netdud blog

I am going to save you some money here, because I know you are all trying to get that Geddy tone.

I own an Ashly SC-40 preamp. This is the pre that Geddy Lee used for many years.  It’s not Ashly’s bass-specific preamp (that was the BP-41), but a very good piece of kit that works quite well for many instruments.  A lot of people also like the SC-40 for bass, and I am one of those people.  It is a nice contrast to my expensive tube preamp that would totally impress you if I told you what it was, but I don’t want you rushing over here tearing at your clothes in a fit of mad lust, so I will not mention it any further.

I also use the SC-40 for my bouzouki, and whatever else might need preampin’  It’s got lots of handy features, a transformer-isolated direct out, and very reassuring-looking knobs.

This is a fairly old piece.  It needed a good cleaning, and was kinda barky for bass when I bought it used. Great for snarly rawk tones, but with a definite hump in the high mids and a tendency to sound like it was working too hard.

I spent a whopping $22 and replaced the op-amps inside the thing (swapped the RC4558 chips for OPA2134). The new op-amps are cleaner, with more lows, highs, headroom and a broad, tanned, trustworthy forehead.  It was a good move, and the thing sounds much, much better–for bass and everything else.

At some point, I should also replace all the capacitors.  But that is like, actual work…

If you read boring bass blather sites on the Internets a lot, you will eventually come across the mystical secret to the Geddy tone–on the amp side, at least.  This actually not much of a mystery–it was just a hookup mentioned in the SC-40 manual. Yep, I RTFM. You take a pair of 1N914 diodes, wire them in parallel but backwards to each other, and run them between the tip and sleeve of a 1/4″ plug, which you then put into the effects send jack.  According to the manual, this will create “smooth distortion.”

Now, as anyone who subscribes to “Tiresome Pedal Nerd” magazine (or goes to their many sites online) can tell you, the 1N914 is the diode used in the clipping section of the original Tube Screamer.  It’s used for clipping/overdrive in a lot of other pedals as well.  When it comes to smooth clipping of guitar tones, this should be, as the kids said a while back, “the shizz.”

What you see in this picture is a phono jack with a pair of 1N914s wired in opposed parallel. I plugged one end of a cable into it, and the other end of the cable into the effects send on my great-sounding SC-40.  And it appeared that nothing happened.

Then I realised that (of course!) I would only get clipping/overdrive/distortion if I turned that shizz up!  So I whacked the gain way up, and the red light started to come on, and I have to tell you, I could not believe the difference in tone!

It sounded like total ass.

So what I am saying here is don’t bother doing this.

The question remains whether the change in the op-amps had any effect on this.  See, as anyone who reads “I am Dragging This  Out Too Long” (or watches me do that online) knows, the mighty Tube Screamer used JRC4558 op-amps in its original design.  So is the smooth distortion effect a product of both components? Did I clean up the op-amps and ruin my chance at smooth distortion?  Should I put the old op-amps in and test that?

Should I?

Filed under: clever?, Music by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever - Let me fix that - music »
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Chris Horner of Red Bull picks Jenson Button as their biggest threat .  This is called “messing around inside Lewis Hamilton’s head.”  I am getting the impression that there might be room in there to do that.  I really miss Schumi being on top of his game and psyching people out.  There just doesn’t seem to be a driver on the grid with that combination of clever and cruel, and maybe never will be again.

Regardless, this will be an interesting year in F1.  For those of you who looked away, here is the quick update on what’s going on, based on the news on F1 sites:

• Some teams have some trick aerodynamic thing that might be within the rules. Or it might not. All the teams that didn’t think of this idea say it’s illegal. At some point, a decision will be made.
• Bernie Ecclestone has said that some races are in danger of being cancelled, and that the race in Bahrain is going ahead. This means that the race in Bahrain is not going ahead, and those other races better get ahold of several truckloads of money and give it to Bernie.
• Williams has been picked as this year’s team with enough money to afford all the stuff Bruno Senna will break.  Bruno says that he is only signed to a single year contract, assumedly because there is only so much carbon fibre in the world.
• Every single driver is driving better and is more fit than they have ever been, and feels that this is the year that they will really make an impact.
• Half of the cars are a bold, risky new design, and the other half are a real departure and different in almost every way from last year’s car.
• Somebody famous for doing something completely unrelated has revealed to an F1 reporter that he has always in fact been a fan of F1 and is looking forward to the season.
• Max Mosely is still being a dick, and Bernie thinks that Max would be good as the head of the FIA again. Birds of a feather…
• Renault is now Lotus.
• Lotus is now Caterham.
• Colin Chapman is still dead, so no-one but a bunch of lawyers REALLY cares which team is called “Lotus.”
• Everyone thinks most of the new cars are ugly.

Actual F1 news that’s different this year:

• Kimi is back and racing for Lotus.
• Lotus might not suck.
• Ferrari might suck. Or they might be saying that they suck in order to be tricky.  Alonso has not opening whined about the car, so you never know.
• McLaren is probably really good.
• Red Bull is probably really good.
• Mercedes might be really good.  They seem quiet. Almost TOO quiet…
• Mark Weber did NOT injure himself in the off-season doing some insanely macho thing.  This is very unusual.
• Lewis is back with Nicole!  This is important, because it means there is a good chance that he will be mental again this year, and also we might get to see Nicole!  Squeee!
• Plus, Max being a dick means that we might see Jean Todt at more races, which means we might see Michelle Yeoh!  DOUBLE SQUEEE!
• No team with a budget wanted to keep Rubens Barrichello, which confirms that they are all bastards.  He’s gone off to hang out with his friends in the deathtraps of open-wheel racing in North America, which makes me sad.

Oh yeah–there is apparently still some form of open-wheel racing in NA.  Who knew?

Filed under: clever?, F1 by netdud
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The problem with Facebook is that it makes me lazy.  I’m getting back on track…

wtfqrcodes is extremely entertaining.  (via JWZ)

Here is an interesting piece about books and e-books and things related. It is worth reading. I always run up against the same issue whenever I read about “the evolution of books” that I run into when I read about the “evolution” of nearly anything:  The idea that there is a single endpoint–that things are all heading in one direction, towards one perfect solution, and all previous evolutions will be supplanted by it.

This is just silly.  Books–flat dead trees in a wrapper–are still the best format for certain things.  The fact that there are other formats doesn’t change that.  The very people who are creating these new formats for content state that reading a plain-old paper book is a completely experience from what they do.  And that experience has both unique benefits AND faults, not just faults.

There are still monkeys.

I have no explanation for this link with cats in it.  I thought it was going to be a lot worse than it is, but luckily, you can barely hear the vocals.

Pricenomics is trying to be a reference site for everything being sold online. The idea is that this will save you having to check eBay or Craigslist for the price of whatever you want to buy.  I didn’t find it much easier or quicker to use than doing that, but YMMV.

I wish I had seen this Instructable on how to strip and tin wires one-handed a long time ago.  It is brilliant.

Filed under: that nuttty interweb by netdud
Tags: « Links »
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I prefer to use the keyboard to do things on the computer, rather than having to move one hand over to the mouse, which interrupts my typing. If you’ve ever been in a conversation with me, this will make sense to you, as I also hate the part where I have to stop talking to breathe, listen, eat, or take a punch to the mouth.

Here’s a really basic set of keystrokes that I should have looked for long ago.

When you are using the Finder to look at/for files on Mac OS X, you can use one of four views. Most people find that 3 of those views are annoying, and only like one. I have, in the five or so years since I got a Mac, spent a total of 24 years and five months switching the Finder window to the view I prefer.

You can switch between views by clicking on the view buttons, or choose a view from the “View” menu, or you can use keystrokes.

• Cmd+1 gives you the classic icon view, which I have always hated
• Cmd+2 gives you list view, which is not as useful as it should be
• Cmd+3 gives you column view, which I find most useful, and is a pain if you have a lot of nested folders
• Cmd+4 gives you “Cover Flow” view, which is only ever used when Macs are on display for sale, because it is otherwise pointless

There IS an unnecessarily dumb-ass way to tell Finder to use your preferred view as the default, but Finder has its own funny way of defining “default,”  so it is much less of a pain to just use the keystrokes to set the view to what you want each time.

All of these keystrokes are shown right there in the “View” menu when you use Finder, but I’ve been ignoring them for years. Please be better than me.

BONUS KEYSTROKE: In 10.5 or higher, if you have a file highlighted in Finder, and you hit the spacebar, you will get a quick preview of the file–if Preview is able to open the file.  This is a quick way to look into a text document, or preview a music file, or look at an image, without opening a big application.  This is one of those obvious keystrokes that is somehow easy to miss.

Filed under: Curse These Confounded Figuring Machines!, Mac by netdud
Tags: « Mac - nerd »
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As Thoreau insisted, the Internets is indeed an information super-highway.

And if you are in a wreck by the side of that highway, your vehicle shattered, your body broken, your hope in ruins, and you stand waving your arms and asking for aid, you can count on a constant stream of people to come to a stop beside you, roll down their window, tell you that their vehicle is working just fine, and then drive on.

Filed under: clever?, that nuttty interweb by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever - short 'n' sassy »
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What every woman should do today:

1. – Call up an ex-boyfriend on the phone.
2. – When they answer, say in as flat a tone as you can “It’s [your name] Happy Father’s Day.”
3. – Count the seconds of silence, and post your best score in the comments.

Filed under: clever? by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever - short 'n' sassy »
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I sometimes play with and always tech for, an Irish band called “Ellis Island.”  The band was playing both Friday and Saturday nights this weekend, about 4 hours per night.

On Friday night (Friday NIIIIGHT?), the cross-brace at the back of Mick Doyle’s bodhran broke.  I think that this had something to do with it being a completely silly design, considering that the player’s hand is constantly flexing against the thing. Here is a picture of the fail, with bonus footage of the utter mess that is my sanctum sanctorum.

Well, I mean, what were they thinking?  Two pieces of crummy dowel, cut into each other at the point that takes the most stress?  This will not stand!

Of course, I was under a time crunch to fix this, as the drum was needed for a show the next night. There was no way I could get the thing to Larry’s Bodhran Shoppe and back in time for the show, because it’s the weekend, I don’t drive, and there is no such place as Larry’s Bodhran Shoppe.

So I had to cast about the house for something that I could use as a brace that would be strong enough and comfortable enough, while still maintaining the unique machismo that is such a defining characteristic of my work.  The answer was obvious:

For the one or two of you who might not be able to tell by looking, that’s the butt end of a Sherwood PMP 7000 (Coffey).  The Coffey was the best choice,  because  backhand shots are just not an issue for bodhran players.  Also, I had two of them in my garage.  Note that this is the older Kevlar-reinforced 7000, not the newer, fibreglass reinforced model.  I would never have used one of those!

So how does it sound?

It sounds like a bodhran.

Filed under: let me fix that, Music by netdud
Tags: « Let me fix that - music »
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http://www.penmachine.com/2011/05/the-last-post

Derek Miller was the epitome of a good guy, and the world is poorer for his passing. We were not close friends, but I knew him for many years–briefly in person–mostly through unfailingly helpful, well-though-out and supportive replies to my rambling pleas for information.

This is the only time I can think of when anything to do with Derek has caused me bad feelings, and that’s not a fair way to do this.  You don’t have to have known Derek, or feel bad about his death, in order to appreciate him.  I highly recommend you read his excellent writing, as much of it as interests you, in the archives at the other end of this link.

Derek’s writing reflects the same clarity, wit, and grace that stood out when I met him.  He wrote like someone who truly loved life.  He loved to learn, and he loved to share what he knew with others when it was helpful to them.  He wrote meaningfully, but never stridently.  He was an excellent writer but more than that, he wasn an excellent person. We need more of those.

Long live the Penmachine.

Filed under: Excellent by netdud
Tags: « Excellent »
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I am a person who, in the main, embraces change. In fact, I am cuddling a nickel right now…

But seriously, ladies and germs, I am fine with things changing. If there is an improvement to be made, if the mores of the times shift, if there is more comfort to be had by doing things a different way, if life will be improved, or harm and strife averted, I’m on board.

I’m quite lucky, in that I have always lived in countries which were DESIGNED to handle change.  They were created of whole cloth–the governance of these countries did not just kinda get put together out of what was already there.* It was actually conceived of in advance of being put in place.  And nothing was deemed infallible.*  The whole thing was set up so there was recourse in case mistakes were made.  It was very very clever.  …didn’t necessarily work out that way in practice, but it was a swell try, and between that and the fact that the whole shebang is still very young, at least the IDEA that things will not be the same forever and ever still bangs around this continent from end to end.

Besides, a lot of stuff sucks, so if you’re kind of cranky like I am, change is a win-win:  You either get one less bit of suckage, or you get a whole bunch more to be cranky about.

So yes.  Change.  WHEN IT IS REQUIRED, a very good thing.  Not to be fought once it’s inevitable.  I’m on board.

But I am not going to say that I’m a FAN of change. That would be like saying I am a FAN of exhaling.  It’s necessary–done as a matter of course. But there’s no point in just doing it for the sake of doing it.  You’d eventually fall down, wouldn’t you?

Some people–the kind who believe there is an actual reason to eat the crust, so they do it even though they don’t LIKE crust–think that any change is good.  That change and challenge have some innate virtue. That they prepare you for something.

Well, these people are obviously goofy.

All change-for -the-sake-of-change does for you is make it harder to know when you’ve found something good–or missed it altogether.  Lots of stuff will change in your life.  Some you will want, some you won’t, and very little of it will you have a say in.  There is no need to force change upon yourself, because it’s all around you, and if you aren’t getting enough of it, you are simply not paying attention.

There is no innate virtue in change. Nor is there any innate danger. It’s in the way that you use it.

Which brings me, of course to the phone company. I live in an area which is just now changing over to 10-digit dialing.  We now have to use the area code when dialing a local number.  Oh BOY does this kind of thing make cities feel like they are all grown-up!  I remember when this happened in Vancouver, and it was just all the rage!  Over night, it was suddenly a world-class city, whereas the day before it was but a small fishing village on the Fraser River.  Good times.

Anyway, I am sure that this change was initiated for a good reason. People breeding or moving or whatever.  People are like that–always moving very close together or farther apart.  How the change was  implemented however, ends up being needlessly annoying to people who use the phone. Seeing as those people outnumber the people who implemented the changes, you’d think…

Well, wouldn’t you?  YOU WOULD THINK!

There are now TWO area codes that share the same area: 402 and 531.  402 is the old one, and contains an overwhelmingly greater percentage of the numbers.

Here’s what currently happens when you live in the area and you dial a number without the area code:  A recording of a slightly peeved dude (who really should have gone to bed a bit earlier last night but you know what?–he’s going to stay up and watch this movie, because it’s HIS life and dammit he could do that damn job in his sleep and besides it’s not like he’s ever faked calling in sick, or refused to come in on the weekend or even ever shown up late so screw it, he’s going to watch Three Days of the Condor because it’s NEVER on anywhere but TCM and he’s got like, 100 movies in his Netflix queue, and you know what?–screw it TWICE he’s going to have another beer too.  Whatever.  He just won’t shower and instead of picking up a coffee he’ll just drink that swill in the lunchroom.) tells you that you have to dial the area code.  Then you have to hang up and dial the number again with the area code.

Now, THAT is silly.     Here’s what would work better:

- Caller dials the number, and for whatever reason, does not include the area code.
- System checks if that number exists in 402 AND 531.
- If the number only exists in one area code, the call goes to that number in the area code
- If the number exists in both area codes, then the caller hears “This number exists in both the 402 and 531 area codes.  Press 1 to be connected to 402[number] or two to be connected to 531[number].”

One dial, a meaningful error ONLY if necessary, one extra key press ONLY if necessary, and we all get on with our day.

“But wait!” I hear someone screech “The system wasn’t designed to do that!”

“Oh.” says I “Well, THAT needs to change…”

Spam sez “A satellite phone gives you worldwide calling ability.”

*Oh my WORD is there ever a big kettle of stinky fish being barely side-stepped here.  Believe me, I can smell it.  And if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, I completely agree with you (tautology much?). In the interest of brevity, let’s keep pretending we didn’t notice that, just for this post.   But I hear you.  I hear you.

Filed under: clever?, let me fix that by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever - Let me fix that »
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A dude with bad hair wants to name the government of his country, which produces a lot of oil, after himself?  Where have I heard THAT one before?

Seriously–if CANADA’s Prime Minister starts showing up in uniforms he designs himself, with lots of gold braid on them, it’s past time for the guys with the butterfly nets.

Spam sez “Cox Buzz“

Filed under: let me fix that by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever »
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