Gobos

[Joao Brandao]

Hi there!

This is my first post, and first of all I wanna say thanks to the people who started this forum, it seems realy nice!

I've re-read my post, and it seems a bit long.. I hope you can understand my question.

I work in a small recording studio, but we have a decent sized tracking space. Lately we've been trying more and more to get into tracking bands live, playing together in the room. It's a great approach to recording, but now more than ever we need to get some nice gobos to control the bleed and to allow us to place the musicians where they feel good - regardless (well, kind of) of the sound of that particular spot in the room.

We asked an acoustician that works in a pro audio company not far away from us (and that builds gobos and stuff) to give us an estimate, but the ballpark he's aiming at seems a bit over our budget.

In the meantime, I decided to ask for an estimate in another company (not really an audio company, mostly they manufacture and assemble exhibition stands/booths and stuff like that). In order to do this we asked a designer to make us some drawings of what we thought that could be a good screen.

We saw the BBC gobos PDF file in the Mercenary website (thanks a lot!) and after some more google image search we came up with something like this:

- Number #1 -

This gobo would be 2mx1x0.15m (something like 6'7'' x 3'3'' x 6'' - I hope I got this right, we use the metric system).

One side would be a rigid surface, like plywood, and the other would be some kind of thick fabric (I don't know the english word for that). On the inside it would be stuffed with rockwool or some kind of absorving foam.
The window would be made from 5mm thick plexiglass.

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/7640/painel1frente.png


http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/1405/painel1tras.png


- Number #2 -

This gobo is exactly like the first one, but with no window.

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/3900/painel2frente.png


http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/8379/painel2tras.png


- Number #3 -

This is square gobo - 1m x 1m x 0.15.
The filling is the same, but this one has no legs so we can stack them.

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/3886/painel3frente.png


http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/6060/painel3tras.png


The legs would be made in a way that would allow us to put the gobos together like this:

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/3376/paineisjuntos.png


We have the actual drawings with all the measures, these are just images so you could see what I am talking about.

Do you think this could work?

Probably it would be better if one side of the gobo was a diffuser (but that would be more expensive). We thought that if we get a reflective side (insted of 2 absorbing surfaces) we can have more options in the room



Our room is aprox. 12ft. high.

Sorry for the long post, I hope to get some feedback here before I can send them the drawings!

Thanks,

Joao.

[Joao Brandao]

Oh and please move this if it's not posted in the right section!

Thanks!

[Zachg]

It looks like it would work well, but wouldn't they take up a lot of space when they're not in use? Unless they could be used as normal room treatment for your tracking room and then you could also build a mini vocal/complete iso booth out of them for overdubs if needed... The more I think about it, that seems like a better and better idea.
Another good forum for acoustics and design stuff is the JohnSayers forum, I've seen many people say that as great resource for acoustics related stuff.

Hope this helps a bit,
Zach

[Joao Brandao]

Hey, thanks for the reply!

They would take a lot of room, expecially because we need 7 or 8 of the bigger ones and like 4 of the square ones.

But this is not really an issue because our room is fairly large, and like you said they can be kept like a mini-booth since we only have one tracking room.

Thanks for the JohnSayers tip, I'll try to post this over there too.

Please keep them coming!!

J.

[Dan]

Those look nearly identical to ours, which were built by one of our clients.

My advice: get the feet design right - they can be VERY easy to tip over.

-Dab,

[Joao Brandao]

Hey Dan,

Thanks! We'll take that in consideration!

J.

[tekis]

You can buy large sheets (squares) of dense grey foam that work well as gobos. I've found that gobos that have no space (ie. are flush with the ground) isolate slightly better. I like the "TATRIX" brand of pre-made gobo. They're easy to stack and really work. I use lots of packing blankets too...