So how did you initially learn about electronics?

[midwayfair]

I see. Well that does sound like a good plan. If you have it mostly paid for then yes, I would agree you should take advantage of that. I thought you said you already had a bachelors. College is so expensive though, I can't recommend it unless you're a top student going to a school that people will actually be impressed with or unless it's paid for somehow. Yes, you need at least a bachelors for most real jobs. But unless it's from a big name it doesn't really matter from where or in what. Honestly I have to wonder if it would have been better to major in English Lit or History or Econ and then become a coder.

Funny enough, my first degree was English.

Anyway, this is pretty far off topic ...

 

[boji]

I can look at a circuit as a set of legos, and I can probably even do all the calculations I need to build almost anything I can imagine out of those legos, but it's almost like they can see the atoms that the legos are made up of.

I'd add to the comparison a healthy knowledge of all the lego sets that include the best accessories, which of course get looted for the enthusiast's own unique dioramas. 

 

[gyraf]

be me, 16, played drums with a punk band, desperately wanted a moog, but no funds

talked to a librarian at the local public, she somehow managed to dig up a copy of the minimoog service manual

me soldering on perfboard with way-too-big iron for 1½years, resulting in functional electronics, bar keyboard

must have learned something in the process, because when I later was solder-slave-intern at a big local studio, I was the one that ended up fixing the broken stuff

and of broken there was plenty - in those days, late-80'es, there was so much analogue gear that statistically you'd get a handful of blown IC's every freaking day

so I got a job as part time tech, part time engineer

dealing with artists was a pretty rough part of the engineering aspect, so I took a masters in psychology to keep up - found out that I actually dislike people, not only musicians, so I went into AI for my masters thesis. Still part-working on phd thesis on that subject

my company was a result of engineers visiting our studio wanting some of the units I made for inhouse use. showed quite clearly that there was a market for such tools. still designing my stuff very much focused on what local engineers really and actually use, not what they think they want.

my published diy-projects were mostly made simply as a mean for having compatibility between our studios - at the time there were e.g. no stand-alone SSL stereo comp, and even the 1176 was discontinued (!) for significant time before purple picked up on it. so these were born out of necessity, not commercial scope - which is also why I've tried to keep that part of it strictly non-commercial

Jakob E.

 

[boji]

I took a masters in psychology to keep up - found out that I actually dislike people

;D ;D ;D

I went into AI for my masters thesis. Still part-working on phd thesis on that subject

Very cool!  Too soon to share aspects / synopsis on any parts of it?

 

[Ricardus]

My dad is a retired electrical engineer, and everything in our house growing up was Heathkit. I used to help him build those. That said, my real passion was for recording. I used to walk around with a portable cassette deck when I was a kid recording everything. In high school I saw the movie Blowout and was SO jealous of Travolta's character for being a sound recordist!

Anyway, I did take 4 years of electronics but never really did a lot with it. I ended up going to school for recording, and would do basic maintenance to gear, but I always left the hard stuff up to the other techs, and I concentrated on recording and production.

I've been around studios for more than 20 years and despite me and my dad's earlier DIY stuff I didn't know there was such a huge DIY scene for recording gear until a few years ago.

Now that I have some spare cash to play with I just built two of poctop's U87 clones, and i just ordered the BOM to build a Hairball 1176. I plan on building a pair of those. Then a U47 clone, then some CAPI 500 series mic preamps. I'm super excited.

My bench is my dining room table, and I need to get a few more things, like a signal generator and a smaller o-scope.

Cheers.