this must be the place....goin strong , yeah baby!!!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

what they do



Bonus, this is ridiculous:

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Sunday, October 24, 2010

New Reverse X Rays

is being mixed right now

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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Back in the 1808 saddle // Holy Wave

bros and broettes,

I'm doing shows at Club 1808 again, if you are interested, I may solicit you. Being a substitute teacher is rewarding on a day-to-day-making-money-doing-something-useful-to-society level, but not to be throwing shows its like...the itch isn't not there, so I'm back in the game. Plus the calls have dried up ever since I lost those Pre-K kids...

Saw a great band last night from Austin called Holy Wave. I don't know how long they have been around but the sound was overall pleasant. Heavy without being grating, plesantly melodic. The singer has long blond hair and is relaxed around the mic like the the way his arms move suggests a hidden inertia, like the power could be released at any moment, and yet, never is (in physical form). Its probably obvious right now that i have forgotten everything i learned in high school science, because I really should be able to do a better job explaining what I am trying to say. I liked the vibe of true rockers of yore. Nothing girly about the singing. Anyways yall should check these guys out, it felt great to see a new Austin band I hadn't heard yet that was really great

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Sunday, October 10, 2010

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 7

+1,500 solder points later....aaaccciiiddd


First run through is totally unaffected, then it gets run through an effect I wrote dubbed the Bitsmacker (it's a free download if you like distortion).

The decay knob just started working on me...must have been a bridged connection.

For the sake of the blog, I'm calling this one complete. Thank yall for taking this journey with me, and giving me an outlet to document the workflow.

For the sake of honesty, I doubt it will ever be done...I want to add some of the Devilfish mods and also things like audio in to the filter because that ho really whistles.

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Saturday, October 9, 2010

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 6

Ups and downs strikes and gutters...

Thursday night - lots of progress... digital section mostly complete, all leds in place, nothing to test so assumed was ok.

Friday night - lots of buttons soldered in, chips socketed, jumpers connected (still managed to get one backwards!!!), but finally, LIFE. Things sounded great, though a little off...the low notes were INCREDIBLY low .. I'm talking 15hz type ish...just sounded like clicking. Also, had something loose and a slight touch would reboot the thing.

Saturday - Determined the loose connection was the voltage regulator, which had gotten bent back and forth repeatedly over the course of moving this thing around and always using it as ground reference. I just broke it off and resoldered it onto the bottom of the board.

Much more stable now, but tuning is not going well. Turns out the octaves are just way off...it should not have been that low. One of the thermistors at R100B was blown, which was basically setting the base pitch way too low. Quick visit to the x0x forums and this is illuminated, along with the fact that I could replace thermistor for plain old resistor.
Power back on and BING the thing sounds great now. Much more like the tb-303 notes I was used to.

Of course though, I somehow managed to break the decay knob...so I've got to get another one of those.

Basically though, it's finished, it squawks, and I'm happy. Hoping to replace Decay knob soon.

-J

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Thursday, October 7, 2010

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x0xb0x Etudes - pt 5

Holy crap, I'm getting close.

Last night I finished the Headphone / Mixer section, as well as the I/O board which has all the plugs and jacks on it. They are still sitting separately now, which means testing at this phase is not really possible.

One quirk I noticed was that, for the VCA test, I could not get a tone to come out of my headphones. I checked it on the scope though, and it looked ok, like there was a sound being made and then tapered off. I'm going to go on faith now, because everything looks to be in order.

Also, I still hate desoldering...I didn't make a mistake this time, but as I was soldering a cap in on the IO board, it kind of shifted out of it's socket and was just barely hanging in there. I fought this for an hour trying to remove the solder and re-seat the cap.

Anyway, I'm on the second to last section of the fab manual, which means a lot of redundant, tedious soldering as I get the digital controller + leds + buttons working.

I've given up on doing mods this round, as I just want to make sure the sumbitch works first, then I'll try to open it up and mod it...cause damn those Devilfish mods sound so good.

BONUS:
My favorite x0xb0x vid out right now:

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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

x0xb0x Etudes - pt 4

Envelope + VCA done.

Desoldering sucks.

First that damn wrong transistor, then the wrong pot. Got to watch those differences between D and B pots! I do have a solder sucker now so it's helping some.

The only other issue, after the envelope / gate section my tests weren't passing. It was either reversed or loose transistors around Q36 - I'm socketing all the 733 transistors so I can swap them out for higher beta ones if I ever feel like it. Anyway, they were loose, but once I touched up a couple solder points and stuck them in more firmly, the gate tests passed just fine.

On to the headphone and mixer/amp section.

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