DIY tip #1

Once you've dove into DIY electronics and collecting parts, one thing you may face is organizing all of it to see what you've got. Here's a little trick for resistors (inspired by user Thomas_H)

-cut paper strips
-fold the paper in half and use a permanent marker to write ohm values
-organize them by value in any old box. An unused looper enclosure worked well for me

Jonathan Robinson-Developed, Framed, and Clean EP

 Here's the latest project I've engineered, an EP with local acoustic pop singer/songwriter Jonathan Robinson. The whole project started as a set of demos to send to the student record label but the songs wanted to grow all by themselves. We finished the whole thing pretty quick--in about a month. In my humble opinion, Into My Life is the catchiest tune...you'll get a bonus demo version if you download the whole album. Check it out if you like Rob Thomas/Matchbox 20, John Mayer, etc

http://jonathanrobinsonmusic.bandcamp.com/

MKII Tonebender

Here's my MKII Tonebender; I'm still waiting on a replacement trimpot but it sounds really good. I tried getting it to work for a while and then realized I got the pinout switched on the layout! Turned the transistors around and BLAM!

PCB Store

You can now find Hotcake pcbs at my website http://bigdippereffects.weebly.com/ . Shoot me an email if you'd like to see other circuits.
Welcome to the Big Dipper Effects pcb shop! Right now I have a small quantity of Hotcake boards. Comment or shoot me a message to make sure your order goes through. Thanks for looking.

Shortstack (Hotcake circuit)

LPB-1

Here's an LPB-1 I built for a friend. Interesting facts about the LPB-1:
-It was Electro-Harmonix' first pedal, sold in 1969.
-It's very similar to the Dallas Rangemaster and Vox Treble Booster but with different values for a different frequency response.


demo; title's a joke because I got a noise complaint from a hot neighbor right after doing this

Remembering Wes

     One of my best friends through college, Wes Bryant, passed away suddenly. He was a dedicated musician, engineer, band-member and friend. When I met him, I frankly wouldn't have thought we'd eventually be friends. He was clearly a metal-head...had a nose ring, long hair, wore metal-band shirts. But eventually I found out how humble he was and how accepting he was of all kinds of music. I remember talking with him in the studio around 2009 about crappy college food. After I mentioned how much soup and Easy Mac I'd eaten, his eyes lit up and he said "Oh yeah dude, I LIVE off some ravioli".
     Skip ahead to spring of 2011, when I hung out at the studio until around 3 am. Wes was writing a song for a recording project and I just sat in. Soon we were bouncing ideas off each other, coming up with phrases that were more brutal than before. It was stream of consciousness stuff that was about power and overthrowing it. I'd never written a metal song and he made it seem easy.
         At one point, we went to the Tapp Room every Wednesday for the taco special. He paid for my meal for my birthday. One time he talked about guilty-pleasure pop listening at Taco Bell. He played a silly-simple bass part for a cover of "Raindrops Keep Fallin On My Head". I saw As Oceans do a show in a friend's basement and Wes kicked a guy while playing guitar--and it was soooo metal. He'd talk about how hard it was to promote his band in today's media--you have to constantly give little nuggets of content and make personal connections. His occasional nickname on the studio schedule was "Big Daddy Dubbya". The last time I spoke with him, he had called me for advice on drum editing. He was handed a big project for the studio he was working for and needed to use beat-detective.

I hope he's remembered for his dedication as a musician, engineer, dependable friend, and the countless hours he'd spend trying to get everything just right. He was a big guy with a bigger heart, and was a massive metalhead. But more than a metalhead. To Wes, metal was high art. Complex rhythms, pristine production, atonal parts, clean tones, and lyrics about conspiracies and subcultures--questioning everything and defiant of being different. Wes was a metalhead who, on Facebook, had just joined "National Jim Henson Day", changed his religious views to "Theism", his political views to "People over everything".




Music:
solo project
Procrasturbation Take 2
Dorito Breath Remix
ECU Pump Up Song

Dead Meadow

Real good. Thankfully not that Jack White band.
It's like Earth meets The Black Keys with Sonic Youth singing.