Taj Mahal Is A Nice Guy...Really

This post is for the lady who tried so hard to get an autograph of Taj Mahal at the 2012 Kitchener Blues Festival.  I was a volunteer working the backstage gate.  There was a woman who had an old picture of Taj and was desperately trying to get his autograph.  She waited until he arrived, and he sort of brushed her off as he was being ushered into the backstage area, and she left pretty disappointed.

Well, not 10 minutes later Taj Mahal came back and asked where that woman had gone.  He even waited a few minutes while I ran up and down the line in search of her.  I really wish I could have found her, as it would have completely made her day.  I don't know if she did come back after the show and got an autograph, or if she went home thinking Taj Mahal was a big jerk.  But if she happens to stumble upon this post one day, I can tell you that he seemed like a nice guy.  Really.

New Toy

I am now the proud owner of one of these:



Now to figure it out and set it up...

Clean Power

As part of my guitar effects house-cleaning I thought I would build a real 9VDC power supply rather than the mish-mash of batteries and hacked up wall wart that I use now. I also wanted to learn Eagle as it is always touted as the best, free CAD package out there for hobby electronics. I decided to start with this circuit for an adjustable power supply from Tonepad. Tonepad is great, but I think a lot of their layouts aren't the greatest since they don't try to minimize the amount of copper you must etch off of the copper-clad board. As a result, etching takes longer and you end up using more ferric chloride. This isn't really a concern, but I figured I could come up with an more optimal layout, and basically used this as an excuse to learn Eagle. I've never actually designed a single layer PCB before (my previous designs have been double-layer boards, ordered online from ExpressPCB), and never realized how difficult it was to route things given the single-layer design constraint. As a result, it took me much longer than I expected. I ended up with this layout:



I think it turned out alright, and I learned a lot in the process. Eagle is definitely much harder to use than ExpressPCB, but it has quite a bit more functionality (most of which I don't know how to use).

I also decided to experiment with Sharon's scrapbooking machine while I was at it. Instead of trying the usual toner-transfer method of etching the PCB, I thought I would try cutting the mask out of vinyl and etching the board that way. I loaded up her Klic-n-Kut, and cut out the layout which I had exported from Eagle.



I then applied the mask to the copper clad board. If you look really close you will see that the mask produced by Sharon's machine actually isn't all that great. I am on the very edge of the capability of her machine in terms of size. Basically, the size of the pattern I am trying to cut is so small, the machine can't produce it (the knife works by pivoting around a slightly off-center pivot point, which is about the size of one of the corners in my layout). There may be various ways around this, but I may just end up going back to the toner-transfer method for future layouts.



After about 15 minutes in ferric chloride, I had a PCB for my power supply.



All that was left was to drill the PCB and mount the components. After a bit of smoke (I soldered in one of the diodes backwards...oops!), the result was a working 9VDC power supply for my future guitar effects projects.

From Effects Pedals

Tonelab For Sale

I'm selling my VOX Tonelab SE in an effort to minimize my guitar rig in 2009. If anyone reading this knows anyone who may be interested, feel free to contact me. The Kijiji ad is here.

I think I'll try to round out my sound with a few more home-brew pedals. I have a Tube Screamer and a Ross Compressor built. I'll need to find some good designs for a chorus and delay pedal and perhaps a flanger and a simple reverb unit. I wonder what's involved in building a tuner as well. Hmm... Tonepad here I come.

Intelliware Christmas 2008

While were catching up on events already past, on December 6th, our band played at the Intelliware Christmas party for the fourth year (I think it was the fourth time?) running. Intelliware is the company my brother (along with the rest of the band members) works for, and I just join them every year in exchange for a free meal and open bar (my drink of choice every year is St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout).

The past three years have been at Hugh's Room, which has, to be quite honest, spoiled us musically. Hugh's Room is a great venue with a dedicated sound person and permanent (and great-sounding) setup. We literally would show up, plug in (and sound check) and enjoy ourselves. This year the venue was the Argonaut Rowing Club in Toronto. It is a great place, but there is no sound setup to speak of. As a result, we had to rent all of our own gear and set things up ourselves. We spent most of the day lugging gear and setting up, and by dinner time I was wasted and my voice was already screwed.

From Intelliware Christmas 2008

I wasn't particularly proud of our performance, but I am always hard on myself. What can you do; the bottom line is we had fun. The second set was particularly enjoyable as it was very late and everyone was mostly drunk as we banged out tunes until we were shut down by management at about 2:30am. ;) We still didn't get any of our Rush covers recorded (I think our rendition of Limelight was one of our best tunes this year), but we managed to pull off Money without too many hiccups.



If you look close, you can see Coco in the background (the one with the super-bright, blue LED) in all her tubetastic glory. She worked and sounded great all night. My thanks to Intelliware for hosting a great party, yet again. They really are a great bunch of people. The food (and the Oatmeal Stout) was awesome, and I had a great time despite my self-deprecating tendencies.

Guitar Effects PCB Etching

Tonight I had some free time and since I am taking tomorrow off work to get some other things done I figured I would take a couple hours to polish off a half-bottle of wine and etch some guitar effects PCBs that I have had kicking around for quite some time.

Todd and I had printed out some guitar effects schematics from Tonepad a couple years ago when we etched the PCBs for Model II. Todd recently dug out the press-and-peel and tonight I transferred them and etched the boards. It turned out much better than usual. I think it had something to do with the smoothness of the copper-clad board. This time I wet-sanded it down to 600 grit. I was going to go to 1500 grit but I figured I'd give it a shot at 600. It only took me a few extra minutes to sand the board and I think the results were well worth the extra time.



There are two Ross Compressors and two MXR Phase 45s. Looks like I have a date with a drill press in my near future. In the meantime, I guess I should order some components!

While I'm Up

I may as well post about my activities on the weekend as well. I spent the long weekend (finally) working on the next guitar amp. In particular, I took my robotic table saw for its maiden voyage and cut the finger-jointed pieces out for the cabinet. It worked great! There were definitely some lessons learned, and I think I'll have to improve the cycle time for any sort of volume production, but I am happy with the result.



You can see more pictures, and a couple of videos on my Picasa page.