40:36.369
I didn't know that there had been five generations of elements in Shure green bullet microphones.

00:40:36.768 --> 00:40:40.632
If you buy a modern green bullet, you're getting a dynamic element.

00:40:40.813 --> 00:40:50.402
If you buy a 520D, you're getting a dual impedance CM, which of all of the generations of CM and CR elements is the harshest and thinnest tone.

00:40:50.722 --> 00:41:01.313
As you go back to the plain model 520, no letters after it, green bullet, now you get into the single impedance CM and even before that CR elements.

00:41:01.534 --> 00:41:03.155
And those are outstanding.

00:41:03.315 --> 00:41:07.519
But as you come forward in time, not all green bullets are created equal.

00:41:07.619 --> 00:41:08.481
People need to know that.

00:41:08.800 --> 00:41:09.422
No, absolutely.

00:41:09.442 --> 00:41:12.264
And I think it's well established that the modern green bullets aren't that great.

00:41:12.525 --> 00:41:14.347
Okay, so we'll move on to some of your other products now.

00:41:14.367 --> 00:41:17.570
So let's talk a little bit about your ultimate series of mics.

00:41:17.630 --> 00:41:29.643
So we touched on these a little bit so these are basically Shure SM57 and Shure SM58 which you've chopped down to make them shorter and lighter and easier to handle and also put a volume control on yeah exactly

00:41:29.724 --> 00:41:52.847
right if you take one of those mics stock it sticks out a long way from your grip and the weight of the cable then is weight on this long lever and it tends to cause hand fatigue they're just heavy if you add an inline volume control to that it gets even longer and they get even less comfortable to hold here's another little fact that one of my, I think it was Deke Harp pointed this out to me.

00:41:53.108 --> 00:42:00.155
What'll happen is you'll tend to point your head down so that the cable falls more vertically from the microphone.

00:42:00.295 --> 00:42:04.260
And when you do that, it helps close off your throat and your tone suffers.

00:42:04.541 --> 00:42:07.204
What we want is for our throat to be really open.

00:42:07.244 --> 00:42:11.969
So we want to be looking straight out at the crowd and we want to be holding that mic straight out in front of us.

00:42:12.048 --> 00:42:13.751
It becomes very uncomfortable to do that.

00:42:13.851 --> 00:42:25.003
So the ultimate mics shorten and lighten the shell and build the volume control So you're really comparing it to an SM57 plus an inline XLR volume control.

00:42:25.163 --> 00:42:28.286
They make it a lot lighter, a lot shorter, and more comfortable to play.

00:42:28.405 --> 00:42:32.670
The other thing they do is give you a choice of connector and impedance.

00:42:32.990 --> 00:42:36.914
As you know, an SM58 or an SM57 are from Shure.

00:42:36.954 --> 00:42:39.617
They have an XLR connector in their low impedance mics.

00:42:39.878 --> 00:42:45.083
And that means people get confused when it comes to hooking them up to their amplifier or effects pedal.

00:42:45.264 --> 00:42:58.398
Many people don't know that they're supposed to use an XLR to XLR cable and an impedance matching transformer and they go out and buy an XLR to quarter inch cable and they don't realize that they have now just cut their microphone's signal in half.

00:42:58.599 --> 00:43:05.445
But when you order an ultimate mic, you talk to me, I make sure you get what you want and need and the gear to go with it to hook it up.

00:43:05.585 --> 00:43:20.041
You can also order it in high impedance configuration so that if you want to be able to connect to an amp or a pedal and you don't want to have to put an impedance matching transformer in line with the cable, you can directly cable the mic to a high impedance device.

00:43:20.443 --> 00:43:25.871
So the SM57 is a good mic that can be used into a tube amplifier.

00:43:26.132 --> 00:43:29.878
Paul Butterfield played the SM545, which is very similar to an SM57.

00:43:29.918 --> 00:43:33.322
So you get a nice hard driving tone from an SM57.

00:43:50.369 --> 00:43:56.177
And then for the SM58, that's a nice clean one, maybe more an acoustic sound or maybe using with chromatic.

00:43:56.498 --> 00:44:00.362
I know Hermione Derlo, who's been on the podcast, she plays one of those.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:44:20.514 --> 00:44:25.378
So yeah, you've got those two options with a sort of more clean 58 and the dirty 57, yeah?

00:44:25.759 --> 00:44:26.318
Exactly.

00:44:26.418 --> 00:44:33.945
The 57, I like to say, has the widest tonal range in the right hands of any microphone.

00:44:33.965 --> 00:44:41.751
It has a beautiful, warm, clean sound in free air, and it dirties up quite nicely when you cup it.

00:44:42.052 --> 00:44:48.737
But I say in the right hands because cupping it at its diameter and its comfort is harder to do.

00:44:49.079 --> 00:44:52.561
And if you don't cup it well, you can get harsh tone from it.

00:44:52.581 --> 00:44:59.168
But properly controlled, you can get a really wide range from quite dirty to quite clean with it.

00:44:59.750 --> 00:45:02.972
And hence the Bulletizer product from you, probably worth mentioning at

00:45:02.992 --> 00:45:03.193
this point.

00:45:03.213 --> 00:45:03.434
Right.

00:45:03.474 --> 00:45:09.721
The Bulletizer changes the diameter you're holding the mic by and makes it a little easier to hold and cup.

00:45:10.101 --> 00:45:19.090
Also, the 58, because of the ball end, is actually harder to cup, almost impossible to cup into an airtight situation.

00:45:19.291 --> 00:45:48.481
And so you can't get it to go as dark or as distorted but also because of that it has a wider directional pattern which makes it easier to sing through uh so it's a wonderful mic when you want to kind of stay clean hook it up straight to the pa sing through it play acoustic harmonica through it and if you're like me and you close your eyes sometimes when you sing if you fall off axis a little bit it won't punish you as much as a 57 where you need to be dead center in front of it while you're singing or the output's going to fall really quick

00:45:48.742 --> 00:45:55.789
so two great options there when the And then Toots Thielmans, no less, used one of your, well, your Ultimate 58s, didn't he, later in his career?

00:45:55.949 --> 00:45:56.771
Yes, he does.

00:45:56.811 --> 00:45:57.371
He did.

00:45:57.411 --> 00:46:03.737
And also Robert Bonfilio is using an Ultimate 58 sometimes as well, and he really likes it.

00:46:03.878 --> 00:46:07.382
So that microphone crosses a lot of genres of music.

00:46:07.402 --> 00:46:26.041
And so another of your products, one which I'm really eyeing up at the moment, Greg, is your racket, which is its ability to put your harmonica onto a rack, and if you're playing another instrument like guitar, and it's got a bulletini microphone attached to it so that you getting a nice, hard-driven sound from playing on a rack, which, you know, usually on a rack, obviously, you're getting an acoustic sound.

00:46:26.101 --> 00:46:32.027
So it's got a cylinder cup, which encases the sound and mimics the sound of cupping the microphone, doesn't it?

00:46:32.148 --> 00:46:32.389
Right.

00:46:32.688 --> 00:46:34.710
It cups the microphone for you.

00:46:34.811 --> 00:46:39.777
So I call it a hands-free blues harp mic, and it can give you a really fat sound.

00:46:39.916 --> 00:46:47.385
That's a product that I saw the need for for a long time, and I had some really good rack players asking me to make something.

00:46:47.505 --> 00:46:54.472
The only solution available was this mic called the Stranad, which is now called the Tsunami.

00:46:54.753 --> 00:46:57.976
And it just wasn't delivering the kind of tone that people wanted.

00:46:58.175 --> 00:47:04.163
Unfortunately, what I knew needed to be built didn't match up with my skill set as a machinist.

00:47:04.463 --> 00:47:10.889
It would be a very difficult thing to machine the way I thought it should be built and shaped and out of the materials that needed to be made.

00:47:11.090 --> 00:47:14.673
But I was fortunate to hook up with a woman in Colorado.

00:47:14.713 --> 00:47:16.255
Her name is Michelle Lafrie.

00:47:16.715 --> 00:47:19.820
She started to do 3D printing work.

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:28.829
She actually She started even before that with just thermosetting plastic and we started talking to each other and she consulted me about elements and so forth.

00:47:28.929 --> 00:47:43.844
So when I saw what she was doing, I started to give her feedback and we figured out how we could incorporate the Bulatini and really design the racket that is now 3D printed in the shape that we wanted and incorporate the Bulatini as a microphone for it.

00:47:44.186 --> 00:47:49.992
And the result was this thing that cups the harmonica much more effectively than anything else.

00:47:50.192 --> 00:47:53.536
except a few people's homebrew microphones.

00:47:53.596 --> 00:48:06.349
If you ever saw Paul Osher or Deke Harp, they had these homebrew contraptions strapped to their racks with PVC pipe and duct tape and bailing wire and God knows what else.

00:48:06.730 --> 00:48:12.856
And they were getting big fat tone because those contraptions were, in fact, cupping the harmonica really well.

00:48:12.956 --> 00:48:16.400
But those designs weren't really suitable to production.

00:48:16.539 --> 00:48:19.663
It was 3D printing that made the racket possible.

00:48:20.143 --> 00:48:23.106
And it has been very successful since.

00:48:23.186 --> 00:48:25.869
People are discovering it and getting great, great tone out of it.

00:48:26.090 --> 00:48:35.318
And the musicians I really love are the ones who come back and tell me, now I can play this whole class of music I've been wanting to play in a rack, but couldn't because I couldn't get that tone.

00:48:35.518 --> 00:48:41.443
Yeah, and the cool thing, you know, your website's got samples of a lot of your equipment being played by different players.

00:48:41.483 --> 00:48:44.827
And there's a nice video of Mark Hummel playing with a rack.

00:48:47.150 --> 00:48:47.230
Yeah.

00:48:47.521 --> 00:48:53.918
Thank you.

00:48:55.489 --> 00:49:02.902
so

00:49:02.943 --> 00:49:27.818
people can go and check that out as well the racket looks a very interesting product as you say and it's got some um it's got some scope to get different sounds you know it's got a sort of three levels of sound isn't it a huge a fat and a bright sound so you can vary the tone a little bit on that which is interesting that's right yeah Something else that you sell, I don't think you manufacture yourself, is wireless systems for harmonicas that people can wander around without having to be plugged into the amplifier directly with a wire.

00:49:27.898 --> 00:49:33.182
So that's something you source, you know, your experience setting it up basically so people can come to you for that.

00:49:33.543 --> 00:49:34.585
You're exactly right.

00:49:34.625 --> 00:49:36.346
I'm a Samson dealer.

00:49:36.365 --> 00:49:40.409
I chose that system several years ago because I liked the way it performed.

00:49:40.630 --> 00:49:42.992
And I did do it as a service to my customers.

00:49:43.012 --> 00:49:45.554
I had so many customers asking me about wireless.

00:49:45.934 --> 00:49:47.695
I wanted a system that I knew and understood.

00:49:47.695 --> 00:50:07.556
understood so that i could set it up properly for them so that i could make various adapters to work with it to connect to various kinds of harmonica microphones but yeah you can't really make much money on something that's sold also online at amazon or guitar center i offer it as a convenience but they're very good systems

00:50:07.858 --> 00:50:23.094
yeah well again it's good to be able to come to somebody who's done that done that background work isn't it and another thing which i think you were doing maybe not so easy to come by now is the kalamazoo amps i think it's one of the earliest things you did and these are great amps made by Gibson wasn't it which we're very sought after are you still selling those

00:50:23.494 --> 00:50:50.822
right those are those were I started doing that in about 2006 they were made by the parent company of Gibson called Chicago Musical Instrument Company it was a sister company to Gibson they are wonderful little harmonica amps for many years I was buying them used and beat up off of eBay and reconditioning them and restoring the electricals to factory spec and reselling them And I had a long waiting list of people who wanted them.

00:50:51.143 --> 00:51:01.255
But I don't know if you've looked in the last year, year and a half, maybe two, the prices have just skyrocketed and it no longer makes sense for me to do that.

00:51:01.494 --> 00:51:07.541
So I don't sort of sell them proactively to my waiting list, but I do still rebuild them for customers.

00:51:07.621 --> 00:51:14.528
If a customer finds their own Kalamazoo Model 1 or Model 2, they can send it to me and I will rebuild it.

00:51:14.648 --> 00:51:21.175
And they know they have the experience of somebody who knows what they're supposed to sound like and what goes wrong with them and how to make them just right.

00:51:21.856 --> 00:52:24.903
You know the list of players who you know sort of endorse your products is as long as your arm yeah you know a lot of people have had on the podcast I'm proud to say you know Charlie Musselwhite and Kim Wilson we've mentioned too and Paul Lamb here in the UK so Rick Estrin the list goes on and on you know the endorsers and people who really love your product so fantastically well done Greg in what you've managed to do and get out there and you know you've made a real splash so another thing you've done which is really useful and you've touched on it a lot through the conversation we've had is all the different sort of techniques and all the sort of technicalities behind you know the microphones and amps and how you get a good tone and it's a guide that you've written called all about microphones which is available on your website again i'll put a link on the front of the podcast page so people can dig that out but i read i read through it the other day and it's got tons of great information on there you know you're talking about all the you know the harmonics and the different tones of the cupping they're different all about the different mic elements and you know how to control feedback all sorts of all sorts of things in there it's a really good read and all that detail that you know the harmonica players really crave is in there isn't it i hope so it's you know i just wanted to

00:52:24.983 --> 00:53:06.748
try and encapsulate a lot of what i have learned over all of these years being so focused on where does tone come from and then answering a lot of the questions that people who confront amplification for the first time haven't gotten the answers to yet i always find customers are almost apologetic like i'm really sorry i feel really dumb to ask this question and i want people to understand you shouldn't feel that way nobody they didn't teach amplified harmonica in high school they didn't teach high impedance versus low impedance or dynamic versus crystal these are all things that you don't learn until you have an interest in learning them but i have learned them and i'm happy to share that and i've shared a lot of it in that document

00:53:06.889 --> 00:53:16.818
it's a great guide you know i feel i'm pretty knowledgeable but it was a great read for me you know it refreshed a lot but it also definitely gave me insight into some things i didn't know as well so i definitely recommend people ever read through it it's

00:53:17.320 --> 00:53:17.360
uh

00:53:17.360 --> 00:53:20.123
you know, it's kind of like 28 pages long or something.

00:53:20.143 --> 00:53:23.706
It's not so long, you know, it's kind of readable in one sitting and it's very good.

00:53:23.766 --> 00:53:23.927
Yeah.

00:53:24.347 --> 00:53:24.668
Thank you.

00:53:24.907 --> 00:53:28.871
On this topic, Greg, a question I ask each time is my 10 minute question.

00:53:28.952 --> 00:53:34.277
So for you, I'm going to ask you the 10 minute question from a microphone amplification angle.

00:53:34.338 --> 00:53:39.943
So if you were to practice for 10 minutes on your amplification skills, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

00:53:40.324 --> 00:53:44.528
I would spend those 10 minutes learning how to cup more airtight.

00:53:45.030 --> 00:53:54.786
When we hear about cupping a microphone, we think about creating a seal between the back of the harmonica and the front of the microphone with our hands.

00:53:55.166 --> 00:53:57.989
And it turns out that it's really, that's part of it.

00:53:58.248 --> 00:54:08.898
But whether we're playing amplified or acoustic, what we have to come to learn is that a great deal of sound pressure escapes out the front of the harmonica too.

00:54:09.257 --> 00:54:18.445
If you're not blocking those escape paths for sound pressure until you can get kind of a full or near full mute, you're not getting a full cup.

00:54:18.626 --> 00:54:24.835
And the problem here is that if you're not getting a full one, you don't know how far away from a full one you are.

00:54:25.036 --> 00:54:33.228
And a lot of the golden beauty in amplified playing is somewhere between like 97% and 99% airtight.

00:54:33.289 --> 00:54:34.612
You can always open up more.

00:54:34.871 --> 00:54:36.193
I have a harmonica in my hand.

00:54:36.253 --> 00:54:41.784
I don't know how well you'll hear this, but I just want to say, here's how most people sound when they open and close their hands.

00:54:44.289 --> 00:54:53.657
But when you get a really good airtight cup and you seal off both the rear and the front of the harp, I hope that difference comes through.

00:54:53.677 --> 00:54:53.717
It

00:54:54.239 --> 00:54:54.818
does, yeah, it

00:54:54.838 --> 00:54:54.958
does.

00:54:55.079 --> 00:55:01.824
Playing acoustically even, learning to really cup the harmonica well will give you a much deeper wah.

00:55:02.246 --> 00:55:06.949
And the trick is sealing off all of the escape paths for sound pressure.

00:55:07.030 --> 00:55:21.844
It means putting a lot of harmonica in your mouth, using tongue blocking if you can, and then sealing off the right side using a combination of your cheek and your thumb, and then being really observant, looking in a mirror, finding out where the leaks are and learning how to plug them.

00:55:22.103 --> 00:55:24.606
We'll move on to the last section now, which is just talking a bit about gear.

00:55:24.786 --> 00:55:28.411
So talking about the harmonicas that you play, first of all, I think you play sidles, yeah?

00:55:28.610 --> 00:55:32.014
Yeah, my main gig harps are sidles.

00:55:32.556 --> 00:55:35.398
I started with Lee Oscars very early.

00:55:35.418 --> 00:55:42.226
Well, I started with a little bit of everything and I kind of got driven to Lee Oscars, but then I realized I didn't like the way they were tuned.

00:55:42.266 --> 00:55:46.550
They're more kind of a country sound and I settled on Special 20s.

00:55:46.610 --> 00:55:48.713
Dave Barrett helped me, I think, find those.

00:55:49.012 --> 00:55:50.994
And I like Special 20s and I still do.

00:55:51.235 --> 00:55:56.420
I think the Seidls hold up longer, have very similar tonal qualities, but are louder.

00:55:56.661 --> 00:56:02.126
And so all my main key harps are Seidls, but admittedly, they're more pricey than a Special 20.

00:56:02.387 --> 00:56:12.117
One thing I like about both of them is that the sides of the cover plates are closed, whereas on some marine bands and other harps, there's these little gaps in the sides of the cover plates.

00:56:12.318 --> 00:56:15.284
And when you're going for this airtight cup, Those fight you.

00:56:15.545 --> 00:56:22.047
You know, I still use Special 20s like for my D-flat harmonica and my B harmonica that I don't play as much.

00:56:22.570 --> 00:56:24.797
But Seidls are my main ones and I love them.

00:56:25.282 --> 00:56:27.324
So what microphone do you play then, Greg?

00:56:27.565 --> 00:56:35.655
When I play my big amp, which is a Sonny Junior Avenger, I'm using one of my custom wood mics with a 1949 Black Label CR.

00:56:36.036 --> 00:56:47.230
When I'm playing through my small amp, which is a Kalamazoo, like for coffee shop gigs and pub gigs and lower volume gigs, I use a Bellatini through the 5-watt Kalamazoo.

00:56:47.489 --> 00:56:52.567
And then I have an Ultimate 58 set up in a mic stand connected directly to the PA.

00:56:52.586 --> 00:56:58.005
And I use that for my voice and my acoustic harmonica work.

00:56:58.626 --> 00:57:31.039
do you use any effects pedals very little i usually use a delay or a reverb these days lately i've been using a reverb i find i'll use a pedal for a couple of years and then i'll take it out and put something else in and go oh that sounds good and then i'll take that out and put the other one back in and go oh that sounds good and then i'll go next door and sit in with a band after we did a gig and i don't want to set everything up so i just plug straight into my amp and i say oh that sounds good i think people always think change is good but i'm not a big effects pedal guy on the other hand I'm not doing a three-hour harmonica show.

00:57:31.219 --> 00:57:37.038
There are people who do that, and I think mixing up tones using pedals when they're used sparingly.

00:57:37.179 --> 00:57:39.144
Jason Ricci is a master at this.

00:57:39.565 --> 00:57:40.750
There's nothing wrong with that.

00:57:40.931 --> 00:57:41.934
It's just not my thing.

00:57:42.146 --> 00:57:58.139
so final question then we've been just through a pandemic of course and so what have you been up to over the pandemic and what about now for your plans or you know you're looking at some future products you know you've just been catching up with back orders over the pandemic and what's happening with your you know any future plans for new new product lines

00:57:58.699 --> 00:58:18.378
well business is still is is picking back up i did drop off during the pandemic when people couldn't perform but now that they can uh business is coming back and it's keeping me busy and uh i'll be very honest i'm old enough and ready to kind of retire and slow down that there's a lot of things I'm not doing.

00:58:18.398 --> 00:58:20.681
And that's including introducing new products.

00:58:21.101 --> 00:58:28.610
I may have one trick up my sleeve left, but for the most part, I'm actually happy to let the business slow down a little bit.

00:58:28.670 --> 00:58:29.931
So I have a little spare time.

00:58:30.010 --> 00:58:32.934
My wife and I want to travel while we're still young enough to do it.

00:58:33.175 --> 00:58:34.615
So that's the honest answer.

00:58:34.675 --> 00:58:36.418
I'm not planning a whole bunch of new products.

00:58:36.878 --> 00:58:37.398
Yeah, no, great.

00:58:37.438 --> 00:58:39.221
But I mean, the products you have are great.

00:58:39.380 --> 00:58:42.063
Certainly the wood mics are something on my shopping list.

00:58:42.063 --> 00:58:42.224
this.

00:58:42.244 --> 00:58:44.806
I'll have to get ordering one of those while you still can, eh?

00:58:45.047 --> 00:58:45.327
Yeah.

00:58:45.688 --> 00:58:51.034
Thanks so much, Greg Heumann, for joining us today and giving us a great insight into the wonderful products you offer.

00:58:51.353 --> 00:58:51.934
Thank you, Neil.

00:58:51.974 --> 00:58:53.115
It's been nice talking to you.

00:58:53.175 --> 00:58:54.436
I appreciate your questions.

00:58:54.556 --> 00:59:00.063
And of course, anybody's able to contact me through my website or Facebook, and I'm

00:59:00.083 --> 00:59:01.324
happy to answer questions.

00:59:01.945 --> 00:59:02.885
That's it for episode 46.

00:59:03.085 --> 00:59:05.128
Thanks again so much for listening.

00:59:05.148 --> 00:59:10.153
I highly recommend you go and check out Greg's products on his website, blowsmeaway.com.

00:59:10.635 --> 00:59:26.974
Just over to Greg now to play is out.

00:59:41.666 --> 00:59:44.018
uh