I’ve always found that at this time of year I’m affected by the general malaise that seems to be part of the christmas season. I kinda figured it out years ago after wondering why I would suddenly lose interest as the holidays started and by watching for effects I eventually put it down to the nature of the overlying consciousness at work on all of us.
When the society is out working I can work… but when they decide to do nothing and are thinking of rest (which I incidentally think they think harder about than anything) then all the available creative space seems to be gone and so I just veg until they all get back to work.
This was illustrated last night when a TV star was interviewed about what she was doing for her holidays and after saying several times that she was just going to chill completely for the whole two weeks she then proceeded to explain all the trains, planes and automobiles she’d arranged to be using as she shuffled between three chill out zones.
I’m sorry but I just don’t get that at all. Well I do but I think it’s silly to think one is chilling out while travelling back and forth across the country almost without rest with brief intervals between to acclimatise and before one even gets their bearings and a sense of where they are to be zooming off to some other relaxing place. The sum result being I basically do as little as possible and just let the population at large get it out of their systems.
But we are here for music and related and on that front I did the thing at Handmade last week, the 23rd, and it was yet another working it out kinda gig but it did go rather better than the first one and we ended up almost getting chucked out. My friend Doug joined me and I learned yet again, or remembered, that there is a time and a place for letting those unskilled about the nuances of music making… almost free rein on ones setup. Then Tom turned up, sorry I don’t know his last name, and listened for a while then took over when Doug and I went for coffee down the front.
Whatever huh, but on the promotional side (which is a little scary) I’ll be doing a interview and a little instrument tinkering on Bfm this coming sunday morning. I’m unsure of the exact time right now but it’ll be sometime between 9 and midday on the 3rd.
I love the idea of new experiences, my last little radio interview on said station was way back in the middle of the last decade, but I’m somewhat averse to letting the public know they are going on. I prefer the concept that people are in the right place at the right time which is why I often do things unannounced… even visits accross town. That said I’ll be plugging the Handmade thing, Vitamin S and DIYstompboxes and maybe even this blog.
Back to the Handmade and it’s aftermath. Tom, Doug and myself were down at the car loading the stuff in and discussing the relative merits of the place and the what of its when one of Toms friends arrived in the vicinity and Tom said they were going to be jamming at the Wine Cellar. I dropped Doug off at his studio, can’t call it a house as it’s completely filled up with paintings, offered him my place if I go overseas, and then returned to Town to catch some of Tom and said friend. Tom was on electric guitar and friend was on double bass and they then did some blues. Kinda Cajun blues and I was reunited with the concept of playing guitars normally and the major scale of A. It was great! Both Honkin’ and Tonkin’ were in attendance. I went home and picked up the guitar and realised they’d bin playing in one of my favourite scales.. A major!
But I have done a little work. Below is something I threw together and after finishing I realised it wasn’t what I wanted. It does what I want but the aesthetic is not what I realised I wanted. I’m also quite happy to admit I do actually suffer from that which I sometimes accuse others that being I don’t actually know what I want until I see whats made.
This is the moonlight amp with a speaker, the power supply for the fx, and a container for leads and fx… on wheels.
My unresearched idea for a combo amp. Unresearched because I just let it build itself and because of that it’s far more like a furniture piece than a usable, efficient musical instrument… far too carnivally. But I’m not adverse to the concept but I’ll bin this, as an instrument, and start again I think.
This though is far closer to having something that’ll do the job, pack away nicely yet still retains the ideas of art that appeal to me.
And down there at the back, with all the little holes around it, is the actual amplifier.
Bottom right is the power supply which is 18VDC at a little under two amps so it should be enough to give me about 10 watts.
The above is a ten watter using valves so one can see the obvious advantages of using silicon for amplification. The amp chip is a TDA2003, which costs about 5 bucks from RS, and I’m hoping that attaching it directly to the pot will be enough heat sinking for it. The idea being that the holes drilled increase the surface area around the chip, just like a regular heatsink has fins, while also allowing the required scarcity of metal to allow the lowish frequency of molecular vibration that is heat to be able to dissipate. Solid state amps require big power supplies and big heatsinks because to do what you want them to they are actually very wasteful of power. Anywhere from 50 to 75% of the power needed is wasted as heat. So for ten watts of output one needs at least 20 watts of input power and this is why the power supplies, and heatsinks, are so big on SS amps.
So there you go and because of the radio show being moved from Wednesday night to Sunday morning, and lots of peple back at work, I’ve a few ideas up my sleeve about new things I can build that’ll, as usual, go out into the world untested, usually mostly untried, and “try” to make them work!
Tube, or Valve amps, don’t suffer such in adequacies… they suffer other ones. The parts are big and often heavy and use alot of real estate and are expensive, relatively… but they often sound better and tend to last a long time.