Professional Background In Electronics?

[Strategy]

I learned a bit from my dad growing up who built synth modules and other electronics for the electronic music labs at the universities where he's taught. He started doing electronic music in the 1960s at UC Berkeley as a graduate student in composition. Knowing electronics was required for maintaining and augmenting synth and recording equipment. Meet recording engineers from that generation they also know how to solder and how everything works...My dad still tinkers, gave me some of his old PAiA kits and, he recently built a kit which allows motion detectors and proximity sensors of various kinds to generate MIDI information. It was used in an interactive sculpture.

I didn't start doing pedals and synth modules etc. until much later, 'electronics projects for musicians' helped me out as well as online tutorials, just looking up things like 'how do transistors work' and checking all the materials against each other for questions/inconsistencies. But most of all I have a friend who is very experienced in DIY electronics and is also a degreed electronics technician. So he has run me through a lot of both the theory and the craft. That friendship and assistance has been priceless, really I learn 'by doing' more than anything.

- Strategy

[Ry]

I have a BSEE.  I don't get to use it at work, so stompboxes amps are my outlet.  I have always felt like a total hack when it comes to analog technologies.  I went to school with great aspirations to learn everything I needed to design great stomp boxes (honestly, Craig Anderton's EPFM changed my life).  I have miserably failed at this goal so far...but I've built some pretty great clones and original designs thanks to the great people here.  I might get the courage to throw away my day job sometime and step into pedal building, but that's a huge step 12 years out of college...

Ry

[wharding]

I got most of my training in the navy then went on to get an EE degree at a community collage. Now I work mostly with industrial controls i.e. PLC, Servo Motor programming. I never really got a chance to do analog design so once my oldest son moved out I turned his room into a hobby room and started to build stomp boxes (wife still not happy). So for the last year I have been trying to remember stuff I learned years ago and reading everything I can find. The "Technology of the..." articles over at Geofex have been a great starting point for my understanding of the circuits behind the sounds - Thanks R.G. it's truly appreciated!

Bill