The Ides of December!

December is already half over! Lots of things on hold right now. The Mrs. is on the mend from her blood clots - still in q lot of pain, but her spirits are starting to come back. I had a great experience this week. I "trained" the Hartford Public Schools Student Senate this week. They had 28 young people who act as an advisory board for the superintendent. I was really impressed by these young people and have high expectations for them in the future! I just got the final draft back from a feature article that will be in the February edition of School Administrator Magazine. It's all about mistakes superintendents make. I'm pretty excited about it. I am a regular columnist for them, but it's my first real article.

I've had a chipmunk hiding out in the music room for the last week. I tried glue traps and have a live trap baited with peanut butter, but haven't managed to get him out of the room until last night. We managed to chase it downstairs, but he's a persistent little bast@rd and he's hidden away somewhere. The dog totally ignores it.

Oh well, have a great week!

Only six days until the WInter Solstice (in the northern hemisphere) and then the days start getting longer again. Ten days until the official (but historically inaccurate) celebration of Christmas!

And I have completed all the preparation, except for wrapping. No more shopping to do, cards to send or decorations to put up. It feels somewhat anticlimactic!

So, a routine Sunday for me. I'm on a practice streak, so when I pick up my guitar today I will have completed 80 straight days. This traces back to my return from Ireland. Before that, when I started marking the days, I had a 50 day streak going. It's pretty easy to do when you're not traveling or working a job. Retirement is fun!

Also, as a creature of habit, I will attend church, then grab some lunch, perhaps watch some handegg, and try to get some outdoor exercise in before the promised rain arrives. Another plain, simple Sunday. I wish everyone a Sunday comfort day!

Like others have said, our Christmas prep has been completed with the exception of putting up the Christmas tree. That is something we have always done as a family tradition and will complete that on Christmas eve. My wife and I decided a few years ago to stop giving each other gifts as we both feel we have everything we need or want so our Christmas eve is spent sipping Dom Perignon and enjoying hors d'oeuvres while listening to music that means something to us.

We?re off this morning after church to enjoy brunch with our friends from our Corvette club. I hope all have a great day!

Doing a complete re-build of my pedal board. Long overdue.
A few things have changed and admittedly, I cobbed it together just to get it working. Added a new Keeley Compressor and it is just time for an overhaul.
My Princeton is next on the list for a thorough inspection. It just doesn't sound quite right and needs some attention. I'm going to start by changing the tubes. The tone is just kinda flat and lacking that juicy mid-range Princetons are known for.
After that, we're off to the Hillstown Blues Jam at the Knox Trail Inn where I hope to light the room on fire with my re-vamped rig!
Not overly ambitious before 1:00 today, is it?

Had coffee, took a nice dump, now just going to chill.

Yesterday was finishing up stocking stuffers for Christmas. Also worked on music some. Also consulted the local music store and tried to lock down details for NAMM. Today was 2 gigs on electric. Right now relaxing a bit, then it?s wrapping presents, working on music for next week, then some work stuff.

started a reply before I left to go to a store in the south end, must have had a brain fart and closed the window. We have had a roller coaster of weather. Snow. low teens for lows. then 60s and pouring rain and right back into cold. As long as I ain't shoveling I ain't complaining.

Wiring got roughed in this week, glad I was there because the original plans were for 4 wafer lights in the ceiling, found out they were about the same as a single 100 watt equivalent regular LED bulb. Not. Got that bumped up to 4 each side, on their own switch. It is gloriously lit down there now. Insulation up on the walls on three sides. Also got two switched outlets on the ceiling for atmosphere lighting. 8 duplexes around the wall, two up high by the windows. GFCI and AFCI. Something new to me, arc fault circuit interrupters. If something starts to spark, it disrupts the AC sine wave. I said to the electrician "you mean square waves?" and could tell he was impressed that I knew about that. 50 years of chasing guitar amp distortion teaches one a thing or two :D

https://i.imgur.com/tWVp7hS.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zEFIjdL.jpg

Got a gathering tentatively planned for Christmas eve, going to buy the ingredients I need tomorrow. I'm ready to coccoon for the next 2.5 months.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Offshore Angler

Had coffee, took a nice dump, now just going to chill.

---

Now THERE is a Sunday report for you! :biglaugh:

Dan, distortion is not a square wave. Distortion pedals use diodes to clip the sine wave. It's still sine wave [e to the power (i times theta)] (which can also be expressed in terms of sine and cosine) but just gets the top "sawn off" if you will. They use an op-amp to boost the signal and then clip it. Very simple circuits. Square waves are when we get into weird sh!t like ring modulators, etc. Square wave power is generally used for pulse width modulation, not something we need for guitars! Since the bias on a square wave is arbitrary it's really just switching power on and off which can be converted to digital. You wouldn't want it on say, a refrigerator because the inrush current would be mega. On a sine wave the bias is the "0" point of the current and you can multiphase circuits.

Chuck

It's been almost 50 years since I sold HiFi, but I seem to remember defining square wave response as combination of the pure musical tone (sine wave) with the odd harmonics (or something like that). It's been a long time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gibsonjunkie

It's been almost 50 years since I sold HiFi, but I seem to remember defining square wave response as combination of the pure musical tone (sine wave) with the odd harmonics (or something like that). It's been a long time.

---

We'll leave the Fourier transforms out of this thread, lol.

Here you go boys, a little explanation of distortion:
http://www.ovnilab.com/articles/clipping.shtml

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Laker

Here you go boys, a little explanation of distortion:
http://www.ovnilab.com/articles/clipping.shtml

---

Not sure who writes these things but they?re not engineers!

disortion actually comes from overload of cheap transistors with bad slew angles. The diodes play a part but not what most people think.

Square waves are a physical impossibility in an electric circuit. A voltage can only be a single value at any time. For a square wave it would have to have an infinite number of values at the step and zero inductance in the circuit.

Chuck

My definition of distortion: Something that sounds awry from what it normally sounds like.