Kit Marsden // Musician

Tag: sharma 2000

  • Remote Recording Sessions For Alex Carter

    Remote Recording Sessions For Alex Carter

    Kit Marsden

    ,

    I’ve had the privilege of recording both drums and organs on a new single from blues singer/songwriter Alex Carter in my studio this weekend.

    With a super cool, groovy blues vibe, I have really enjoyed getting stuck into this session and getting the tone and feel of the song just right – both in my playing and in the choice of cymbals and studio techniques. Plus the session was also another great opportunity to run organs through my vintage Sharma 2000 rotary cab, which is always very exciting!

    Keep an eye out for the finished single being released soon. I can’t wait for everyone to hear it!

  • More Sharma 2000 Modifications

    More Sharma 2000 Modifications

    Kit Marsden

    ,

    The long-awaited follow-up to my original post from January 2020 on modifying a guitar amp channel footswitch to change the motor speed in a Sharma 2000 rotary cab is finally here! I will give a small précis of the 2020 post here, for context.

    The Sharma 2000 has a nine-pin Amphenol connector on the rear panel, and three of these pins are concerned with the speed of the rotary motor; grounding Pin 6 (ie. by connecting it to Pin 1, the ground pin) spins the motor fast, whilst grounding Pin 7 spins the motor slower (and with neither pin connected to the ground of Pin 1, the motor does not spin at all). I rewired a generic footswitch to use a TRS ¼” jack connector to change which pin was connected to the ground. Because I was doing these modifications in a bit of a hurry – just a couple of days before a gig on which I planned to use the Sharma rotary speaker – I left it at that. But I always planned to return to the project at a later point and finish the job.

    Despite all the unexpected free time afforded to me by lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, I only managed to return to complete this project within the last few weeks.

  • Sharma 2000 Modifications

    Sharma 2000 Modifications

    Kit Marsden

    ,

    In November I achieved a small dream of mine, as a keys player – I bought a genuine old vintage rotary cab for gigs and sessions where I’m mainly playing Hammond organ-type parts. My studio setup has evolved so that I try to stay away from emulators, and capture the sounds of real hardware and genuine components, wherever possible. So to be able to record and play live with a real rotary speaker for that sweet bluesy organ tone was a really exciting prospect for me.

    The speaker I got is a Sharma 2000 – Sharma was a British firm which was a competitor to the famous American Leslie cabs during the ’60s and ’70s. It maybe a lesser-known brand, but the Sharma speaker still sounds just like the organ tone I’ve always wanted from my playing, and put a huge grin on my face from the first moment I sat down to play organ through it. (I’m playing it from my workhorse Nord Stage 2 keyboard setup as a B3 emulator – you can’t avoid emulators altogether! – but with the Nord’s built-in rotary function switched off.)

    The Sharma speaker has the same 9-pin Amphenol connector you get on Leslies which carries input signal, volume information and various other program-change style controls.

Kit Marsden // Musician