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TubularCorporation

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Posts posted by TubularCorporation

  1. I don't really know electronics that well, but a lot of really god old tube equipment was wired point to point (not turretboards or terminals strips like you see in guitar amps, literally point to point) and it sounds great; perfboard is just point to point with a board to hold everything in place while you solder it. PCBs are a lot easier to deal with when you have complicated layouts, though, and you can usually make them a lot smaller. I've never bothered to DIY one, though, the only things I've made that are complicated enough for it to be worth the effort have either been stuff that I could buy a PCB or kit for, or amps on turretboard.

     

    I've gotten in to veroboard lately, though, and the couple of things I've built with it have been easy and small. Last fuzz pedal I made fit onto a piece about the size of a postage stamp.

  2. Not cheating, just moving focus to the design. There are all sorts of ways to make a good guitar. I like the quietness and convenience of hand tools but the only part where I really couldn't see myself wanting to ever use anything but hand tools is carving the neck, and that's just because I like to refine it by feel.

     

    The down side is it's a lot slower to finish an instrument this way.

  3. I'm not electronically minded either, but I can build other people's designs pretty well so fabricating PCBs at home would be great. Also control panels, router templates (although most people I know who've tried it prefer CNC for templates since you don't have to account for the diameter of the laser).

     

    A really solid, 18" thickness sander would be the best, though. Honestly I'd probably take one of those over replacing the band saw I gave away when I moved into a smaller apartment, you can do pretty much everything the band saw would do almost as easily by hand but hand planing body blanks down to thickness is a big hassle and the maker spaces nearby don't really keep their stuff calibrated and sharpened well enough to be trustworthy for luthiery.

  4. Nice guitars!

     

    How do you like the sunken tune-o-matic on your second one? The one I was just starting before a bunch of stuff at work ate up all my time for the next month was going to be a 12 string but I'm leaning toward actually making is 6 string, and that means deciding on a different bridge before I can finish the design. I want to try setting the neck without any angle to it this time and I'm kind of on the fence between buying a bridge designed for that or doing the sunken tune-o-matic thing (especially since I already have a brand new one in the parts bin), but I've never actually handled a guitar made that way before so I'm not really sure what I think about it yet.

     

    Nice looking inlay work, too. How'd you cut for those lines on the fingerboard of #2? I've been using a dremel on a little homemade (by someone else, since he had it made already and only wanted $15) router base but I might try hand cutting next time. The fewer power tools the better!

  5. Anyone know anything about Goom? Seems like it could be a fairly easy, really cheap way to add a simple 16 voice, multitimbral VA synth. You'd definitely need to pair it up with some kind of MIDI routing/dispatch/filter/something to make it useful in a larger setup since it looks like the MIDI channels are hardcoded but in the right setup it could be interesting (and cheap! Really, really cheap!)

  6.  

     

    Imagine if Phillip Morris made coffee... People would be like wtf.

     

     

    They own Kraft who bought out General Foods in the 90s, and General Foods owned Maxwell House. So yeah.

     

     

    You have passed the test. You will be contacted by a man hanging from a helicopter at midnight. Be prepared in front of your house. Naked, holding a loaded sawed-off shotgun.

     

     

    As if I would leave the house any other way.

  7. Imagine if Phillip Morris made coffee... People would be like wtf.

     

     

    They own Kraft who bought out General Foods in the 90s, and General Foods owned Maxwell House. So yeah.

     

     

    These Reface things would be pretty cool if the prices were in the Volca range and had better MIDI implementation.

  8. Putting together a minimal live rig. Couple more small pieces of gear to finish and make a second rack for, and then I'll have to scrounge up the money for a little mixer and I'll be good to go.

     

    This rack's almost done, just need to decide how I'm going to keep everything clamped down so it doesn't break when it's in a case.

     

    post-19174-0-48154200-1443034042_thumb.jpgpost-19174-0-79076700-1443034042_thumb.jpg

  9. That's sweet, RSP. You've got me thinking about trying to assemble that bad boy.

     

    If you've built a couple things it should be pretty easy. I got it as far as powering it up and testing it in about 3 hours and then came back from playing music with a friend and got the LEDs in and the case together before bed. It's digital so there really isn't a whole lot to put together.

     

    Next thing is going to be one of these.

     

    I'd have loved a shruthi or ambika, it's sad they're gone.

  10. RE: using 3d models to generate sound, pretty sure it's been possible for a while, they did some of that here with interesting results:

    http://www.ness-music.eu/overview/physical-modeling-synthesis

     

    Good site to explore, although I wish they would share some source code. Shows some interesting possibilities

     

    I'm having trouble finding anything about it online, but topographical synthesis* is kind of related to this. Waveforms generated by tracing a path across a 3 dimensional surface. IIRC the standard method for it is to have a point moving in a circle on the surface and generating the waveform from its Z position. The X and Y coordinates of the center of the orbit can be modulated to change the shape, and the speed of the orbit changes the frequency (one revolution = one cycle). It's an interesting idea but I can't say I've knowingly heard anything made that way.

     

     

    *it's described in The Computer Music Tutorial but I don't think it really caught on outside of 90s academic music

  11. Little update in case anyone's thinking about one of these.

     

    -The "stuck notes when using DIN MIDI" bug is definitely real. Didn't show up once in the first 5 or 6 hours of use but since the first time it happened it seems like it's been happening more and more often. Hopefully that doesn't mean it's a hardware issue (1/8" jacks, I am looking at you). Arturia did finally acknowledge it and says they're working on it but the last firmware update didn't address it. Supposedly it doesn't affect MIDI-over-USB; for me that hopefully means I'll be able to pass the midi to the Axoloti over USB and then pass it on to my other gear from there, but I'll believe that when I see it. If you plan to use DIN MIDI a lot with this thing then I'd seriously consider holding off. CV has worked fine for me.

     

    -I've encountered the bug someone posted about of their forums, where when using swing some actions (I think it was changing the step division while a sequence was playing, but it happened a week ago in the middle of playing with someone else so I didn't have a chance to try replicating it) will make it play straight for a couple of steps and then swing again. I can live with this (and hopefully it'll get fixed) but I could see this breaking it for some people.

     

     

    Still happy enough with it to keep it and hope it gets straightened out. I wish larger companies would release open source firmware for their devices and focus on delivering on the hardware end, stuff like this seems to get straightened out a lot faster in the open source world, but mass production is hard to argue with when it comes to controllers in particular. Between sourcing parts, fabricating boards and an enclosure, and paying low-volume prices for the buttons and encoders, DIYing something comparable for a similar cost isn't really an option for many people. I get that big companies still see firmware as a valuable, proprietary asset but hopefully they'll eventually come around.

     

     

    Also, tok down the track posted above for space reasons but I'll put something shorter and more polished up at some point.

  12. I make no claims with regard to its quality, but here's a recording of me futzing around with the BSP and a really basic tabletop setup the other day. Track 1 is playing an Anushri via CV into an old, silver Akai Headrush, track 2 and the drum track are playing Roland MT32 presets since I had one lying around. Both of them are running straight into an EHX 2880 recording a continuous loop slaved to the BSP with some decay so it keeps evolving. Starts from a blank project, so it takes a while to build up.

     

    https://soundcloud.com/tmoq/first-steps-with-beatstep-pro-improvdemo/s-Trksb

  13. I've known many people who think cannabis can cure literally everything, cancer and all. It's all a big pharma conspiracy apparently that's preventing these geniuses from saving the world. lol.

     

     

    I used to know a guy who claimed he could cure the common cold with weed.

     

    The method was, when you caught a cold you would spend 3 days in bed smoking weed and drinking orange juice and by the end of the third day you would be better.

     

     

    The typical duration of the common cold is 3 days.

  14. i understand the not being able to market yourself well bit i suffer from that. spend so long on the creative aspect i forget about the getting it out there to people aspect.

     

    totally cool, love the craft of beautiful things

     

    I'm hoping I can spin my general distaste for marketing into part of the inevitable/already beginning backlash against the self-branding/startup-culture/monetize-everything/ web-2.0 horseshit of the 00's.

     

    No Commercial Potential.

     

    Building stuff has kind of taken over a lot of the time I used to spend on music in the last couple years, that's why I haven't really shared any music here yet. Most of the stuff I've done that's at all well recorded and recent is just fucking around trying to make things that are ridiculous and have a laugh.

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