An Engineer Engineering

I love it when that happens!

I acquired a pair of Shure KSM32’s a while back in a trade for studio time. Thankfully, the guy brought them before we started. The original deal was for $600 of studio time (totally in my favor, yet no one was taken advantage of). I didn’t even really want the mics, figured I’d sell em if nothing else. Upon receipt of the mics, I immediately tested them as soon as I could (at the end of our first session) and one of them wasn’t firing. The deal was then readdressed, dropped to $400 in studio time as I’d have to repair it.

Shure is actually cool about their repairs: they have flat fees for any product, and repair. If I were to ship it to them, give them $96, I’d have a working mic.

But, I wanted to see if I could fix the sucker (Probly a stupid cap in the power supply section, right?). Nope. It’s aaaall SMT. Dang. On the shelf it went until I had $100 to play with.

Today I opened it up again, just for one more look. Maybe there’s A solder joint I can futz with! Turns out, there are two PCBs: one for the actual guts, one for the pad and roll off switches. The second one (harder to get to without actual disassembly), does have some solder joints and the input from the capsule goes through it all. So I took it as apart as I could without desoldering.

Turns out, there’s a slide in connector between the two PCBs. I plugged in the mic while all the guts were in my hand to see if wiggling now accessible wires would indicate a bad solder joint. And! It was stinking working! It was just a connector that was tired at life and needed a little massage!

Sometimes, things just need taken apart:)

Woohoohoo, pretty! The first two production model Crazy 88s, ladies and gentleman!

The screen print labeling under clear coat did some interesting things. It’s too shiny to photograph, but the top looks like the photoshop ‘shrink wrap’ filter. Only in real life, all three dimensions of it.

I made the circuit boards for these two fellas a month ago. All that’s left is the wiring!

Screen print: CHECK!

These are two of the first production run of The Crazy 88 Loop Boost. Got my silkscreen working beautifully! They’re finishing drying, I’ll be doing the yellow fade and clear coat as soon as they cool.

So excited to finally have a reliable labeling situation. The screen my buddy Drew made for me also contains the artwork for The Abbey and The PBRDrive, as well as a Built By Speck emblem. Hopefully every pedal I make from now on will be screen printed!!!

My big ass red button, all encased and wired.

I’m officially of the opinion that every engineer ( every man, even) needs one.

Finished the window! Finally! Fiberglass insulation between the window and a sheet of OSB. Covered that with hemp acoustic tiles I cut from remnant reams. Used simple 2x4s and 1x2s to mount.

So many things to do!

The enclosure for my new TalkBack switch came in the mail today… it’s drilled and the paint is drying.

Finally decided to finish the window treatment in the drum room. I’m gluing 12” squares of hemp acoustic material to it. Gotta get that sucker done in time for Monday’s session.

Thanks to my buddy Drew, got my silkscreens in yesterday. That means I can drill, screen, paint, and wire the new Crazy 88’s.

…FINALLY!

SOMEbody got a new button to push! Finally found a momentary switch that will trigger both of the talkback mics I have. (one requires normally closed, the other normally open).

Yeah! Just need to find the right enclosure situation.

It’s like an awesome rocket launching awesome button!

In Other News

I started this blog with intentions of documenting things broader than just guitar pedals. The pedal thing has really been a focus lately, for sure, but my good friend Dan Keck has encouraged me to start going down another road as well. We have some plans for modding things: preamps, A/D converters, mics, etc.

He’s coming by tomorrow to do some soldering. He recently acquired a cool Tascam recording desk out of the 80s, and it unfortunately has ONLY RCA jacks. (really Tascam?)

Dan had an 8 channel TRS snake. So we’re cutting it in half to make two 8 channel TRS to RCA snakes, to interface with a DAW and actually use this sucker!

Expect photographicalish evidence.

Come on, guys.

So in order to do the dual led mod on the Crybaby, had to first make it true bypass. Naturally, rather than just figure it out, I YouTube it.

Bad idea.

The first one that pops up is just plain wrong. The others, that are correct, show horrid practices in execution. I wouldn’t expect those to last more than a year without needing redone, let alone REPAIRED.

Geeze. I think I’m going to do my own tutorial on principle alone.

Just whipped this up for Jake VP:

The coolest Crybaby Wah you’ve ever seen. We plan on having two colors. One for bypassed (with a true bypass mod, of course) and another color while engaged.