RG complimented by the Univibe inventor Fumio Mieda

[coi2001]

RG. was cited by Fumio Mieda, the inventor of the Univibe, for his analysis of the Univibe. Look in Tom Hughes book "Analog Man's Guide to Vintage Effects", 2004 edition, page 175.

Mieda is very complimentary about RG and at one point he says, referring to RG's article on the Univibe, "I was really impressed at his analysis". This is obviously old news, as the book was published in 2004, and some of you may have already known. But I think that RG deserves a direct acknowledgment of his long standing and continued contributions to the field, which are obviously being recognized by the pioneers in the field.

Congratulations RG!
Costantino

[Jered]

Absolutely.

[kurtlives]

Dudes a genius.
Hope when I graduate with my EE degree in a few years I'm half as knowledgeable as him.

[composition4]

kurtlives, Freudian slip?

[amptramp]

As well as being a great EE, his explanations are very patient and painstaking, leaving nothing out and making sure the explanation is understandable by even the most unskilled.  He would have been an excellent teacher.  What am I talking about?  He is an excellent teacher - on this forum.  I concur that his analysis of the Univibe was clear and to the point.

[lazerphea]

R.G. is truely an enlightened person.

[Mark Hammer]

Ae you kidding me?  I've known him for 20 years, and he is a lazy, inconsiderate, inarticulate, show-boating, self-centered and down-right MEAN sonuvabitch whose mother not only wears Army boots, but puts them on the wrong feet!!

[alparent]

Ae you kidding me?  I've known him for 20 years, and he is a lazy, inconsiderate, inarticulate, show-boating, self-centered and down-right MEAN sonuvabitch whose mother not only wears Army boots, but puts them on the wrong feet!!

Sounds just like someone else I know on this forum!  

At lease R.G. knows what his talking about! 

[yeeshkul]

Buddy i am pointing out your mistake of not getting a joke 

[Joe Hart]

Are you kidding me?  I've known him for 20 years, and he is a lazy, inconsiderate, inarticulate, show-boating, self-centered and down-right MEAN sonuvabitch whose mother not only wears Army boots, but puts them on the wrong feet!!

THANK YOU!

Only kidding. There are many people here who are so helpful. Thank you all! And it's great to acknowledge them, but I hope they already know!! Thanks!!!!
-Joe Hart

[Mark Hammer]

Not having ever seen a copy of the Analog Man book, the comment by Mieda was news to me too.

Actually, that IS kinda nice, and certainly deserved.  The Univibe article was likely one of the first of its kind.  Although a great many construction project articles in electronics magazines had included a "how it works" segment (and Craig Anderton included such commentary as well in both his construction articles and books), those discussions usually had a primarily electronics flavour to them, with very little geared towards musicians or the musicality aspects of what the circuit segment did or was optimized for.  I think in that respect, the Technology of... series set a benchmark that has been of inestimable value to all the folks whose interest in musical electronics is just beginning, or began not all that long ago.  For many of the nearly 20k people registered here, when they look at a circuit, they want to know more than "IC1b provides a unity-gain inverting stage", they want to know "What does this part of the circuit do for me, as a player and someone attempting to express a musical idea?".

What has, sadly, not kept pace with the discussions here has been any sort of correspondance with all those designers and industry insiders, that work in another language.  I have an excellent idea of the mindset and groundwork that American and European designers engage in.  I have no freaking idea whatsoever of how the Roland/Boss, Yamaha, or Korg mind works, and what they set as their design objectives.  And as for understanding how a Shin-Ei mind works.....fuggedaboudit!!  Part of that is a language thing, obviously, and another part is the underlying corporate culture; they just tend not to talk as freely about how they get to their ideas.  I doubt you'll ever stumble onto any interviews with senior members of the Roland/Korg/Yamaha empires that compare to a cigar-chomping ramble with Mike Matthews.

[jkokura]

Ah yes, but Mike Matthews started as a musician right? I was recently reading in Premier Guitar, which did an interview with Mike, about how he got his start into pedal manufacturing. He started out wanting to be a famous musician, made an attempt at least, and then got sidetracked into this mission to live forever. In anycase, he got into pedal building as a way to get back into music having had to leave the 'biz' for actual business.

I have no idea who the Roland/Boss, Korg, or Yamaha owners are, but it's struck me that it's far, far more likely for those guys to be business men first, then perhaps they have an interest in Music. I think guys like Mike Matthews and many of the boutique North American and European pedal builders are a different bread because they are musicians first who create a business to assist other musicians.

You pay for that service however, even with the relatively inexpensive boutique stuff of Fulltone, Lovepedal, etc. Many of the large players think of marketing FIRST before product, like Zoom or Berhinger or any of the other cheap pedal makers. How much money can they make off the 15 year old bedroom guitarists if they release V2 of their plastic-uber-multieffect-box with updated features and new lower 79.99 price? Then they design the gear, or in Behringer's case, they rip off the gear (Sorry, cheap shot I know, but it's true).

I like the fact that companies like Empress, Strymon, and well... US here at the forum are generally musicians who see a hole in our musical experience. We then pursue a method to fill that hole, and in some cases we stumble upon an opportunity to create a product that helps to create excellent musicianship in others. I think Mike Matthews is a pioneer in that way, and guys like R.G. are OUR forefathers. They are the guys I look up to about pedal building, and me and my like custom projects for friends and other musicians wouldn't exist without the musicians who have created great pedals to emulate and improve upon.

Jacob

[Mark Hammer]

Well, I wouldn't be too hard on the larger Japanese companies.  Keep in mind they are much larger empires, with more at stake, and have to keep a much broader market happy.  Mike Matthews may make an awful ot of different pedals, but he's not making guitars, pianos and motorcycles, like Yamaha is, or catering to the international educational market like Roland.  I'm not saying that EHX or Dunlop are NOT mindful of the average player, but their business model is not based on getting a sound everyone will find useful by setting the knobs to 12:00, just so that the inventory and machining needed to produce 100s of thousands and ship worldwide can be justified.

And, to be fair, there ARE a number of interesting and adventurous things that the Japanese companies do, in tandem with their more conventional offerings.  Consider the Kaoss pad or the barberpole phasing of the PH-3 for starters.  I'm just curious about the working environment of those places.  Is it two or three people in an R&D faciity?  Is there an office where independent designers approach the company and sell them an idea that the company turns into a fully realized product?  Is there a 6-storey product development facility somewhere deep in the Akihibara, in a sort of underground area that you get to via a series of Get-Smart-like doors and elevators?  How do they do it?

[Cliff Schecht]

When we created the R.G. Portable Stompbox Guidance System project back in 2001, we never imagined it would be this successful... *tears streaming down face*

Dudes a genius.
Hope when I graduate with my EE degree in a few years I'm half as knowledgeable as him.

Give yourself a few years, a EE degree won't teach you how to be even a decent audio circuit designer. Especially one that is well versed in dealing with highly non-linear circuits (distortions, phase distorters, etc..). School will instead teach you principles that you then have to take and apply in your field of interest. The whole practical wisdom thing that RG is so keen on (see what I did there?) comes from his years of experience in the field. I now know this because I've gotten my undergrad in EE and realize that pretty much everything I use in audio circuit designs I taught myself.

[RedHouse]

...Mieda is very complimentary about RG and at one point he says, referring to RG's article on the Univibe, "I was really impressed at his analysis".....

IIRC, the feeling's not mutual.

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=69666.msg558981#msg558981

or, maybe so.

[jkokura]

Well, I wouldn't be too hard on the larger Japanese companies.  Keep in mind they are much larger empires, with more at stake, and have to keep a much broader market happy.  Mike Matthews may make an awful ot of different pedals, but he's not making guitars, pianos and motorcycles, like Yamaha is, or catering to the international educational market like Roland.  I'm not saying that EHX or Dunlop are NOT mindful of the average player, but their business model is not based on getting a sound everyone will find useful by setting the knobs to 12:00, just so that the inventory and machining needed to produce 100s of thousands and ship worldwide can be justified.

And, to be fair, there ARE a number of interesting and adventurous things that the Japanese companies do, in tandem with their more conventional offerings.  Consider the Kaoss pad or the barberpole phasing of the PH-3 for starters.  I'm just curious about the working environment of those places.  Is it two or three people in an R&D faciity?  Is there an office where independent designers approach the company and sell them an idea that the company turns into a fully realized product?  Is there a 6-storey product development facility somewhere deep in the Akihibara, in a sort of underground area that you get to via a series of Get-Smart-like doors and elevators?  How do they do it?

Very fair to remember Mark. I too don't know their inner workings, I guess I just see the end of the line products. I will say that a company like Yamaha or Roland is a different breed. I don't know the parent company for Zoom, but I guess I just ball a lot of the 'mass produced' companies together when I view that whole end of the spectrum. Look at the PS-6 from Boss, their most recent release and it's perhaps one of the most forward thinking pedals they have. They have a great balance between 'we have to make/sell a lot of these' and 'we have to make really awesome musical devices'. I think, and it is simply MHO, that they approach the business a very different way than most of those smaller, we ONLY make pedals kinds of businesses.

Would it be worth trying to track down the public relations people of those companies and asking them nicely for more info? The DIY community has a LOT to learn from Boss, or Korg, or any of those big boys I'm sure.

Jacob

[tubelectron]

Hi All,

I have a copy of the AnalogMan's Guide To Vintage Effects book = I recommend +++

R.G.Keen has both the knowledge and how to make it accessible and clear to us = double merit +++

Great Man, indeed, as Mr Mieda states.

A+!

[Mark Hammer]

Would it be worth trying to track down the public relations people of those companies and asking them nicely for more info? The DIY community has a LOT to learn from Boss, or Korg, or any of those big boys I'm sure.

My guess is they will not be forthcoming.  Just doesn't seem to be the way they work, though I could easily be wrong.

On the other hand, there are all those patent applications.

Back when I was connected with a university, and had access to the library, I used to regularly peek through the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society and the review of acoustical patent applications in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America ( http://scitation.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=JASMAN&Volume=CURVOL&Issue=CURISS#MAJOR20 ), where stuff would show up a full 5 years or more before it was a commercial product.

Speaking of which, while I can't see the paper that prompted it (you have to be a member or pay for the article), there is an iteresting thread of comments in response to an article entitled "Recording Electric Guitar--The Science and the Myth", by Alex Case:  http://www.aes.org/journal/online/comment/?ID=15244

[PRR]

> my EE degree in a few years I'm half as knowledgeable

You learn at least as much while working as you do in school.

School is just the phase where you know so LITTLE that you are not worth hiring. In many ways, a fresh EE is hardly worth the pay. But the only way to get seasoned EEs is to put raw EEs in the real-world fire for a few years. And a well-seasoned EE is worth far more than his pay. So large companies take the losses for the long-term benefit.

You will have 4 years. Say R.G. has, round-number, 40 years (I'm nearing that number). You will get your EE with one-tenth our current seasoning. You will stare at a bias problem for 100 seconds, then I do it in 10 because I've done such problems 10 times more than you. Your solution works 99% of the time (with tolerances and temperature); R.G.'s works 99.9% of time because he's been in the customer-returns bin and seen more "shouldn't happen" failures.

> who the Roland/Boss, Korg, or Yamaha owners are

The banks. But that's a minor detail.

They say Kando: "the sensation of profound excitement and gratification derived from experiencing supreme quality and performance."

A friend trained in their piano tech program. In large Japanese companies, every morning the employees assemble to do exercises and sing the company song together. At Yamaha they do this under a banner which says roughly "Nobody needs the stuff we make!"

Huh?

What it means is: people need food. People need clothes, and a house. People do NOT _need_ a motorcycle or a piano. People live just fine without them.

So the message is: if you like your job here, you gotta make this stuff so good that buyers really WANT it.

That's the high-level view.

Down in the trenches, mega-Japanese companies are NOT a Mike or Cliff sitting alone with a vision and a breadboard. There's a whole department for Product Planning. Big Engineering division. Massive Manufacturing office. Everybody is in meetings all day. Everybody brings ideas, they are discussed, balanced, and brought to another meeting. Product wants 3 more knobs. Engineering says they can add a XR2345 chip to do that. Production says the XR2345 is expensive and uncertain supply, better to use ONLY generic parts. Engineering goes back and has a meeting to figure a generic-part idea. One good idea makes 4 new knobs easy, and that requires going back to Product Planning to see if their committee likes the change, and then meeting with Production to see if four holes costs too much.

I sometimes wonder when they do any real Designing.

Much Yamaha design is very small-bits. At their size, transistors are cheap and resistors even cheaper; it seems they put a part in because they don't have time (between meetings) to design it out. Special ICs threaten production if they go out of stock. OTOH, Yamaha is one company that WILL use special parts IF it improves the product. Their motorcycles and 4-wheelers represent a lot of unique tooling to improve the product.

Yamaha's founder seems to have been a tinkerer: watch repair, medical equipment, and reed organs.

父の仕事を見たり、器具や機械をいじったりして育った彼は器具や機械類に関心をもち、また手先が器用なことから、その後長崎で時計づくりを学びました。
"...grew up playing with the machinery and equipment..., and the manual dexterity that I learned in watch making..."

[R.G.]

IIRC, the feeling's not mutual.

Read what I wrote, not what you think I said.

I have great respect for Mieda-san. That's why I wondered at the idea. Working for a big organization you're often forced to do things you would not otherwise do. My opinion is that Mieda-san is much better than that.

Like I wrote.