Great words from Kevin O’Connor in TUT5

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Here are some great words from Kevin O’Connor – they really speak to me and the spirit of DIY:

from TUT5 preface:

http://londonpower.com/books/tut5.htm

“In the coincidence of two hobbies – playing an instrument and wielding a soldering iron – we can double our fun. We can expand our musical dexterity while learning new electronic tricks to make new sounds We remember the joy of discovering how to play out first chord, or sound a note cleanly, and we try to capture that feeling. Similarly, there was the sense of wonder in learning how some of the black magic of electronics works, and the specific voodoo of guitar amps became less mysterious.

There will always be people who think something they know is special and “just for them”. They will try to cloister their knowledge and obfuscate the truth, perpetuating myths that make it harder for the more communal-minded persons to move forward in their own paths.”

Whenever we can, we try to clear the path for others, as others have done for us. Through these writings, we hope to imbue a spirit of community amongst those within our hobby and industry. We can discover new methods together, to achieve our individual sounds, and to share and enlighten the world. We can all make a living while doing so, provided there is value in what we offer. Fortunately, like-minded people are in the majority.

Cheap inductors

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Here’s a post from the forum re: inductors:

Ever since I started this hobby, I was always interested in the black art of the inductor. Hardly anyone seems to know what value certain inductors were and from what I have been reading, two measurements seem to be the most important: inductance and resistance. Based on this, I purchased and tested a number of inductors from part numbers mined from the forum and some guesses I made when looking at the spec sheets.

Before you read any further, from what I have been reading, the Fasel inductors Dunlop sells are actually spec’ed pretty good. Although higher than the magical 500mH, they do hover between the 500mH-600mH mark with very low resistance. The yellow seems to have more resistance than the red, but not by much.

The 42TM024 just happens to hit right around the 435mH mark, but with high resistance. The 42TM022 is very versatile with 252mH, 800mH and 190mH in different combinations with relatively low resistance.

The 42TL024 comes in with 1.1H at the primary.

S = secondary
P = primary
o = outside lead
m = middle lead
R = ohms resistance

42TM024
S o+o = 435mH 160R
S o+m = 102mH 76R
Possibly good for midrange circuit??? Possible use in wah?Huh

42TM022
S o+o = 252mH 46R
P o+o = 800mH 60R
P o+m = 190mH 32R
All kinds of uses?

42TL024
S o+o = 196mH
P o+m = 1.1H
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=33725.0
Close to 1.5H but not quite.

42TL021-RC
S o+o = 161-187mH
S o+m = 36-43mH
P?Huh? no reading
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=22409.msg141895#msg141895

Fasel Red 580mH 15R
Fasel Yellow 540mH 23R

output transformer protection

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I was reading the Gar book on amps and was reminded about the speaker protection resistor in my Traynor amp. It’s basically a 200 ohm, 20 watt resistor wired on the speaker output jack. One end is connected to the tip, the other to ground. In other words, a 200 ohm, 20 watt resistor from tip to ground.

This can help protect your amp if you forget to plug in the speaker at either end (amp or cab) and can help protect your output transformer. I should put this on some of my amps.

Kubuntu on MacBook

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Kubuntu seems to run great on the MacBook using vmware. Set the number of processors to 2 and enable graphics acceleration in vmware. Full resolution and fast. Parallels for OS X has problems running Kubuntu – locks up when shutting down, cannot get full resolution of display, must manually turn on wired ethernet every time you startup. Need to check out the music apps now.