geared up for tomorrow's concert

Now that I do concerts again, I see how different it is since I started to get interested in gear. I spend almost as much time tweaking stuff as preparing music! Well I do improv, so I need to keep fresh, and it's a good way to stay focused, understand how sound is produced and try something completely new! 

I housed my Volcas in a crude wooden rack and put my LeafAudio DroneSynth in a wooden box. 

Here is the new Göldo roller bridge I put on the Jaguar - broke too many strings since I put the LesTrem. I'm not satisfied yet with it, the E strings jump easily out of the roller saddles - my playing style is quite enthusiastic… But I'm sure it can be set up somehow - have to figure out how.

And this is the pedal line for this project !

chip

I've been asked about the reference of the chip used in the noise box - here it is.

a good working day

Didn't lose my time today, I've made this little video demo of the oscillator I build last week.

Then I've been busy with housing the noise box in an hemispheric case that I was saving for a pedal project (also I pillaged two tele control plates for knobs), and I'm quite happy with the result... I still have to add a couple of things - a switch to turn it of and a power jack - it works on battery - and a LED... 

And I kept working on the new planck guitar project - another chambered planck guitar as you can see...

Noise Box Workshop

On the weekend I did a noise box workshop - I'm so clumsy when it comes to soldering and this kind of stuff, that I thought it's time to learn it for real! On pic 2 you can see how pathetic my soldering technic was, but after a few hours I made some progress (pic 3) and I managed to assemble all the parts together to make a little oscillator that makes some noise - that was the purpose and it's achieved! 

In a couple of days I will house the thingy in an alu box and shoot a little demo - I guess that through a couple of pedals such as my Wrong Side of Uranus, it will sound terrific. The workshop was hosted at Noisy MusicWorld, a music complex that rents studios in Berlin where I rehearse regularly - there I can play very very loud and nobody ever complains.

There are two other things I learned in this workshop, outside of soldering together electronic gizmos: finally it is true that after 40 you start to get farsighted, fucking hell! I can hardly see the details on a PCB and I made an appointment to get a prescription for glasses! The other thing is that the demographic of electro-noise gadget wannabe makers in Berlin is 100% white and male - I'd tend to add heterosexual but I didn't inquire that far -, though still international. Fascinating...