Messages

Thank you everyone for your well wishes.  I knew posting on this forum was the right choice, you are all amazing people.

Paul

Thanks everybody, I appreciate all the kind words. 

I'm seeing the myeloma specialist tomorrow to find out what sort of future i can expect.  Im a little "anxious" you could say. Wish me luck.

I don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon, so you never know, you might see me around the madbean forum, my most favorite forum to hang out

Thanks again everyone, you are all such kind souls and i wish you all the best. 

Paul (DIYGP)

Hi guys,

Long time no speak

Sorry to start such a heavy hearted post out of the blue.

The Madbean Forum feels like my pedal building home, and I've always felt so welcomed here.  This isn't easy, so here goes..

I received some disastrous news regarding my health last week, I'm still coming to grips with it.

I had a MRI on my neck after a slight injury. I was not expecting the MRI result to show cancer...After much testing, the hematologist has concluded that i have a blood cancer called Myeloma.  Myeloma is treatable (extend life), but not curable.  I now do not know what the future holds or how long i will be around for.

Priorities have changed.  Things i once took for granted have become so important.

As such, I've had to re-evaluate, and unfortunately the guitar pedal store will need to be closed or sold.
Its a shame to have to shut the store down, it has been a valuable resource to Australians, but also, to those wanting to start out.  However, i don't know how much time i have left, so i can not continue to run it.

If anyone is interested in the store, please message me and we can talk about it.

Alternative, i will just be selling down whatever stock remains.  Store availability may fluctuate.  I have a feeling i will be put through some serious hell at hospital soon to try to put my myeloma into remission, during those times, the store will be closed.

I have a young family, and i will fight for them as long as I'm able to.

Once again, I'm sorry to come busting in here with this news, after all these years. 

I guess this post is to say, thank you to everyone for all their support over the years and to inform everyone why the store is closing down, I've had a lot of questions over the last 2 weeks.

Kind regards

Paul (DIYGP)

Hi guys, feels like a school reunion, thought i would poke my head in as well!
Been a long time.  Pedal store is still going strong, but I have been missing DIY lately. 
Ive been wanting a laser cutter / etcher for a while, so went and bought this (12watts).
Hitting the books to learn how to operate it (properly) and looking forward to cranking out some pedal and non-pedal related DIY stuff. 
Anyway, going to have to make a habit of checking in more often then once every 3 years

Hey ! Chromesphere! Which Laser Etcher did you get?  I need to learn more about those. Glad to see you're still kicking...

Hey Dan, sorry missed your message. 

Its a Creality falcon 2 12 w with air assist.  Main purpose was for etching enclosures for the webstore, but I'm discovering the magnitude of things I can do with it and the kids are placing their orders.  Signs, crossbows, xmas decorations, puzzles, even a tensegrity table.  Lots of fun. 

I've run some inital tests on pedal enclosures and it does this without an issue as you would expect, but the results are also pretty crisp too which is nice, no burning etc. Im hoping to incorporate a "drill template" with the graphics, so i can etch -> drill based on markings from the etch, if that makes sense.

There was not alot of info out there before i bought it so it was a bit of a gamble, but i figured if its no good for pedals, i will use it to engrave photos on wood of myself standing on the beach in my speedo's to give to the in-laws for xmas presents.

Once i start smashing out some regular enclosure artwork, ill put something up on here about it.

Hi guys, feels like a school reunion, thought i would poke my head in as well!
Been a long time.  Pedal store is still going strong, but I have been missing DIY lately. 
Ive been wanting a laser cutter / etcher for a while, so went and bought this (12watts).
Hitting the books to learn how to operate it (properly) and looking forward to cranking out some pedal and non-pedal related DIY stuff. 
Anyway, going to have to make a habit of checking in more often then once every 3 years

Hey Paul. Great to see you. It's DIY, just push buttons


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks mate. Im super paranoid about safety with this thing, which probably isn't a bad thing.
But yes as far as operation goes im literally pushing buttons until I can smell burning then I know I'm on the right track.

Hi guys, feels like a school reunion, thought i would poke my head in as well!
Been a long time.  Pedal store is still going strong, but I have been missing DIY lately. 
Ive been wanting a laser cutter / etcher for a while, so went and bought this (12watts).
Hitting the books to learn how to operate it (properly) and looking forward to cranking out some pedal and non-pedal related DIY stuff. 
Anyway, going to have to make a habit of checking in more often then once every 3 years

Paul, They might me trying to buy some of their germanium transistors back.

Oddly, Russian germanium transistors have been popular lately :| Lets not judge their transistors.  Transistors dont kill people.   People kill people. 

All insensitivity aside, my heart goes out to the Ukrainian people, wishing them a peaceful resolution.

Hey guys,

Just a heads up for anyone here that has a website / sells gear and probably a good time to review your security.

A real life example of Russian hacking activity I noticed while it was in action on our site recently. 

It looks like a pretty basic hack attempt (DDOS or maybe port scan). We'd never have more then ~10 guests on the site at any one time, which is what alerted me to the massive number of guests. All guests had the same IP address, repeated over and over, and surprise surprise, the origin was Russia. They did no damage at all, in fact as the activity was underway i checked responsiveness on the webstore and found absolutely zero detectable difference, so seems to be a pretty futile attempt really...

But, they could try more advanced attacks so make sure you have the proper security in place. 

Also, if you can, consider blocking that IP address that attempted hacking my store...My web guy is a bit of a genius with this stuff and he blocked the following ip address range:

I've put in a block for the 65535 ips in the range:
45.155.0.0 - 45.155.255.255

Anyway, hope it helps you all and prompts everyone to keep ontop of their security.
Cheers guys
Paul

Well said and explained Brian i couldnt agree more.  Self doubt and imposter syndrome go hand in hand.  I dont BELIEVE that im great at anything.  So when im told i am, i feel like i've mislead or even lied to people.  I say that from personal experience by the way.

I recall a conversation i had some years ago with someone on this forum when i was having a rough time with one aspect of my life.  And he said, in so many words, or at least, the way i read it: "There's something that you have that others don't.  There's something that you know you can do well, that others cant.  Its not insignificant, its important.  That's the thing you should be focusing on improving".  I thought about what that thing was and i came to an answer.  And just like that.  Bang.  Things started to make sense.  Stop competing with others, and start competing with myself.

That advise lead me out of the dark and head first into improving my life.  Not just with the "thing" I was having trouble with.  With everything.

Does this help? These are the pins I assigned.

Thanks Erik!  I hope this answers your question Jack?
Cheers
Paul / diygp

Awesome food as always Dave!
I bought a Weber Smoking Mountain last week on a whim.  Warning, total meat smoking noob here.  Never even tried it before. 
First attempt was barely a pass (top side roast).  The smokey flavour was way too intense, slightly bitter and ashy.  Also the cut of meat may not have been the best choice.
2nd attempt was much better (chicken), really nice.
Just as an idea, we used some of the left over smoked chicken in a chicken soup the following night.  Wow.  The smoke flavour mellowed out and created this deep flavour to the soup thats a little difficult for me to describe.  Combined with small pockets of the original smokey flavour when you eat pieces of the chicken.  A winning combination!

There are other D9X diodes that will no doubt sound just as good and are not affected by the hyped price tag.  D9B, 200pcs $25 shipped for example.

D9K, D9V are 2 others i know of as well.

Hey bean, we should do a PIF party - 2019 xmas edition, i would certainly contribute some give aways as a way of saying thanks to this forum and everyone here.

Erik spent quite some time re-engineering the zombie chorus due to the ticking problem and came up with the lich king chorus, which is a really nice sounding chorus pedal and totally tick free.  What was the secret?  He told me a while ago but i cant recall (placement and grounding possibly).  Anyway, the resultant PCB is here, have a look in the build doc for the schematic and the PCB layout for placement.  Ive asked Erik for comment and will post here once he responds:

http://www.diyguitarpedals.com.au/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=35&products_id=601

Sound Demo (note: no ticking )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIDLT0_Tmdo

Eriks response:

1. Ground Plane (due the fact the zombie chorus needs a ground plane, vero may not be the best option for this project)

2. Made sure the Op-Amps were as far away from the CD4046 as possible, because the CD4046 releases a bit of electronic noise.

3. The resistors to the CD4046 for the R1 and R2 are very close to the CD4046 and are grounded to a ground plane. Those two resistors seem to be the "antennas" to a lot of the ticking.

4. Having a variable trim pot for the bias is extremely helpful. As is true from the old Boss CE-2, the MN3xxx BBD's are more sensitive to BIAS drifting than other chips, and so it needs more fine tuning.

(please share your own finds in this thread )

I know i might come across as a bit of a miser saying this but...i dont know...i see some things put out on the side of the road and think its just a huge waste.

I picked this up the other day.  I reckon it was used, maybe, a dozen times.  Gave it a bit of a clean and it came up great.  The tray is a bit dirty, but you know...its for powder coating...couldn't pass this up, i was considering buying a larger toaster oven just recently, but there is no way i would waste money on one, i see them thrown out on the side of the road ALL THE TIME.  Check out the size of this thing compared to my old toaster oven: