ProgKaZoo Badges
Gray Decorates the Ultimo-ProgKaZoo (Chapter V)
ProgKaZoo Quest: Day Five...
After sneakily putting the badges together in a spare half hour at work during the day, the badges were printed out on the printer at home on photo paper to give it some sheen and hopefully a durable print which looks a bit snazzy. The prints both came out pretty well, apart from some of the green on the Gray/Yes logo. Rich's badge is obviously influenced by Motorhead as is the man himself. The badges measured 26mm x 26mm, which allowed a milimetre on each side for bleed and cutting-out grace.
Double sided tape was stripped across the back of the printed sheet of badges. I printed more than one on the sheet, just in case I screwed up at any point. After cutting a badge each out, they were taped to the top of each mic and trimmed round with scissors. This didn't give a totally satisfactory finish, but it did look good enough to fit into the slightly home-made style of the Ultimo-ProgKaZoo.
Of course, whilst sorting out the top of the Gray Ultimo-ProgKaZoo, I managed to pull another fecking wire off the mic itself, so I had to solder that back on, which was a pain, but I think that by slopping loads more solder on the wires, they should be a little more durable in the long-run, even though I've mounted the mics with the solder face-down for added protection. After this, it was all go on the attaching of the mics to the kazoo bodies and make their transformation into Ultimo-ProgKaZoos complete.
In the end, I decided to use two trimmed double-sided adhesive foam pads on each side of the mic to stick it to the kazoo body. This allowed air into the kazoo paper and also gave some decent strength to the joint. It also allowed the mic little movement when mounted up. Hopefully nothing can fall off now! The sound of the kazoo was great (even though I had to swap the paper from ProgKaZoo v2b to the Rich Ultimo-ProgKaZoo as it sounded better) when not amped-up and it sounded OK when quickly tested at low volume through the amp and effects unit. Later on I will crank-up the volume and give it a proper test ready for Saturday and the presentation of Rich's Ultimo-ProgKaZoo to Rich and us showing them off at rehearsal.
Expectation and confidence is high... Keep it here, people!
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© 2006 Graham T. Ebbrell