My First Guitar Amp

About 2 years ago I decided it was time to cobble up a guitar amp using as many parts as I could find on hand. This included a transformer and choke from a short wave radio (ca. 1968) and an electrical junction box I found rusting under a house. The balance of the parts I ordered from TubeDepot and Triode Electronics, which both have a great selection and aren't too pricey. 

Though I could have gone (and maybe still will) with a solid state rectifier and bumped up the B+ voltage to really get the EL-84 tube screaming, I decided I would build it like they made them back in Olden Tymes and went with the EZ-81 tube rectifier. Going one step further into simplicity I only used one side of the 12AX7 preamp tube as well. I really just wanted it to work when I powered it up without worrying about wild oscillations so I pretty much stayed within the printed tube specs. Later posts will reveal my second creation which does push some of those limits so stay tuned! 

How does it sound? Nice and clean but not too bright. With a preamp pedal pushing the level a bit it breaks up pretty well too. After the break check out the innards as well as some schematics. 

Recording Light

There comes a time in the recording process that requires extreme concentration to catch the right take at the right time. However, there are times when someone outside the recording room might observe prolonged silence and think the "recording artist" might be asleep or writing blog posts when in reality they might be making a hit record ... eventually.

The answer is a recording light. In this case a MIDI controlled one. After the break I give a picture tour of the light, the control module and the source code.

Welcome to my blog!

USS Cod in Cleveland, OH - Radio Room

Ordinarily, I have no interest in such things as self promotion but alas, out of laziness and my aversion to most social networking interfaces, I decided to put some of my crackpottery on the interwebs for friends to see what I am up to, as well as the general public. I have often found it comforting to see others hash out various inventions complete with failures, triumphs and occasional humor. Though I promise not the latter two, I thought I would contribute photos, screenshots, words, etc. to those in pursuit of similar endeavors in fields related to electrical engineering, software development and audio production.

Having no formal education in the above, I generally do what I do as a starving artist (at least in spirit - my lovely wife feeds me well). As a musician and songwriter, I find new and exciting products that I could never afford but that, with a little coffee and googling, a suitable solution can be found; sometimes an entirely new and exciting sound/functionality/whatever. After one strips away the packaging, marketing, and new smell of freshly opened merchandise you are left with just basic building blocks which open up doors for experimentation and hopefully a level of artistic expression which far exceeds the intention of the original design.

Not to say I don't invest in proper tools to do the job. Sure I could spend years developing software to record music or I could make music. Some things are worth investing in. I use mostly open source tools to do what I do (at least when it comes to software), a good bit of which is via GNU/Linux. I read on a post somewhere that "Linux is free if your time is worth nothing". This holds true as I weigh everything I concoct - time vs. just getting on with the music.

So lets get on with the music ...