Hi from the Heartland

[poppaflavor]

Hi All,

Just a quick howdy from a fellow who's trying to learn too much too quick.

I got into music to get these pesky melodies that keep piling up out of my head and into existence. En route I discovered that music is math and audio is engineering. it's like a whole secret world opened up, except it's not secret... It's openly shared and discussed by a cool crew here.

Now knowing that engineering is the alter ego to audio musicality, I can create music when inspired and then when tapped out of tunes can dive into insights of impedance and inductance. It's such a precious and compelling yin yang.

I have yet to solder any DIY projects but I've been desoldering transformers like a fiend to get some goodies ready for anticipated projects. My Hello World project will be a passive transformer color box (I hesitate to mention it because they seem to get a little bit of ridicule). Anyhoo, I'm soaking up the learning like a parched sponge, but prolly won't post much since I don't have any advice or insight to offer yet. Hopefully someday!

 

[ruffrecords]

Over 20 years ago I moved house and my new next door neighbour turned out to be a 60 year old musician with loads of songs going round and round in his head. I encouraged him to get a little 4 track cassette recorder. Once he got the hang of it he soon recorded 20 songs. No complicated overdubbing or track bouncing - he just created a rhythm track with a drum machine, a bass pedal and guitar, (all playing at once), then add guitar and vocals three times to the remaining tracks.

Today he has not long turned 80, has 15 albums under his belt and it out gigging.

The moral of the story is you are never too old to learn. Welcome to the group!

Cheers

Ian

 

[poppaflavor]

Awesome! Thank you for the encouragement... Yup, you correctly divined that I'm a bit of an old fogy myself, having gone past the half century mark already. I have to say I've really benefited from many of your posts so far as I lurked here and got up the gumption to get going. Thank you!

I've really enjoyed the journey so far. It's been a struggle to sculpt something that can exist outside my head. But since I love learning, at least the process has been one of equal parts exasperation and enlightenment.

At my age I'm starting to realize that regret is a poison for the soul so I try not to dwell on things. Having said that, if I do have a regret on my journey so far it would be that I did not find about how much I am fascinated by DIY audio engineering earlier (and didn't find this forum of like-minded folks earlier). Then, relatedly, the regret of not jumping in as soon as I found out about it because I perceived that I couldn't be competent enough to give it a good go. I could have saved an arm and a leg (and a couple years) by not chasing plugins but, well, water under the bridge

Anyhoo, happy to be here and grow.

 

[Ricardus]

Welcome!

 

[Ricardus]

Over 20 years ago I moved house and my new next door neighbour turned out to be a 60 year old musician with loads of songs going round and round in his head. I encouraged him to get a little 4 track cassette recorder. Once he got the hang of it he soon recorded 20 songs. No complicated overdubbing or track bouncing - he just created a rhythm track with a drum machine, a bass pedal and guitar, (all playing at once), then add guitar and vocals three times to the remaining tracks.

Today he has not long turned 80, has 15 albums under his belt and it out gigging.

The moral of the story is you are never too old to learn. Welcome to the group!

Cheers

Ian

Not to steal from the OP's thunder in his introduction thread but please share some info about this person or a web site or something! The world needs to know!

 

[ruffrecords]

Not to steal from the OP's thunder in his introduction thread but please share some info about this person or a web site or something! The world needs to know!

www.thesongfactory.co.uk

Cheers

Ian

 

[poppaflavor]

Not to steal from the OP's thunder in his introduction thread but please share some info about this person or a web site or something! The world needs to know!

I'm really glad you asked. While I do enjoy playing with others and have some aspirations to get 'the band' started, Just Bob is inspiring! Dude seems like a real force of nature.

 

[ruffrecords]

I'm really glad you asked. While I do enjoy playing with others and have some aspirations to get 'the band' started, Just Bob is inspiring! Dude seems like a real force of nature.

He is an amazing guy. He was no good at school so he went to work in a big factory at first. He bought himself a motorbike but it got stolen. He reported it to the police. They found it being ridden by a guy and gave chase but the guy crashed it and was killed. Turned out the guy was Bob's brother who had borrowed his bike.Later he got married but within a year his wife died of cancer. He married again and got a job in demolition. While using a welding torch to dismantle an old railway signal a large rusty chink came adrift and chopped off all the fingers of his right hand. This was in the 60s so they were unable to stitch them back on. He eventually got some compensation for his injury which allowed him to buy a small seaside post office/stores. He ran this for many years and also played in a band. During the summer he, his wife and three kids would sleep in a room above the garage so they could rent out the flat above the shop to holidaymakers. Bob got up at 5am and ran the shop until 6pm. Then he went gigging, eventually arriving home around midnight. When I met him he had finally sold his shop and retired but this was prompted mainly by the fact his youngest daughter had been killed in a motor accident a year before.

What I find really spooky is that my wife had a dream before we moved in that a neighbour would have only one hand. I have never told Bob this but soon after we met he said he dreamt his new neighbour would have a recording studio. So I guess it was meant to be.

Cheers

Ian

 

[poppaflavor]

Wow. What a stunning arc to his life. It did seem like there was more behind what was described on his About page, but I could never have imagined. Bob still has an amazing smile though and focuses on the great things in his life. Truly inspirational.

 

[ruffrecords]

Wow. What a stunning arc to his life. It did seem like there was more behind what was described on his About page, but I could never have imagined. Bob still has an amazing smile though and focuses on the great things in his life. Truly inspirational.

i know. For a guy who has experienced so much tragedy he has a wicked sense of humour.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Gavin Pursinger]

Hi Midwest

I have e a similar back story. I bought an old custom built tube Broadcastbline amp and the 1st time I used it I thought 'man does this thing sound great!!! I figured I could build units like this...after all it was an old technology...how hard could it be? Come to find out it was HARD but fun .and I struggled to grasp any of it..everything hummed and sounded terrible...and even shocked me senseless and then....something actually worked well...I still have it and use it regularly. Then more pieces and more successes and more Racks to put them in and plans to build more...DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOUR SONGS THOUGH...KEEP YOUR CHOPS UP....GOOD LUCK
fyi...there are cats waaaay more knowledgeable here than humble me

 

[poppaflavor]

Hi Midwest

I have e a similar back story. I bought an old custom built tube Broadcastbline amp and the 1st time I used it I thought 'man does this thing sound great!!! I figured I could build units like this...after all it was an old technology...how hard could it be? Come to find out it was HARD but fun .and I struggled to grasp any of it..everything hummed and sounded terrible...and even shocked me senseless and then....something actually worked well...I still have it and use it regularly. Then more pieces and more successes and more Racks to put them in and plans to build more...DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOUR SONGS THOUGH...KEEP YOUR CHOPS UP....GOOD LUCK
fyi...there are cats waaaay more knowledgeable here than humble me

Thanks Gavin, you nailed it when you said not to forget about the songs! It's so fun to while away the day exploring the engineering aspects.

But that means it's waaaay too easy to "lose" hours and then realize I've got to work the next day and that I never got to the songs I set out to improve.

On the bright side, the interface of the music and the engineering is so delicious. I found an Altec transformer that rolls off the lows and emphasizes the highs on vocals from a ribbon mic. It's a match made in heaven, like EQ and saturation with no EQ.

Getting a taste of success like you said is definitely addictive.

Today I mis-soldered my first Zobel termination onto a transformer I've been wanting to work with by accidentally reversing the resistor and capacitor (didn't check the polarities of the primary vs secondary windings, doh!).

Then I found out that is ok because it becomes a Boucherot cell which is equivalent for all intents and purposes.

The soldered setup ended up working perfect. Just exactly as the pilot experiment with the alligator clips and variable resistor (decade box) and variable capacitor did.

This Xformer is pretty clean anyways but i wanted to see if i can get the ring down a bit with a Zobel (erm, Boucherot cell).and it sure worked.

I attached 3 pics of the ring, and how it went away with the variable resistor and cap boxes and then finally how it was still ringless when I finished soldering. Yay!

What a journey

Edit- also attached a freq response with the zobel termination from the variable R & C. You can see that it's flat up to 20khz but the upper frequency doesn't lift up so the ring is gone.