Otis asked if I could convert some 45’s he had in his collection. I have converted full albums, but hadn’t tried a 45 yet. So of course I was eager to try. Man I am such a nerd.

Anyway, I carefully transported them home and this weekend I got to work on them. It was fun. I always forget how to set the levels, it is in no way intuitive and I really should create some documentation, but that seems to much like my daily job. It takes a bit, but I recall the right combination of settings to make it all work.

I started with a 45 of Mike Watt (from Firehose) playing with The Black Gang.

I set up my rig and got all the settings down, then put the needle to the vinyl.

I watched the left and right channels bounce close to the red for a bit, satisfied that the recording was happening to the very utmost highest level it could go without going over the line into mushing out the sound.

Next up was Bes Monde.

and then Nick Cave (picture disc, backside was just black. No X).

Picture discs traditionally have a poorer sound. They look good spinning though.

and then a Side By Side 45… Misfits and The Lemonheads. Also a picture disc

This one looked cool spinning too.

All sounded great and copied well, although it was probably going to take as long to edit out the needle drops and run offs on all these and rename them than it did to actually do the recordings. Doing an album you can walk away and come back in 20 minutes.

Last but not least was the Clip The Daisies 45.

Insert Front

Insert Back

It was recorded at Fat Blob Between Records in Madison. I couldn’t find any information on Fat Blob, or even any other 45’s by them, but if you are interested in the matrix numbers and other factoids, I did find this listing.

http://www.45cat.com/record/nc338594us

Only 1 member of the site actually has listed that they own this. Otis paid $3.49 for it and just for the aesthetics alone it was worth it.

Sweet white vinyl and a red center.

Looked nice on the turntable.

There is no Side 1, or Side One, there is a Meat Side and a Bean Side. I fired it up and the sweet strains of Clip The Daisies bounced the meters. Here it is in action.

Once Clip The Daisies was done I set to work with the files. The program separates the tracks based on the silence between them. I open them in Audacity and clip out the needle drop and the trail off and in the case of 2 songs on a side have to separate them and rename the files. It’s fun in a geeky way. I must admit.

Once all the files were edited, renamed and ready I copied them to a flash drive, after making a copy for myself, and packed the 45’s for travel back to work.

Another successful conversion!