10:08 Adventures

Hello Again

2010-10-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

I've been ignoring this blog pretty successfully recently. I have a huge backlog of stuff to post...eventually.

Here are some new songs that sound like old songs.

More Songs

2010-06-15T10:01:00.000-04:00

I promised myself I wouldn't get any new gear until I have five complete songs.

Its time to get some new gear.

Two of the songs are ones I've posted before, but mixed this time, so they should sound a lot better. You can find them here.

And I promise that I will have electronics updated in the next day or two.

A Song

2010-05-27T00:20:00.000-04:00

Well, here is a song, done with my synths and stuff. DX7, Juno, and DX drums. Did some processing and sequencing in Ableton Live. Also had some guitar. I have no idea what to classify this as. It is called "Mumber," because I misspelled "number 1" when naming it and I decided to stick with it. A friend describes it like this:

Aha, yeah; aha, yeah, yeah drumset and eerie piano tune. Minute one, I’m in a 23^rd century cathedral, electric organ ushers in neo-acolytes into the friendly arms of the one true faith. We are all gathered under neon-lights standing over shiny reflecting white tiles beneath us. There are no walls and no doors, only one faith. Minute two, it’s the queue for all of us gathered to begin our absolutions. Everyone starts bobbing in place to the beat. We are one, we are one faith. We are mumber. Cool.

You can listen to it here

New Stuff and Updates

2010-05-11T21:41:00.000-04:00

Let's start with the S-770. After spending a few days scratching my head, trying to figure out how to get this thing working, I finally found a solution. It is somewhat convoluted, but it works. Roland's website has the OS and a program for writing the startup disks. You will need a DD floppy disk though, and they aren't common. You can, however, format a "normal" 1.44MB HD floppy disk to 770kb. All you have to do is tape over the hole on the bottom right corner. This will make it read as a DD disk. If you are running Windows XP or later you can't format disks to 770kb DD. For that I used Alkonost MaxFormat, very useful for formatting floppies. After formatting the disk, write the OS with Roland's program and you are all set!

I ordered a SCSI Zip drive from Amazon and I dug up a bunch of old Zip disks. Now, instead of only having 40MB of storage, I will have hundreds of megabytes of storage. Lots of samples. I keep reading reviews of this thing, and it makes me more and more excited to start playing around with it:

Most impressive in 1990 was the S770, a 3U rackmount sampler that, nearly 15 years later, remains a superb instrument. It was 24-voice polyphonic, incorporated an internal hard disk drive, offered sample RAM that was expandable up to 16MB, had digital inputs and outputs, offered 20-bit A-D and D-A conversion, supported all the peripherals already launched, and was compatible with the existing S-series library. But it was not the S770's specification that held the two secrets of its excellence; these were rather more intangible. Firstly, there was the sample editing system, which was a hugely powerful and elegant synth in its own right, but which was overlooked by the public at large. Secondly, there was the audio quality. Thanks to a new reproduction method called Differential Interpolation, the S770 eliminated the grainy distortion that appeared when you played at low pitches on other manufacturers' samplers. Unfortunately, just as they had on the W30, Roland had missed a trick... once again, the S770's specification lacked the crucial words 'Akai' and 'compatible'. Had it been able to load and/or convert the Akai sample library, it might have gone on to become the new standard. But it didn't, so it didn't.

Akai can eat it.

In other news, a friend of mine pointed me to a website that sells PCBs for stomp box clones. I ordered a Zvex Woolly Mammoth clone and a fuzz that uses a 4049 chip (basically it sounds wild, unlike any other fuzz, its kind of like the Red Llama I was making earlier, which I abandoned). I also bought the parts for everything, so hopefully I'll have two new fuzz pedals to make loud guitar noises with.

Alos purchased: a parallel printer to USB adapter for my EPROM programmer. Oh yeah, apparently you need a parallel printer to use the EROM programmer, so the Ensoniq is still not working. Soon though, hopefully.

Electronic Components Part 3: R

2010-05-03T15:31:00.000-04:00

V = IR

Welcome to the third part. This will cover resistance. For us armature electronic engineers the component that we will use the most are resistors. Every circuit uses resistors. Actually, every circuit uses capacitors too, but not as frequently as resistors.

Resistors, as the name implies, cause resistance in the circuit. Using our hydraulic analogy, think of a resistor as a crimp in the pipe that restricts the flow of water. This is measured in ohms.

So V is the pressure, I is the rate of flow, and R is the resistance of the flow.

Let's set up a simple circuit consisting of a power source (V) and one resistor, and an ammeter.

Lets say we are using a 10 volt battery and we have a 100 ohm resistor.

Using simple algebra we can rearrange V=IR to solve for I. I=V/R.

I = 10/100

I = 0.1 amperes (amps), or 100 mA. This is the reading we would see on the ammeter.

If we increase the resistance and keep V the same, the current will decrease. If we decrease the resistance, the current will increase.

It is actually much harder to under stand the "why" than it is to do the math with this equation.

The next installment will be an introduction to the various electronic components that you will frequently see in a circuit.

Fender Bassman Update

2010-05-02T21:47:00.000-04:00

I was wrong. I wasn't a blown capacitor. It was two blown resistors. And a blown capacitor. The smoke was from the resistors though, not the capacitor. The good news is that these are cheap parts; two 100 ohm resistors and a 5uf capacitor. I have no idea why they blew, but if i had to guess I'd say it was due to age. It should be an easy fix.

Amp Guts Porn:

Here you can see the two blown resistors

Blown cap in the bottom of this picture. It's really hard to see.

Another view of the blown cap.

Roland S-770: Who would have thought I need this old stuff?

2010-05-02T21:22:00.001-04:00

On a whim I bought a Roland S-770 sampler. It was made in 1989. Stock it features 1MB of memory, expandable to 16MB. The one I bought has the full 16MB. It has ADSR filters and come cool editing capabilities for 1989, however, I have not used it yet. The internal hard drive, used to store the samples (a full 40MB hard drive!) was busted. It turned on, but when it searched for a hard drive there was a clicking-grinding noise, so I can't use it yet. Eventually I will swap the floppy drive with a Zip drive (and that will replace the hard drive too), but for now I've been trying to get it to fully start up. This requires booting the thing from a floppy drive. The fun part is that it will only take a 770kb DD floppy. I am not sure that I have actually ever seen one of those before, 1.44MB yes, but not 770kb.

Zip drives and DD floppies. Who would have thought I'd be needing these things in 2010.

Anyway, here be some guts:

Ensoniq ESQ-1 Update

2010-04-24T21:37:00.000-04:00

After some research I decided it is easiest to try to program new EPROMS my self. I can download the OS off of the internet. I found an EPROM burner for $30 on eEay, and I bought a bunch of EPROMS from Mouser. If all goes well, I will have a working ESQ-1 in about a week. All probably won't go well though.

Where There's Smoke...

2010-04-20T14:20:00.000-04:00

Well, no fire, but there was smoke.

I was jamming with a friend on Sunday, playing thought the Fender Bassman when suddenly no sound. Initially I thought a cable had a short in it, so I started kicking and jiggling things. Then the smell. Caustic. If you have ever smelled it before you immediately know what it is. Burning electronics components. Panic.

I turned around and saw smoke coming from the Bassman. I ran over and unplugged it.

I'm 99 percent sure a capacitor blew in the power supply. Hell, the thing is over 40 years old. I'm not surprised. At least I have another project...

Kawai K3m and update

2010-04-18T22:45:00.000-04:00

Based on the last picture you might have figured out that I bought another synth. It is a Kawai K3m. I bought in on eBay, and it is in fantastic shape. It looks like I bought it new yesterday. This is a hybrid synth. Digital mixed with analog. It also uses two types of synthesis to make awesome sounds.

The wave forms are generated by additive synthesis. It builds up the harmonics to create unique sounding waveforms. It has 31 preset waveforms and one user defined waveform, plus white noise. This allows for a lot of really cool sounds. These are all digitally generated.

The analog part lies in the filters, using subtractive synthesis. This is what separated this synth from many others in its class. The analog filters smooth out the digital waveforms and make it sound very natural.

You can assign the LFO to the VCA, Filter, or oscillators. It also has aftertouch. You can have the aftertouch control the filter, balance between the oscillators, the VCA, and the LFO.

It also has built in effects; five choruses, a tremolo and a delay.

You can get a lot of really great sounds with these features. Its a pretty great synth for its price (under $200) and I bet that these will go up in price quickly when people rediscover how cool it is. Is only weakness is that is doesn't do basses too well, at least compared to something like my Juno 106. The K3m is great for pads, noises, and general synthing (I'm not sure what that actually means). It comes in a keyboards version and a rack version. I have the rack version. I guess I'm getting into rack synths now.

Kawai K3m

2010-04-16T21:09:00.001-04:00

Ensoniq ESQ-1

2010-03-22T21:31:00.000-04:00

I bought this off of eBay broken. Thought it would be a fun project. I still do, but it turns out it is more broken than I thought it was. It only plays the stock piano sound and the screen is messed up:

The ESQ-1 is a rad synth. It has digital oscillators and analog filters, three LFOs, a cool envelope generator, and a built in 8 track sequencer. You can actually program this thing to sound like a techno-type drum kit. It's sick. I just need to get it to work. I have a feeling, at the very least, I will have to get the EPROMs (the thing that stores the OS) reprogramed.

I tried a hard reset, grounding the battery (to reset the RAM), checking the voltages form the power supply, and checking to make sure all the chips are properly seated. I need to go over everything and clean off any corrosion. If it still doesn't work I think I will have to send the EPROMS away to get re-programmed.

Since I took it apart, here are some pictures:

I'll probably get around to some more trouble shooting over the weekend.

Um...hi!

2010-03-19T19:48:00.000-04:00

New post coming soon (Sundayish) about a new old broken synth. Until then:

Happy Pi Day!

2010-03-14T11:51:00.002-04:00

Woo!

Lights!

2010-03-03T12:21:00.000-05:00

On Monday I saw Muse live. It was awesome. Matt's piano, which is actually a digital piano in a piano housing, has really cool lights. Every time he plays a key it lights up a light. It is a really cool effect:

As soon as I saw that I needed to figure out how to build one. Its a good thing the internet exists. After some research, I think I figured out how to do this. Its actually much easier (in theory) than I thought.

Enter the MIDI 16-Way Light Controller. It does exactly what I need it to. Takes the MIDI input and outputs a small voltage. It can output up to 16 channels. They also include a schematic for wiring multiple LEDs to the circuit:

If you have a 61 key keyboard (like I do) you will need 4 controllers, not to mention the 61 transistors and 200+ LEDs. I think it will be worth it though.

I'll keep you updated if I decide to build this.

Space and Congress

2010-02-26T10:00:00.025-05:00

I went through a few ideas about what to post about today for the Friday science-related post. Since I have a congressional hearing on right now about NASA and its future, I'll post about that. This might turn into a rant about how much I dislike politicians.

I noticed a few things:

Charles Bolden is a really smart guy.
Congressmen are not. They don't seem to have a grasp of some key issues of science and technology.
Congressman Wu from Oregon seems like a complete moron, incapable of making a clear argument. My impression of him: "Wahhh, I don't like this because I just don't. Hmmfp."
Everyone seems to be worried about a human space-flight program.
Props to Bolden for having to put up with these people. I couldn't do that.

The Constellation program was flawed. It was nothing new, just rehashing Apollo age technologies. Like rebuilding a 1977 Cadillac, but painting it red this time and adding a Tom Tom navigation system. I respect President Obama for his decision on this issue. It takes a lot of guts to completely cancel a program that we have already spent $10 billion on. I support this too. We need to develop new technologies to get us into space cheaper, and that is what the proposed NASA budget focuses on.

Congresswoman Giffords talked about how she (and many others) want to see more details about this shift for NASA. I agree with her. Details are important. This seem to be a reoccurring theme in this hearing. I'm not convinces that NASA has the details worked out in full, but Bolden did mention a few programs thay are currently working on.

Congresswoman Fudge had a story where she was talking to a kid who wanted to be an astronaut, and she didn't know what to say to him. She wanted to tell him to think of a new goal, because NASA will not have a maned space flight program. OK, what about private space flight? Can't he work for one of those companies (Boeing, Space X) that will soon have the capabilities to take people to space? There is a weird focus on government funded manned spaceflight, like its government funded manned spaceflight or nothing. I actually think that there is a better chance of me going to space if we have a few private companies that have the ability to get there.

She is also worried about the priorities shifting and having the funding for proposed programs canceled in the near future. If that is your worry, you are in the wrong field. Stuff like that happens in the world of politics all the time. I like to think that if it is a well thought out plan, then it will last.

One overlooked goal of the NASA Bidget is the development of a heavy-lift rocket. NASA is looking long-term, not just at the next ten years. This is the type of thing where government funding is useful. There is almost zero incentive right now for the private spaceflight industry to develop these type of rockets that use new technologies.

Bolden is talking about education in NASA. Important. Possibly the most important. Educating kids about NASA ans space and getting them excited about it is the best way to ensure the future of our space program, be it government or private.

It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out. Congress needs to approve the new NASA budget, and right now there seems to be a lot of resistance.

Electronic Components Part 2: I

2010-02-23T12:21:00.000-05:00

Time for part 2 of this thing: Current. I is the second term in V=IR (obviously). It is also the one thing about electricity that scares the crap out of me. When it comes to electrical shocks, the current is what makes them deadly.

Current describes the rate of flow on the electrical charge. It is the change in coulombs (electrical charge)/change in time. Going back the the hydraulic analogy, current is the flow rate of the water. Current is measured in amperes (A).

This is a quick post. Next week will be R (resistance), and I will also bring everything together for an explanation of Ohms Law.

Synth Setup

2010-02-22T13:30:00.000-05:00

I went to Guitar Center this weekend to pick up stuff i needed to set up my synth rack. My old keyboard stand is now used for the Oberheim DX. I bought a new 2-tiered keyboard tack to hold the two synths. I bought a small Behringer mixer too. All the synths and drum machine are plugged into the mixer. This allows me to use the FX loop on the mixer for the synths (or drum machine) and all three now have a single output. I was very excited to set everything up, and even more exited to play through it.

Pictures:

Synth pop?

2010-02-21T10:09:00.008-05:00

I have always had a weakness for pop music. Lady GaGa is one example of this, I just can't get enough of her. I also like 80s synth-pop. I also like Nine Inch Nails, so my musical taste is all over the board.

I've been a fan of Gary Numan for a few years now. His songs have a feel and sound that is truly unique. And he sings about robots. I've been waiting to see him live since I first discovered him, but he hasn't come around.

Then there is Little Boots. Watch this video right now. Catchy pop tunes. I discovered her last year when my roommate showed me the video linked above, and I immediately fell in love.

So what do these two people have in common? A love for synthesizers. They joined forces back in December for a 45 minute session at the BBC studios. It is worth watching the entire thing, especially the Lou Reed cover at the end. They do a two solo songs each, then join up for three songs as a duetish sort of thing. Somehow, it works. Really well too, in my opinion.

Watch all five parts, it'll be worth your time.

Part 1
Part2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The aspect ratio is off on these videos, but it was the only complete version I could find. There are interviews throughout too. Strange how their two different worlds can combine so well.

Toys!

2010-02-19T21:59:00.007-05:00

When it snowed I got really board. That means that I surfed the internet a lot. I remembered that I love synthesizers, so I started to think about buying one. I also remembered that I really wanted a drum machine. This took me to eBay. After browsing for a day or two I found exactly what I was looking for. I was excited. So I bid on them. And then I won them. Here they are:

Oberheim DX. This is the "Blue Monday" drum machine. Well, its big brother the DMX is, but they have the same exact drum sounds in them, the DMX just has more. The one thing that makes the DX much cooler than the DMX is that on the back of it, there are thumb screws that adjust the pitch of the sounds. It can hold up to 100 sequences, you can change the number of measures in a sequence, the time signature, and you can arrange those sequences into up to 50 songs. And the buttons make a very satisfying click when you hit them.

And then we have the Roland Juno 106. This sound is THE sound of the 80s. It has 6 voices, a sawtooth wave, square wave, pulse width modulation, a sub oscillator, a sweet envelope generator, high pass and low pass filter, and two different chorus (or as I call it, the 80s button). 16 different banks of 8 patches. This is a really incredibly versatile synth.

I'm working on a rig for all this stuff. I'll post pictures when everything is set up.

Yamaha DX7: Finished

2010-02-19T15:49:00.000-05:00

I finally had some time to fix the DX7. All keys now work the way they should. I also discovered that it has aftertouch. It is fun. After you press a key, if you press harder it activates the LFO. I also figured out what keyboard scaling is. I think that I finally fully understand the DX7. It is a really amazing piece of technology.

New Toys...

2010-02-17T15:51:00.000-05:00

...comming soon...

...maybe tonight...

Electronic Components Part 1: V

2010-02-10T16:56:00.000-05:00

One of the most basic (an most useful) equations in the worlds of electronics is V=IR, known as Ohm's Law. The first three posts will be about the three components of this equation. I will try my hardest to explain everything as simpily as I can. I want this to serve as a solid foundation to build upon in order to cover more complex topics. I want to adress the "why" for these topics too, not just show you equations and how to use them.

The first component of V=IR is V. This is the voltage. It is sometimes represented by an E, short for electromotive force, but that is not quite relevant yet. Just call it voltage for now. A voltage is the electrical potential difference between two points. Now, what does that mean?

Lets say you have closed "circuit" of pipes and the whole thign is full of water. you are able too measure the pressure at two points in this circuit, point A and point B. With the water not moving in the pipes, the two pressures will measure the same. Now, lets add a pump between points A and B. When you turn the pump on the water will start to flow. The pump creates a high pressure area and a low pressure area. Now measure the pressure at points A and B and you will find a pressure difference. If the pipes were actually copper wire and the water electrons, the difference in pressure would be the voltage. This is part of the hydraulic analogy of eletrical circuits. For some reason I was not taught this, but I do find it useful, so I will use these analogies in the next few posts.

But what is a volt? Easy. One joule per coulomb, duh. It is also one watt per ampere. I could go on like this, but I won't.

I'll leave it there for now. Next topic will be current (I).

DX7: How to program

2010-02-08T20:14:00.000-05:00

I just found a good video on how to program a DX7. Its a good primer on frequency modulation.

As for the new features, they will start next week. I'm way to busy to even think about them. I also might have a few surprises coming too.

Surprise! Box

2010-02-04T21:00:00.000-05:00

They Came. I got the small one and the ginormous one. The small one os much much cooler than the big one. It has lots of little electronic components, including about ten of these.

The gyroscopes look cool too. Real gold plating! The Electronic Goldmine has a schematic for a circuit to make the thing spin. I kind of need a power supply and an oscilloscope though. Stamp on the side says they were made in 1981.

The weather is going to be...well, very snowy for the next few days, up to two feet of snow. That means that I get to have fun sorting everything. Maybe i'll get some project ideas, or finish old projects. Or listen to 80s music and play with the DX7.

New Things for the Blog

2010-02-01T14:31:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a little about the format of this blog and I have decided to set some kind of rough format. I'm hoping that this will force me to post regularly. Starting today I will have two new features.

On Mondays I will post what is basically an electronics 101 series of posts. This is mostly for me to review and remember stuff that I learned in college and promptly forgot, but also serve as a way for beginners to learn about simple circuits.

On Fridays I will have a post on skepticism/science, because reason rocks. I have already done two posts like this (here and here). Don't expect these to be super long essays, although some of them might be. It all depends on the amount of time I have. Some of the posts might be about things in the news, others might be about something cool I read that week and want to share. I will probably get stuff wrong too, but that's how we learn.

I enjoy feedback too, so feel free to post comments.

I'm hoping to start on a new project soon too, or at least finish some older ones.

Space, and How to Get There.

2010-01-28T10:47:00.001-05:00

WSJ
Orlando Sentinel
NYT

Its looking like Obama is planning on canceling the Ares program. Almost a shame, but its probably for the better, but only if Obama has a better plan, and based on the above, it doesn't look like he has one. Instead, our main path to space will be with the commercial space industry.

Commercial space flight. SpaceShipOne does not count, it can't quite make it to space for a long period of time. SpaceX is probably the front runner in the commercial space flight industry. They already have a contract to resupply the International Space Station once the shuttle is retired, and they are the only commercial company to successfully launch a rocket into space using only private funds. In fact, they are prepping to test their heavy lift rocket, Falcon 9, and its reusable spacecraft, Dragon, sometime this year. Upon successful completion of the test flight, Falcon 9 and Dragon will be the craft that resupply the ISS. Another company is Orbital Sciences Corporation. They have one rocket that is being used to transport stuff to space, and the are working on another, larger rocket.

All this is cool and stuff, but it is not the inspirational space exploration that makes kids want to become astronauts and study math and science. But what are the realistic options? Continue with the Ares program? As cool as Ares is, I don't think it was the right option to pursue. It is just an update of technology that has existed since the 60s/70s. It's a shame that Ares was the course we took for NASA, and now it looks like the whole program will be canceled. A waste of time and money, but you can't change the past.

So the future, whats up with that? I fully support the commercial space flight industry. For near Earth stuff commercial space flight is perfect. But getting beyond near earth orbit? For that we need NASA. NASA needs a well developed plan for returning the US to the moon. We are already doing a lot of prep work for that, with LCROSS and the LRO missions. Setting up a moon base should be a goal of NASA's. It will be expensive, prohibitively so, which is why it needs to be done by NASA. To me that is the point of the organization: to spend money on things that are far to expensive for the commercial space industry to pay for. Like going to the moon. Or Mars.

How cool would going to Mars be? Obama, take us to Mars. It only took the Apollo program eight years to get us to the moon. Lets get on this, don't make NASA useless, only doing things NOAA and the Air Force can do now.

Hey guys, guess what!

2010-01-27T21:58:00.000-05:00

I fixed the DX 7! Finally!

I finally had the motivation to do it. I took the thing apart again and bent the metal contacts back into place. All keys work. for the first time since I bought the it.

Now all I need to do is learn how to play it.

Lesson: Be careful when putting the keys back in. Thin bits of metal bend easy.

On to the next project.

Ginormous Surprise Box

2010-01-26T14:27:00.000-05:00

I ordered one. It will come full of fun. I also ordered two of these, because you never know when you will need two military grade gyroscopes.

Steorn

2010-01-26T12:57:00.003-05:00

Steorn has been all over the internets the last few years. Most things said about it are negative. For good reason too. Some background first.

Sreorn claims to have made an "overunity" device, called the Orbo, that outputs more energy that is inputted into the system. They have been working on this thing for years now, and so far all demos have very successfully shown nothing at all.

"We are interested in the development community"

That is a quote from a series of six Youtube videos recently posted. Go watch them. the video demo starts OK, but during the Q&A session it seems as if he is just talking BS. He keeps comparing his device to manufacturing HDDs, that it requires precision technologies and a large plant to produce the devices. He claims that people can not reproduce it because it requires precision technologies to make. I am suspicious. I would almost categorize this as a non-reproducible result. Instead of actually explaining how the Orbo works he says that it is too complicated to explain. Right.

In the next week they will have live demos of the Orbo to prove that it works. I think that the only thing the device will show is that it is really good at slowly draining a battery, but I guess time will tell. It would be really cool if the Orbo does work, but the physics don't work out. There is no such thing as free energy.

The quote posted above to me says one thing: I want your money. It would be incredibly evil if this was just a con, but that is exactly what I'm thinking it is right now.

Magic forces read zero. Until a better explanation on how this thing works comes out, it is just magic (or wishful thinking).

Robots!

2010-01-20T17:32:00.000-05:00

I just discovered that the Electronic Goldmine has cheap robot kits.

I'm in. Totally going to build a robot. I like this one.

They also have boxes of random stuff. Will probably buy one next week. I'll post what I get.

CAD

2010-01-15T12:36:00.001-05:00

Whenever someone mentions CAD around me I immediately have a flashback to middle school where we had a tech course and learned how to use a CAD program; I think it was AutoCAD, but there is a good chance I am making that name up. That was my only experience with a CAD program for many years.

When I got into the DIY thing, it occurred to me that I should make my own PCBs. This would be cheaper and more flexible than buying them premade online. So I researched it. It looked easyish. All I had to do was print the layout on some glossy paper (like photo paper or magazine paper) using a laser printer, then iron it on to the copper blank, remove the paper, put the thing into a container of caustic liquid, some other stuff, and I have a PCB.

But I don’t have a laser printer.

Nor do I have any idea how to use a CAD program to make the layouts.

I do have an iron though, so that's a start.

Over the last someodd amount of time I tried out several CAD programs designed for schematics and PCB layouts. I played around with one, switched to another, then another, then back to the first, third again, and settled on the second one until I found a fourth one that was kind of cool, but ended up using the second one because it makes things a little harder, and I like a challenge.

So, here is what I am currently using:

Eagle
DIY Layout Creator

They both have their uses.

Eagle is cool because you can create a schematic in it, then switch to the layout editor and all the components will be there, waiting for you to arrange them. It is also free. If you want to pay $50 you can buy a version that will autoroute the layout. I am cheap, so I do it myself. I should mention that this is incredibly time consuming.

Eagle is tough to figure out at first, but once you figure everything out (only takes about 20-30 minutes of cursing at your computer, followed by several days of making stupid mistakes that you didn’t even realize you had made a mistake) it gets really easy to make the schematics. Laying everything out, on the other hand, is a bit tougher.

For a really useful Eagle library of just about anything you will need for DIY effects, check out gaussmarkov: diy fx.

DIY Layout Creator is useful if you are not using a PCB. I am currently working on a layout for the Red Llama fuzz using DIY Layout Creator. It is easy, although there are a few odd bugs that they are working out.

Now all I need to do is actually make a PCB. (I am currently working on a Ross Compressor)

Something Useless

2010-01-15T10:17:00.000-05:00

Watch!

I must build.

I have most of the necessary bits to build it, I jsut need a box and a servo. I should work out a way that it triggers a thing that shouts "NO" when you flip the switch.

I would link to the instructions, but it appears that Instructables has recently been attacked by some Nazi malware or something about bigfoot. I wasn't really paying attention. I'll post as soon as they pop up on the internet again.

Two more pictures

2010-01-09T22:14:00.001-05:00

DX 7, still working on it.

Phase Royal, completed.

Phase Royal

2010-01-07T21:29:00.002-05:00

Hi.

So I got a Phase Royal for Christmas. Or...I got a kit to build one. So I built it! (It won the poll BTW)

The build wasn't that hard, but soldering thing together is a ton of fun. I really enjoy it for some reason.

So here are some pictures of the build:

The tricky part was getting it to work properly. There is a trim pot that you need to adjust to get the thing to phase right. This controls the bias for a LFO. It will phase if it is not properly adjusted, but it won't sound that great.

I spent a good deal of time adjusting the trimpot. Probably 20 minutes a night for four nights until it sounded good. Now it sounds good! In fact, I'm going to go play through it now.

Time

2009-12-20T15:05:00.001-05:00

Sorry It's been slow. I've been busy at work and have had no time to work on projects.

So here is the best music video ever:

Maybe some updates after the holidays.

Yamaha DX7 Key Repair: Screw the parts.

2009-12-07T11:34:00.003-05:00

All of them.

I made several discoveries over the weekend. One was a "Doh!" moment. Basically, to remove a key, all you have to do is lift up the top panel and take out the white spacer. After that the keys can be easily removed.

I made this discovery by being lazy. I was not very motivated this weekend to start taking things apart, but I was curious to see if i could fix the DX7 once and for all after someone left a comment on Part 2. Lazyness paid off and everything became much easier.

I also discovered what was wrong with the keys, and it is more or less what I thought was wrong with them. When I was cleaning the keys I carelessly put them back in place, bending some of the contacts. This caused the key either not to turn off when released, or not make any sound at all, depending on how it was bent. I was able to fix most of them from the top, however, there are about eight keys that I think I will have to go back into the keyboard and fix from the bottom. The broken keys are marked with blue dry-erase marker.

Wish me luck.

Part 1
Part 2

Sometimes he just gets me.

2009-12-02T10:32:00.006-05:00

Funny cause the SLO Clone goes to 11...

Important

2009-12-01T19:02:00.001-05:00

Watch. Now.

Its officially December.

I Dream of Modular Synthesizers

2009-11-30T12:12:00.002-05:00

Its True. If you love electronics, especially stuff with a classic old-school look. There is something I love about having to patch in the sounds you want with real cables, not by pushing buttons.

Things like the Buchla 200e make me wish I had thousands of dollars to spend sweet toys. The thing looks like it should be on the set of a 50s Sci-fi movie. It also happens to be used in the studio by bands such as Muse and Nine Inch Nails. The school I went to has (had?) a Moog Modular that is in need of repairs. It was really fun to look at and play with the parts that worked.

Over the years I have been secretly planning on building a giant modular synth. I have a lot of schematics and research information. A lot. A friend recently pointed me to a website, that pointed me to another website that might make this dream a possibility.

Say hello to Music from Outer Space. They have what I desire, and that would be PCBs for synth parts. Like VCOs and filters, and step sequencers. I never liked making PCBs, or, never did it successfully, so finding a place to buy them makes things much more appealing.

Now that I have a way, a modular synthesizer is a very real thing for me to build. What will go in it you ask? Let me tell you.

3 VCOs
2 Filters
3 ADSR envelopes
Noise generator
Some kind of phaser
A really cool chorus unit I have the schematics for (thats a post in of iteself).
16 step sequencer

I would really like it to be polyphonic, but that will not be easy, so monophonic it is. There will probably be many changes to the rough idea I currently have, but you gotta start small. I'll probably buy a PCB for a VCO and start there, buying each part seperatly, slowly building this thing over many months. I will also need an oscilloscope to test and calabrate the parts. It should be a really fun project.

Yamaha DX 7 Key Repair, Part 2

2009-11-20T21:29:00.007-05:00

Part 1 here
More progress here (READ FIRST)

It was easier than I thought. Sort of...

The key came in the mail today. I got the right one. It comes with a spring (a thin bit of metal about 2.5 inches long). I'm pretty sure they (Yamaha) no longer make replacement keys so what you are going to find are probably taken from old DX7s that no longer work. It had minor ware, but whatever, it is a replacement key.

Look back at Part 1 for how to remove the keyboard assembly from the DX 7. You will have this:

Turn the entire thing upside down (as seen above). There are two parts you will need to remove before you can take out the keys. You will see a black metal thing in front of all of the keys. It is connected with seven screws. Remove the screws, remove the metal thing (sone of the screw holes are shown below).

Flip the key assembly back over. You will see a long white plastic spacer. Lift it off of the metal rail that it sits on, nothing is holding it in palce. Those are the two parts.

You can now remove the keys! All you have to do is push the key back. This frees the key, then pull it forwars to actually remove it. The key is now free. To put the key back in slide the two horn looking bits on the bottom of the key into place on the key assembly, then align the spring with the the slot, push back, then down. To get access to the black key you will have to remove the two white keys next to it.

You can see the slot where the spring goes in the above picture; it is the hole to the right of the square hole.

When I took out the keys to get access to the black key I noticed that they were very dirty. Me, being me, decided to take out every key and clean them. When I put everything back together turned the keyboard on and played it I realized something went wrong. Some keys wouldn't produce a note, and some would produce one, then as you release the key it will make another note. I started marking what keys didn't work, only to find out that they all had somethign wrong with them.I will have to go back in and look at what I did wrong. My guess is that the keys are not sitting properly and making bad contact with the velocity sensors.

Also, remember that I am NOT responsible for any damage you might do to your DX7 by following these directions. As you can see, I might have messed mine up nicely. I suppose that Part 3 will be about making everything work again.

Next Project

2009-11-20T17:16:00.002-05:00

A Survey:

Click Here to vote

I've talked about all of these ideas already, just can't decide what to build next. Vote on what I should build.

FYI:
BYOC Phaser
BYOC Trem

The Red Llama and Other

2009-11-20T16:48:00.001-05:00

The Red Llama didn't make it into the Monster Guitar. OK. I have all of the parts to build it though, so I think I will build it. I'm not sure why it didn't work, but then again, I hardly expect anything I build to work on the first try. I just wanted the guitar to play. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out why it didn't work, its just a matter of sitting down with my DMM and prodding bits until I accidentally make it work.

I don't have an enclosure for it though, just a cheap Radio Shack metal box thing (otherwise known as a project enclosure, if you want to use real, big people phrases). It shall live there for now, maybe one day I'll but it a real enclosure. It will have to work first. the plan is to do this tomorrow. Or tonight, I dunno.

I also plan on swapping the middle humbucker in the Monster Guitar with a spare one I have hangin' about the apartment. Cause I want to. And its better.

Yamaha DX7 Key Repair, Part 1.75

2009-11-13T12:47:00.003-05:00

Just bought: Key from the eBay place.

Unsure how to specify if I want a black or one of the many white keys...maybe he'll email me?

Anyway, if all goes well, I will have a new key soon. Soonish. Then I dive into the repair. Perhaps over the Thanx-Givin weekend.

EDIT (11/16): Emiled the guy and got black-key confirmation! Get excited!

New Project

2009-11-06T12:30:00.001-05:00

I have always wanted to build a guitar. I think now is finally the time to start. I have been working on an idea for a few weeks now and I think I have, more or less, the final design worked out in my head. I, am excited about this project. I'm just gonna admit it up front, this is, once again, inspired by Muse. But I'm adding my own touches to it.

The body will be modled after the Kaoss Guitar. I like that body style because it offers a lot of room to work with, and I think it looks cool. Details:

Body - Alder
Neck (not ready to make one yet, buying one is much easier) - Ebony, 25" scale, 22 fret
Bridge - Fixed
Tuners - Grover locking tuners

Pickups:
There will be two P-90s at the bridge. I am going with Kent Armstrong High Output P-90s. One will be RW/RP. They will be controlled by a switch so that I can either have only one P-90 turned on, or both on at the same time. When they are both turned on, it will be like a massive humbucker, really fat and thick sounding.

In the neck there will be a Fernandes Sustainer pickup. This also means that there will be a sustainer curcuit in the guitar. Also in the neck will probably be a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails pickup right next to the sustainer pickup, almost making it look like there is a humbucker there. I don't plan on wiring the sustainer pickup to the output, it just needs to be in there as the sustainer driver.

I will probably wire everything with a Gibson style 3-way toggle switch.

Master volume, master tone, plus the sustainer volume.

That brings us to a grand total of three knobs, four switches (2 pickup selector switches, plus the two for the sustainer unit) and four pickups (although they will be acting as if there were only two).

Last but not least, the guitar will be purple. Very Purple.

I might buy the wood for the body in the next week or so. Maybe. This is a long term project, probably taking months to finish, so don't expect frequent updates on this one. This is the beginning of the GSE-1.

And the Tubes

2009-11-05T21:16:00.000-05:00

Pictures

2009-11-05T20:57:00.001-05:00

Um...Pictures!

First, the Kaoss Guitar:

The five control knobs, hold button (red), and the bypass switch.

Single humbucker. Probably the only non-complicated thing about this guitar.

X-Y pad.

Output for the X-Y pad and the Hold button.

Then, the Monster Guitar:

Notice the "beat to crap" look of the guitar.

Master Volume knob, 5-way switch.

Left to right: Danelectro Lipstick - Humbucker - Tele Bridge.

Kaoss Guitar

2009-10-30T12:00:00.004-04:00

I was going to wait until I got batteries for my camera to post this, but that night not happen soon, so here is a the post about the Kaoss Guitar:

I love Muse. If anything that is an understatement, my obsession with them has taken me to foreign lands to see them live. They influence a large part of what I do, at least the projects I do. My obsession with Muse is what lead me to my (second) most successful project.

Matt Bellamy has several guitars with things built into them. Cool things, like MIDI controllers and effects. I wanted one. His guitars are all custom made by Hugh Manson. So I decided to buy a cheap guitar and throw some cool stuff in it, making my own "Muse Guitar". This is probably the longest an idea has taken for me to finally take action and start it, and finally finish the project. I had the idea over the summer of 2007, but at the time I had an unpaid full-time internship, and no money or time to work on something like that. So I spent a lot of time dreaming about building the guitar, but never did anything about it. I searched the Internet for the right guitar to rip apart and I did research on parts to put into the guitar. Then I went to China for a semester.

While exploring the area around the campus in Beijing, I stumbled upon a music store. They had a bunch of guitars, all Chinese knock offs of other guitars. They were dirt cheap. They had a guitar that was perfect for my project. The right price, the right body style, and it played pretty well too. It is (kind of, but not really) knock off of a Fender Jaguar. So I bought it, as well as a small amp to play though while I was in China. I left the amp in my dorm when I left, but I brought the guitar back with me.

Once I was home, I planned the rest of the guitar. The first thing I did was order a Z.Vex Fuzz Factory. It is by far the coolest thing ever invented by a human. It does distortion, fuzz, buzz, crunch and squeals. It was also incredibly easy to put into a guitar. The PCB is very small. All I had to do is drill a few more holes for the control pots and I was set. Now I had a guitar with fuzz pedal in it. I was happy. I installed a bypass switch to turn in on and off, basically replacing the foot switch. It rocked. But, it was about to get much cooler. Enter the Kaoss pad.

The Kaoss pad is basically a multi effects unit with a few built in synth sounds, all controlled by a X-Y touch pad. Move your finger around the pad and it changes the sound. Really fun to play with. It also has MIDI out, so you can control other devices with it.

I headed to guitar center one day and looked at one. Thought about buying one too. The sales person informed me that they had a used one. Used is cheaper than new, and I felt better about destroying it too. I took it home and opened it up. I removed the X-Y pad, removed the ribbon cable connector from the PCB, replaced it with a Ethernet cable jack, and wired the hold button through the Ethernet jack.

I traced the pad onto my guitar and carefully routed the body to fit the touch pad. I also needed to drilled a new hole for the Ethernet connector. The ribbon cable for connected to the touch pad is very fragile, so me being me, I broke it. Luckily all it took to fix was a thin piece of wire and some scotch tape.

Once everything was wired up and installed it was time to test. I'm pretty sure it didn't work the first time, but I can't quite remember. If it didn't work then it didn't take too long to fix whatever was wrong. The guitar is connected to the Kaoss Pad via an Ethernet cable and a regular quarter inch cable.

It is really fun to make the synth sounds using the touch pad, but when you plug in the guitar you get some really nasty noise. I think it might be a shielding problem, but I also don't like the analogue/digital converter in the Kaoss Pad. It really sucks the tone out of the guitar, which is a shame because you can get some really cool non-guitar sounding sounds by running the guitar through the Kaoss Pad. In the future I'll hook up the Kaoss Pad to my computer and play around with controlling some soft-synths with it.

Quick Update

2009-10-28T23:47:00.004-04:00

Got the tubes. Re-biased the amp. Plugged in. Rocked Out.

My camera is out of batteries, thus no pictures of anything recently, but the tubes are almost a work of art. They are HUGE. I didn't think they would fit. They did. They look beautiful.

I...I...love them...

Tubes

2009-10-28T15:59:00.002-04:00

According to the FedEx website, I have tubes waiting for me when I get home tonight. Expect pictures and other updates.

Tubes!

2009-10-23T11:50:00.004-04:00

I just ordered new power tubes for the SLO Clone. I'm pumped. I decided to go for some Tung-Sol KT66 tubes. Tubes look perdy. I guess they sound good too. This time the tubes are meant to go in the amp, and they won't get blown because the plate voltage is way too high.

Also bought some knobs. It only had three before, now it will have all nine!

The Monster Tamed

2009-10-20T12:35:00.004-04:00

It was a wet and, well wet Saturday. I was feeling antsy and needed to do something. I needed to get something to work, anything really, and I didn't have a lot to spend buying $60+ worth of tubes. So I got into my car and headed to Guitar Center. After playing with the keyboards for an hour I headed to the check out counter and bought a new 5-way switch. Made by Fender, not a wacky Chinese company.

I went home, wired everything up, banged on the pickups with a screwdriver, and got sound! Hit the switch to turn on the distortion, no sound. So, you know what? Screw it. I removed the distortion circuit to work on independently and put the guitar back together.

Two things now:

1) The bridge pickup is out of phase with the middle and neck, causing a very thin (and not in a cool way) sound.

2) The volume pot sucks. Damn Chinese piece of crap stuff. When you touch it or move it slightly, it completely cuts the sound.

Both are really simple fixes. I should be able to do 'em both in 30 min, just need a new 500kA pot. I'll post pictures of it tonight. I'm quite happy with it.

AMpeD Up!

2009-10-16T19:33:00.010-04:00

It is time to fix the SLO Clone once and for all. Or at least figure out what is wrong with it. Or...try to.

I think I had some success today, and I didn't kill myself, which is always a fear when working with tube amps. It just so happens that the voltages these things operate at can kill you, although its not just the voltage. You can get shocked by thousands of volts (like a static shock) and nothing bad will happen. What will kill you is the current. If the current is small you will just feel a minor shock. If it is really large, you will probably get burned and feel a huge amount of pain. What is terrifying is that there is a range (50mA-200mA) that will STOP YOUR HEART! It is between this range that your tube amp operates at (the B+ voltage). Yay! It is critical that you do not touch anything in your amp when it is plugged in. I did that once, but I was lucky. I touched the fuse holder, which was 120V and however many amps was comming from the wall (>2A, I think is what my amp draws). It hurt. A lot. I was dizzy for a few seconds and I was out of breath. I was also very lucky. Had I touched any other part of the amp I probably would have been killed. I am now very careful when working on amps.

Anyway, I took a real good look at the schematic and layouts I had, and browsed around the SLO Clone Forums and determined that the schematic was labeled wrong. a few weeks ago I"corrected" a "mistake" I made in the amp, only to have it work even less than before, otherwise known as not at all. It turned out I had it right before. So tonight I uncorrected my mistake.

Before I go on, I should say one thing. I decided when building this amp that I wanted it to sound badass. So instead of putting the proper tubes in it (some 6L6 tubes) I put in some tubes that would have a "darker" "harder" sound. They were not quite designed to operate at the same plate voltage as the 6L6s. But whatever, I threw them in. They worked for a few weeks, then after a while, after playing for 10 minutes, the amp would die. So today I pulled the 6L6 tubes from my Fender Bassman and threw them into the SLO. Powered the thing up, plugged in a guitar, and played a chord. Sound! Yay!

But it wasn't loud. Hmm. Checked the tubes. Only one seemed to be working.

You can see that only the left tube is glowing. The right one was cold too. I think the right tube is blown. This means I need new power tubes. For both of my amps. Cool. I also need some new preamp tubes for the Bassman. The Bassman is probably going to get completely re-tubed. The SLO will only get new power tubes, the preamp tubes are fine (12AX7).

I will leave you with this photo, cause its cool:

A 5-Way Problem

2009-10-16T13:00:00.002-04:00

For some reason, I have never been good with 5-way switches, the ones you find in Fender guitars. I have no idea why. It should be simple, but I have never been able wire one correctly. I have a theory though. More of a hypothesis, actually. The only guitars that I have tried to re-wire have been Japanese or Chinese knock-off guitars (the Monster guitar, and another one that I bought in China...I should write about that one, its really cool).

My hypothesis is that because they are not actually made by Fender, or any relatively known guitar maker, the switches are weird. I've searched the Internet and every wiring diagram I find doesn't work. So I guess its time to buy a real 5-way switch, made by a company people have heard of. Next trip to Guitar Center. I really want to finish that guitar.

For My Consideration

2009-10-15T16:24:00.005-04:00

For many months now I have been thinking about buying a kit from BYOC. For some reason I haven't done it yet. They have a lot of really cool kits. I've had my eye on a vibrato. Or their fuzz. I have a friend who built the fuzz, and it sounds sweet.

I also have plans to build a compressor. I have a mouser project list with all the parts, I just need to hit the "Purchase" button and say goodbye to $35. I already have the IC. I'm pretty sure the schematic I have if for this guy, which I hear great things about. Maybe if i choose to go the less responsible path with whatever Christmas money (in what ever form it comes) I get this year, I will finally buy the parts for it, instead of paying off various debts and student loans.

Although I might not do any of the above. I have been planning on building a Matchless Hotbox clone for about a year now. Again, have the Mouser project saved with all the parts, just need to hit the purchase button.

Meanwhile, I founda broken tube in my Fender Bassman head, which explains why it wasn't working. I'm also feeling a strong desire to replace all the tubes in it. And I have the strangest feeling that the power tubes have gone bye-bye in my SLO Clone. Sigh.

Yamaha DX 7 Key Repair, Part 1

2009-10-10T15:15:00.012-04:00

Its a slow saturday. That means project time. Sort of. Eventually I will get around to replacing the broken key on the DX 7, but I was curious as to what that process would entail. As amazing as the internet is, I can not find any information on how to replace a key in a Yamaha DX 7, and that means its time to explore the DX 7.

The first thing I did was remove the four screws on the top, and the one on the back by the power switch(easily forgotten). This allows you to lift open the top control panel and look at all the fun stuff inside.

From Oct 10, 2009

The panel is on hinges, and that make life easy because you don't need to disconnect the wires going to the main board.

I know that a key is broken, but I didn't what was broken about it. I assumed it was because a spring or something slipped out of place, but I wouldn't find out until a little later. You can see the broken key below, it is the third black key from the right (F#):

From Oct 10, 2009

Looking at the innards of the DX 7 my next step was to figure out how to get the keyboard assembly out of the synth so that I could look at the bottom of the keys. There are four screws at the bottom of the keyboard, and they looked more or less like they might attach the keys to the rest of the unit, so the screws came out.

From Oct 10, 2009

Above is one of the screws. After those are removed, there are three more on the inside of the keyboard that you have to remove, and then the key assembly will be freed. Two are right above the mod wheels, and one is on the other side of the keyboard.

From Oct 10, 2009

To actually remove the keyboard you will have to disconnect the wires seen above, as well as a ribbon cable and a green ground wire.

From Oct 10, 2009

And bam, keyboard is free. This is as far as I went. I just wanted to get an idea of what was involved in taking a DX 7 apart. I have a feeling the hard part is actually going to be removing the broken key.

From Oct 10, 2009

The broken key had a small plastic bit snapped off of it, so it no longer sits firmly in its slot, and wiggles around a lot, and because of this it is not springing back into place. Below you can see the hole where the key should fit in, its the small empty square.

From Oct 10, 2009

The next step is to order the replacement key and install it. I'm confident that I might be able to do it, but there is a chance that I will have a Yamaha DX 7 for sale, no longer working, good for parts.

Part 2
More progress and discoveries

The "Monster" Guitar

2009-10-08T18:57:00.008-04:00

This was my first guitar. I did not look like it does now. I think it was black.

A year later I got another guitar (which is still my number 1, her name is Victoria) so suddenly I had a guitar that I could play around with. My first Idea was do do some kind of Brian May like wiring, with on-off and phase switches for each pickup. That didn't work so well. It almost scared me, having to wire six switches. Something didn't work, and no matter what I did something still wouldn't work. I think by the time it was all said and done, only two of three pickups actually turned on, and the phase switches were more like kill switches. I blame the whole thing on my poor soldering skills.

So I went onto eBay and bought a Telecaster neck pickup and a Danelectro lipstick pickup to throw in the bridge. I also bought a three way switch. Threw it all together and it worked. I was happy, for a while at least.

At some point, lets call it five years ago, I became obsessed with the idea of a Floyd Rose tremolo. So I returned to eBay and bought one. I some how managed to successfully route out the body of the guitar to fit it in too. I also decided it would be cool to paint silver stuff on the guitar as well, so I did that too.

Then I started reading about guitar building and got me some inspiration. I decided to repaint the guitar. This involved completely dismantling it, sanding off the old paint (oh what fun that was), priming, painting, then the clear coat. A lot of work. It turned out OK. Next (about a year ago) I wanted to make it sparkly, so i did some stuff to it and that did not turn out OK, so I striped that off and now it looks kind of cool, beaten and blue. Threw a humbucker in the middle position, and I think the thing sounds pretty sweet. The humbucker is really fat and thick.

This brings me to the now. I was browsing through schematics one day when I came across one for a distortion that I have never seen before. Did some youtubing and was impressed. Looked up how much the parts would cost, and $30 and one Small Bear Electronics order later I had a bunch of electronic bits. Solder them onto a Radio Shack project board and I had me a Red Llama circuit.

I'm currently working on finishing this thing. I put a five way switch back in it. The Red Llama circuit will have a DPDT bypass switch. Three knobs on the guitar; Master Volume, Red Llama volume and Red Llama OD.

Some Pictures:

From Monster Guitar

You can see some of the old holes from past experimenting in that last picture.

I hope to finally finish this thing soon.

Welcome!

2009-10-08T10:11:00.001-04:00

Howdy!

Just starting this blog. Its goal: to follow my progress in all the various music-electronic projects I have going on. Many of them are long term tinkering and experimenting. I plan on updating whenever I work on something, highlighting my progress, the what and how (any why, if there is a why) of what I did. Hopefully there will be lots of pictures, drawings, and other fun stuff.

I'll start with a list of current projects I currently have on the table. Some of them I haven't the slightest idea what I'm doing, so it will be a learning process.

Anyway, here is the list:

Fix a broken key on an Yamaha DX7
Finish putting a distortion circuit in a guitar. The guitar is some Japanese Strat knock off (Aria Pro II, if it matters). The distortion is a Way Huge Red Llama.
Build a guitar. This is a very long term project. I'm just in the planning phase now. It will be cool though.
Troubleshoot a SLO 100 clone (or should it be a SLO 50? Its the 50 watt version) I built a while back. Somethings wrong, and I don't know what.

There will be much more detail on all of these individual projects as I get around to working on them. In the next week or so, depending on time, I'll post detailed explanations of what I'm doing and a few pictures of them. I also have a few other projects that I might start, but those will be kind of spontaneous. If I dont have time to work on things, I might post pictures of past projects.

And about me? Well, I majored in Audio Technology at American University. That doesn't mean a whole lot though. I developed a passion for playing with electronic things during that time, but I have always enjoyed taking things apart. I don't work in the audio field, but I do have a decent job (I also majored in International Relations, you know, liberal arts BS) that I enjoy, and it helps fund my projects, so there you go.

Enjoy!