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I found myself doing this the other day, and realized that there are some merits to the smaller modular formats that I hadn’t previously considered: Yes, this photo is staged; I took it with my camera’s timer. However, I really was doing this before I realized how silly it is (and how silly it must [...]

There’s an excellent video here that shows how to do surface-mount soldering by hand. I’ve done several SMT projects now and I’m a complete convert: in some ways, I prefer it to the old through-hole technology. This video will show you how it’s done. It’s very well photographed and narrated. The same site has a [...]

If you buy music and/or make music, you might find it interesting to read this post and this post about Positron! Records ceasing to release music on CDs. This is relevant to me because Positron! releases a bunch of good music, including but not limited to everything recorded by Chris, my Audio Damage partner. It’s [...]

Lest I give the erroneous impression that Apple is the sole source of my computer woes, I spent all day (fairly literally) yesterday troubleshooting my main PC after what should have been a simple hardware upgrade went awry. I purchased a new graphics card and a new sound card. The graphics card went in without [...]

I just noticed that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of both Donna Summer/Giorgio Morodoer’s seminal electronic hit “I Feel Love” and Kraftwerk’s groundbreaking electronic album Trans-Europe Express. It’s interesting in itself that these were released in the same year, but mostly I’m blown away that it was that long ago. I [...]

Here’s a rather poorly shot video of Robert Henke playing his Monodeck II: It’s too bad that the camera operator doesn’t figure out until the last minute that all he really needs to do is point the camera straight down at the thing, but still, it’s an exciting look at one of the most impressive [...]

I’m selling off some old gear that I haven’t used in awhile. Here’s the list: Clavia Nord Modular, first version (not the G2), rackmount sold Electrix WarpFactory vocoder sold Korg AM8000R multi-effects processor sold Doepfer Drehbank MXR phase 100, original (pre-LED) version Zvex Lo-Fi Loop Junky sold Chris kindly posted the list on his blog [...]

If you haven’t been able to find the Plastic Steel epoxy I’ve mentioned for attaching standoffs to panels, there is another brand of apparently similar stuff called JB Weld. A reader of this site sent this link to me. It’s a discussion thread on making inexpensive illuminated pushbuttons, but if you scroll down a bit [...]

There’s a fellow with a website here that documents a clever idea for building LFOs and ADSRs using PIC microcontrollers rather than the usual handful of analog components. I’m quite sure that this would be a less expensive way to build these modules, and one could build exotic things like DX7-style rate/level EGs instead of [...]

Several people have written to ask me about the “liquid steel epoxy” I mention on this site. It turns out I was calling it the wrong thing; its correct name is Plastic Steel Epoxy. The manufacturer’s product page is here. I imagine that any epoxy would work for the task, but the Plastic Steel formula [...]