80/20 for Studio DIY?

[prester_john]

What's a project you did that turned out not too hard and had a good effect?
For me it would be rack mounting some stuff in an Ikea Lack table instead of a regular studio rack. I saved a bunch of money and I get compliments on it sometimes from other people who think it's cool. Also I can still sit on it.
I think for a lot of people this is making their own cables.
But what is it for you?

 

[Gold]

I use 80/20for all sorts of things. Some of the things I’ve made with it are tables, an inertia base for a Neumann lathe, a stand for another Neumann lathe and a sleeping loft in an off grid cabin.

Currently I’m working on a turntable transfer and QC station. The cart will be 80/20.

 

[Gold]

Here are some examples

 

[Script]

I build rack cases and furniture.
I buy old cables and solder new xlrs and jack's.
I reuse cases of decommissioned broken gear including power plugs.
I drill'n'paint my own faceplates.

Doing all this allows me to not having to compromise on quality components.

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

Is 80/20 rule 80%of your revenue generally come from 20% of customers?
Or 80% of your effort should go into the final outcome and 20% to marketing?
Whats the rule?
The new hotness is 80%outcome from 20% income, but huh?

EDIT: I think fixing broken condenser mics takes them from 20% to 80% with the most bang for your buck

 

[fazer]

8020 T-Slot Product Resources | Extruded Aluminum Building Systems

It’s aluminum extrusion

 

[rock soderstrom]

What's a project you did that turned out not too hard and had a good effect?

pt2399 delay in a recycled Grundig Box.

The front plate is not finished yet and the pots still have to be shortened and the new knobs mounted - but this LoFi Delay is really great fun No idea if this is 80/20 but mega bang for the buck. I've been experimenting with it for a while now, very inspiring.

some recycling ideas here

 

[Gold]

Although 80/20 is expensive it has some benefits that aren’t immediately apparent. The biggest benefit is that you can order everything pre cut. You only need a hex key to put it together. This eliminates the noise, mess and time from cutting the material yourself.

The tent platform I built in the back country would have been ten times heavier with wood. Lugging all that wood up a hill and through the woods wasn’t something I wanted to do. I broke that platform down when no longer needed. It became the long table in the photo and will be a day bed in the cabin. If it was made from wood it would have had to be tossed. And lugged to the dump.

The resulting structure is light, strong and takes up less space than an equivalent wood structure. I think it looks nice and needs no further finishing like paint.

It is easy to repurpose the extrusions if you don’t need what you’ve built. I’ve been using 80/20 for over ten years now and I’ve never thrown away any more than a few off cuts when repurposing.

 

[volker]

This is what OP is talking about, not some alloy

 

[RoadrunnerOZ]

I designed a studio in a lockup storage for a client - instead of framing the walls and ceilings we used clip together steel rack shelving (just the frames) which can handle tons of load


The end result:

 

[MicMaven]

This is what OP is talking about, not some alloy

The Wikipedia article left out another important 80.20 metric --> 80% of the work in charitable service organizations is performed by only 20% of the members.

And then there is Sturgeon's law (or Sturgeon's revelation) claiming "Ninety percent of everything is crap" . . .

Happy trails y'all. .James-K8JHR

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

I think the Pareto principle applies nicely in areas with corresponding data, like Italian real estate. Blindly applying this principle to other endeavors, like a growing business leads to a rent-seeking mindset which alienates clients who aren’t delivering enough return yet, but might in the future.
If this is a conversation about ROI, I think aesthetically pleasing acoustic treatment delivers the most.

 

[MicMaven]

What's a project you did that turned out not too hard and had a good effect?

I designed and built this switch box from scratch to switch a number of peripheral accessories and audio connections (microphone, headset, Morse code key, PTT line, audio Line-Out, and linear amplifier key line) from one transceiver to another without having to unplug anything. Not as fancy or as complicated as other guys have made, but very useful. I used a hand drill and paper drilling template I made with a word processing program to organize the panel and managed to connect all the bits without crossing any wires. Not an award winning piece of kit, yet good enough to endow that all important heady sense of self satisfaction that is derived from a successful home brewed project.

Happy trails to you. James -K8JHR

 

[RoadrunnerOZ]

I designed and built this switch box from scratch to switch a number of peripheral accessories and audio connections (microphone, headset, Morse code key, PTT line, audio Line-Out, and linear amplifier key line) from one transceiver to another without having to unplug anything. Not as fancy or as complicated as other guys have made, but very useful. I used a hand drill and paper drilling template I made with a word processing program to organize the panel and managed to connect all the bits without crossing any wires. Not an award winning piece of kit, yet good enough to endow that all important heady sense of self satisfaction that is derived from a successful home brewed project.

Happy trails to you. James -K8JHR

View attachment 117700View attachment 117701View attachment 117702

You must have made this near Christmas time with all the red and green wires - very festive!

 

[prester_john]

I think the Pareto principle applies nicely in areas with corresponding data, like Italian real estate. Blindly applying this principle to other endeavors, like a growing business leads to a rent-seeking mindset which alienates clients who aren’t delivering enough return yet, but might in the future.
If this is a conversation about ROI, I think aesthetically pleasing acoustic treatment delivers the most.

I was thinking about it in terms of ROI, but not necessarily monetary. It could also be the 20% (or some other low-ish percent) of time invested that returns that 80% (or some other high-ish percent) of sonic improvement (according to your personal taste). Or returning the time to you in another form, like saving you time when mixing. It's not the only way I look at studio stuff (especially true of mixing) but it's definitely the kind of thing I want to know about.
.
Actually, never mind. You're all wrong, and this whole thing was about 80 20 bronze guitar strings from the beginning!

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

Lunch is all.
If nobody has talked about the next meal yet, consider that humans are made of food. And good food can provide inspiration and something to look forward to. Heathy snacks with plenty of fat and protein along the way are essential as well.

 

[Chrisfromthepast]

Jokes are fun, but I have had a great time with this trick:

Tear apart some old obsolete surface with switches and buttons that you can wire to, buy a Teensy 4, and upload this dead simple, browser configurable firmware to the microcontroller. Then, you can create a midi controller out of pretty much anything, and simpler than arduino, or python or C or anything code heavy.
https://www.roxxxtar.com/bmc

 

[rock soderstrom]

Tear apart some old obsolete surface with switches and buttons that you can wire to, buy a Teensy 4, and upload this dead simple, browser configurable firmware to the microcontroller. Then, you can create a midi controller out of pretty much anything, and simpler than arduino, or python or C or anything code heavy.

This looks really promising!

 

[RoadrunnerOZ]

I once made a control system in the early ‘80s for POS terminals which from the factory used 4 bit binary tubular key switches to identify an operator - each of the 16 keys would give a different binary number equating in the system to an operator identifier - this was to track sales and also worked hours on-shift time via a sign in and sign out at beginning and end of the shift. By adding a four pole “shift” identifier key switch and rewriting the operator tables and incorporating a new table for each shift the terminal could then identify a new operator set for the next shift - the shift switch enabled the read of one of 4 diode output boards - each board tied to the one 4 bit switch. The shift switch output 0001, 0010, 0100 and 1000 depending on the key inserted, (the system could actually go 16 shifts but originally only a total of 16 operators as there was only one 4 bit switch) the diode boards output 0001 to 1111 depending on the operator key inserted and turned to lock it in place. The use of these two switches allowed shifts A > B > C > D > A to overlap to cater for overtime and stopped the need to access via software which was awkward for fast moving bar staff to use. For regular double shift or overtime workers if there was space their name was in the next shift table to save having to change shift keys and kept the shift key in the hands of the manager. All the boards were sandwiched together and mounted just behind the switches. I had lots of packs of 100 diodes and heaps of Veroboard floating around at the time so for the cost of a 4 pole key switch and drilling a hole I was able to mod a lot of these terminals.

 

[L091c]

To be able to send the digital out of my converter to both my main monitors (Kii) and my signal analyzer (TC Clarity) I applied my limited knowledge of audio transformers and built a simple digital splitter using a cheap and common network switch tranny and a XLR adapter.

Even used a wire cutter to cut the dual tranny DIL housing in half to make it a single tranny to safe space #donttrythisathomekids