blah blah more ideas and art installation ideas

*the first run of 15 sparkle motion treble boosters is officially sold out! the response has been overwhelmingly positive so far, so i'll be moving to production of these relatively soon (expect to see them at dealers at a slightly higher price) - just need to iron out some design details, etc.

*some possible drastic changes on the mountain range. working out the details...

*something very secret and very special which will be available at the end of august/beginning of september... ;-)

*making progress on the installation - still just kicking around ideas, but at the moment i think it will roughly be an array of 8 separate voice recorder circuits, each controlled via a light resistor and VCA. the idea here is that the 8 recorders will play back different loops, each of which contributes to a larger composition. the LDRs will be placed on the different sculptural elements of the mobile and when viewers get closer to the work the amount of light will change on the LDRs, which in turn will change the voltage on 8 separate VCAs, creating a swelling type of effect. i still need to suss out a decay feature so that the sample will continue playing when you walk away from a particular element, but i don't think that should prove too difficult. aaaaand i still need to compose the piece...

the block diagram is pretty simple:
(LDR -> voltage attenuator/booster circuit -> LED/LDR voltage control) -> VCA
voice/sound recorder circuit -> VCA -> speaker (x8)

mountain range/screenprinted pedals almost done...

still continually anxious about not being able to get many pedals out due to the silkscreen wait, but thankfully i got some pcb design work in for fuzzrocious and fuzzhugger pedals - both very nice companies/people to deal with who are making neat stuff! new stickers are on their way and i should be in the pedal zone with the new enclosures by the weekend - meaning it's 12-hour days for me next week. got to make up for lost time!

i finished the mountain range circuit design and have the pcb all laid out already - now it's just a matter of finalizing the graphics and controls... i'm going to keep it simple so i can keep the price down, but so far the controls are:
pregain, gain, tone, volume and a clipping switch.

both gain controls are different, yet yield similar tones when used independently. together, they bring the overdrive into slightly saturated fuzz territory - not too wild, but really nice.
the tone control is, at the moment, a simple high-cut control that still needs a little attention... i may change this completely to a one-knob bass/treble control? need to think about it a bit more...
there's a nice amount of boost and the pedal so far plays really well with others. i'm in love with how subtle it can be, yet how it warms the signal up.

i'm going to give it a run on some other gear in rehearsal today and see how it fares at louder volumes and with more speakers.
though i can't post it at the moment from my iphone, there's a pic of the prototype over at facebook.

the ups and downs

i significantly updated the website, most importantly with mockups of what the finished screen designs will look like. super excited about that!

still abysmally slow with the printers and having some issues, but hopefully we can work our way through them...

in the interim, i fixed my korg ms2000's power issue, am working on my fender pa100 head and will continue/finalize the prototyping of the mountain range overdrive so i can get started with other designs.