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I need to build (or possibly buy) some DIs.

I will have access to phantom power for a couple of them, but I might need to resort to passive transformer for a couple.

Anyone have any suggestions? Projects, common transformers to use, or if this is a better-to-buy situation? I was trying to figure out if a transformerless solution like just using a Schoeps microphone circuit (with like 1M input impedance instead of 1G) would be good for this.

Sorry Jimi you'll have to wait to hear that song

The rat+pipe organ part is literally only two bars of the song. It's one of those things that I thought really needed to be there, though (and it's right before the last chorus), so I just found it funny how much thought and effort went into it.

Pipe organs make everything better.

Most ordinary people have no. Freaking. IDEA. Just how much...

...

POWER

a good pipe organ has. Couple that with a virtuoso player...

I've read a Gutenberg Project book that claims that the pipe organ is the only really home DIY friendly musical instrument, as you can make it entirely with things from the hardware store -- you don't need tuners, you don't need guitar strings or similar...

My German teacher in high school played pipe organ. I didn't appreciate how utterly insanely difficult it was to play one when I was in high school.

I have an acquaintance in the local music scene that repairs, them, too. They rebuilt one recently and the amount of work involved is insane.

I should build one, I had to use the simulation in Logic to do this.

I had designed a pedal a while back that a friend told me sounded a lot like a RAT (the Mossy Sloth, which was an answer to the question "how many MOSFETs can I fit in a small circuit?"), but it didn't do remotely the same thing. I have more than one pedal that lets me goof up the bias because I was trying to get a tearing sound. Tried a bit crusher, too. A bunch of things sounded kinda close, but it was the RAT that actually sounded correct. Neat.

A beef Wellington I did just before the holidays (2021)

Wow! Nicely executed.

I had good luck with this:  https://smallbear-electronics.mybigcommerce.com/expression-pedal-shell/
Plus this: https://www.vhtpaint.com/high-heat/vht-engine-enamel
The engine enamel is hard as nails.  The wah shell is slightly textured and that texture will still be present after top coating with your white enamel.  I disassembled the shell to paint it, the hardest part was driving out the pivot pin.

This looks like a great solution. Thank you!

I lost my wiener* and need to build a new one. I'd like to have gotten the same white textured finish I got from Pedal Parts Plus a long time ago, but they don't have wah enclosures at all.

*Seriously, I lost it. No one that I ever loan stuff to has it and it's not in my house or at my friend's studio. I'm baffled.

My wife got me every Calvino book I didn't already own last year (mostly short story collections). I've been slowly making my way through a zillion of his short stories but I guess I'll have to dig something else out soon since I'm on the last one.

Also, what did you ask the fella? I have literally no follow up questions to anything science related that hasn't been featured on Mythbusters but I'd be psyched pitching a question

I asked him If we sent out Voyager one today and you were picking music to put on the gold records, as a musician I want to know what would be on your playlist? He basically said Carl Sagan was a dope for putting that on there, and Sagan was his mentor and homeboy. He wouldn't put music on there. That's us assuming that they had sensory responses like hearing. Not even all humans can here. And it's assuming they would understand how to play it. He said he would put artifacts that represent things that represent the human race and things we value. Like diamonds, gold and other elements. Perhaps images of earth, water, or tartigrades lol. He said not to burst your musical bubble though 🤣

Voyager is such a depressing object when I think too hard about it. Someone described it as throwing a message in a very tiny bottle in the koi pond in the backyard and hoping someone on the other side of the earth will see it, and even that analogy doesn't quite capture the enormity of space.

On the other hand, the fact that it exists demonstrates the completely insane levels of optimism that scientists at the top of their game have. I've often noted at work that I'm the pessimist of the team, and I've also noticed that I tend to have few ideas about new projects to pursue. I think ambition requires some level of optimism. (Or delusion.)

That said, I think if they had a way to decipher the symbols we put on the thing (assumes they have visual senses), they could figure out how to play a record that is a physical representation of sound waves on a medium. It's not a CD after all (which is digitally encoded) -- analog media mirror the physical nature of the phenomena that produced them.

Yolk, yes; white, no. This? HELL no:

Things like this remind me how bad the internet is for humanity.

This is amazing. What a weird idea to even come up with in the first place, never mind seeing it through to completion!

RIP crazy guy (and alter ego Thteven as well)

He blew up a pile of cell phones just for me when he found out I didn't like them. There aren't that many people I've met online for such a brief period who were so memorable.

I'm curious what the performance factors are (in order of importance)?

Not in order (not even sure what that would entail):
on resistance
off resistance
total dynamic range (distance between the on/off in decibels)
current draw of the led (PE vactrols were an IR LED I believe)
time to reach on resistance
time to reach off resistance

For a compressor, the timing characteristics of the vactrol don't matter as much unless you're looking for a really fast attack (in which case, why the hell are you building an optical comp) or in a certain compressor using the VTL5C10 that basically relies entirely on the characteristics of the vactrol because the designer couldn't be arsed to put a proper detector circuit in. The timing characteristics are much more important in a modulation pedal. The dynamic range is important but unless the compressor is using ALL of the range, you can almost certainly make up for that. One of either the on or off resistance will actually be important though, because one of them is defining a ceiling or floor to the leveling.

I've never found a discrete LDR that comes close to the performance of the VLT5C1 or C3.

The XVive clones are quite good and $7 is pretty darn reasonable. Smallbear's were not (they were fine, they were just very different.)

1) I love your vocal mic, it sounds so natural.

One thing that's funny about using the RE20 as much as I do (I use it live, too) is that I can actually recognize the sound of it when other people are recording it or using it on the radio! It's a truly great piece of kit and probably some of the smartest money I've ever spent.

4) interesting song title you've got there.

I like long titles.

It's one of the better songs I've written lately, so much so that I'm actually planning to pay to master it before I plop it on Bandcamp etc.

Great insight. Thanks for letting us take a peek at your thought process. Your commentary and explanation of effects whether recording or in your build docs always have a plethora of useful knowledge!

Thanks, Chris. Sometimes I worry that I'm going into information overload, and it's good to know if experienced people don't just get impatient with me. (Hopefully newbies don't get overwhelmed by it, too.) But I'd rather say everything I think needs to be covered than to fall short.