Projects

So, my first upcoming projects should be underway in around a week. I'm building a delay pedal for my friend Drew as well as one for myself. I'm also building a tremolo pedal for my friend Trey. The amp I want to build for myself is getting put off for a little while. I'm going to build an amp for Dorthia first. Like I said in my last post, it's just a kit to build a Marshall JCM 800 clone which is going into the chassis of an amp I already have, so it should be pretty straightforward. My friend TJ has also asked me about designing/building an amp for him. His amp will be built from scratch. It's kind of a daunting task but I think I can do it. Luckily I don't really have any time constraints on building his so I can take my time and make sure it's right. There's a few things I need to buy like hole punches to make the holes in the chassis and a drill and some bits to drill the smaller holes. After I build those 3 pedals and 2 amps I should be in a pretty good position to do more stuff. I want build a big breadboard with a variable power supply and a high voltage power supply so I can test and develop my original pedal and amp ideas. I'm so excited about getting to that point I can barely stand it. I'd also like to find a cheap space to rent to do all this in since our apartment is pretty small but we'll see how that goes. I might have to wait a while to do that.

The first...

My first post! Here goes.

I have more books I need to read than I have time to read, but I'm slowly chipping away at 'em. From math to programming to electronics to amps to wormholes; it's stretching my brain to the limit but it feels good. I'm planning to finally go back to school in the fall which I'm really pumped about. I'm not 100% sure what my major is gonna be, but I'll figure it out when the time comes. It's definitely going to be some science field, but I think that's fairly obvious. Our new apartment is awesome and so is living in the fan. Being able to walk to Byrd Park and Carytown and stuff is pretty awesome, not to mention I can get to work in like 3 mins. now. Dorthia and I are working on a good life plan and generally getting our shit together which is definitely good stuff. I'm happier lately than I have been in quite a while.

I have a few pedals I'm gonna start building in the near future. A few delays, a couple tremolos, an Overdrive and a yet-to-be-determined guitar noise pedal thingy. There are also a couple synthesizers I wanna make after that. The thing I'm most excited for is to start working on my first original design. It's going to be a bass overdrive/distortion pedal. I have some cool ideas that I've never seen in a pedal before. I think it'll prove to be a good design. I have a few other ideas for original designs after that, but I'm gonna work on one at a time. I'm going to build a guitar amp for Dorthia and a bass amp for myself. So that plus my Ampeg amp and I should be more than good to go (I'll probably needs some new cabs as well). For Dorthia's amp, I'm going to gut out this old crappy Crate amp I have and buy a kit to build a much better amp in the same chassis. My bass head might be a little more intense since I'm going to build it from the ground up. I have some ideas for some original amp designs, but that'll probably happen quite a ways down the road.

What my amp will sorta look like hopefully :)

I'm going to either buy a new arduino board or use my brother's if I can find it, and start working on a few micro-controller projects I have been brainstorming. A few of them are music things, but a few aren't which is kind of a first for me. The non-music projects are mostly based around gardening and agricultural type stuff. I'll explain it more in another post, but it's mostly stuff like using moisture sensors to automatically water plants and stuff like that.

If anyone wants to know what to get me for Xmas/b-day/whatever, get me a gift certificate from Sparkfun or Maker Shed. If Mouser or Digikey did gift certificates, I'd say do that, but I don't think they do. Also, any books about physics. I can't get enough of it.

I'm tired of writing, so that's it for now. I leave you with this: