Distortion....Nothing Special

Sooooo, I came in early today to add another project to my line before school ended.
Nothing special..
Just a simple distortion circuit that I got from google.
I plan to actually go a little farther with it because the rhythm guitarist of my band sure can use one.
For now, it's just on and off, but I plan to add volume controls using a 100k pot and distortion controls using a 1k pot.
Hopefully, for being a simple distortion, it will sounds somewhat decent.

And hey! There's the guts! I just put dat shiit in a plastic temporary housing, but at least it looks better than my talkbox..

Personal Guitar Junk Issues =(

Those of you who didn't know, my car got broken into recently and a bunch of stuff got stolen including my beautiful Ernie Ball Musicman guitar =(

So I went back up to Washington to grab the guitar that me and my construction buddy have been working on for the last year. Unfortunately, he didn't finish it like I had hoped, so I had to do it myself. I had to install the pickups (which really sucks). I also brought down a guitar that I put together when I was a wee lad, but smashed after a show in high school, soooo I got to redo the pickups on that one too, hooorahhhh. But, they're both working, and I have some temp guitars before the insurance (hopefully) covers my loses so I can buy a new guitar.

Ghetto-ass talkbox

Just an update on my talkbox.
Tis all done, it's nothing too crazy, but it was a pain in the butt to put together especially when it came to the housing.

For the housing I just used an electrical box that I picked up at the hardware store.
To connect the rubber tube, I used a copper pipe joint and crazy-glued it onto the box.
From there I glued the speaker to the hole where the copper joint sits.
The circuit I used was a simple mono amp circuit.
Besides from the motorboating when the pot is not either on 1 or 10, it works like a charm.

Woop!

How to fix your headphones without buying a new pair.

Hello fellow audio sound makers,

In this post, I shall go over the process of replacing the eighth inch adapter on the headphones. Almost all studio monitoring headphones are connected through three wires, tip, ring, and sleeve; or ground, left, and right. Most headphones that go bad in one ear is caused by wear and tear on the eighth inch jack. All that simply needs to be done is replace the jack with a new one. Here is the process of doing so:

The first step is to break down the rubber or plastic bearing on the outside of the jack, to get to the actual connection of the wires to the jack. Then.....

Snip Snip. Cut that little guy off, exposing the wires.

All headphone wire is wrapped with magnet wire. The magnet wire is wrapped with enamel in the wire. The enamel is not a conductor, therefore it must be separated from the wire to make the wire conduct. The magnet wire is used in headphone cables for the purpose of providing insulation while keeping the diameter of the wire small. Notice Sudhu doing a splendid job of trying to take that enamel off of the wires.

Once the enamel is scrapped off and an electrical signal can be established, a new eighth inch cable can be soldered on.

PNP vs NPN video: Breaks down the transistors in a very simple instructional tutorial

Hey all!

I found this video to be extremely helpful in describing the difference between PNP and NPN transistors.

Takeaway:

NPN uses a positive signal to allow current to flow through the circuit
PNP uses a ground signal to complete the circuit to allow current to flow through the circuit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Cv7CMHoGM

JFET vs BJT

In a nutshell, JFETs operate off of voltage while BJTs (Bipolar Junction Transistors) operate of off current.  The JFET is much more sensitive making it more accurate, however, is also more susceptible to damage from static electricity.

Link here: http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/transistor/tran_5.html

Great info on 12V Zener Diodes

Here's a quick screenshot I thought was very useful...

The full article is here:

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2012/basics-introduction-to-zener-diodes/

4th Connection on XLR cable (Accidentally deleted this post from earlier)

I posted this earlier and accidentally deleted it while editing a draft.

For those of you wondering what the 4th connection on an XLR cable is, it's called a "shield ground" in where the ground is connected to the entire metal casing of the cable.  It is usually not recommended to use this method being that once the cable is plugged into a system that has an alternate ground it may create an "earth loop."

Here's what one blogger had to say:

Why not to connect.

If you use the fourth lug you connect the metal parts of the connector to your “sound system earth”.  If the metal parts of connector then makes contact with something that has a different earth eg. lighting truss, metal parts of the stage etc. you have an earth loop.  

Electret Microphones need phantom power?

Today I tested my circuit using an apogee duet as my interface and Pro Tools for audio output.  During my test, I connected the circuit using a male XLR into input 1 on my apogee and surprisingly received a signal (Previous attempts didn't even register noise).  I was getting somewhere.

I continued to test by tapping on the capsule end of the circuit to see if it would react accordingly and adjust DB levels in Pro Tools.  It did just that, however, the DBv level was extremely low.  Realizing this, I tested with Phantom Power and the result was a much higher DBv level.  Confusing?  Yea, a little bit.

Electret Condenser Microphones typically do not need phantom power being that they hold a small charge (capacitance) between the fixed and moving plates of the capsule.  However, the phantom power isn't used for the microphone diaphragm itself, but rather, it is used to power the JFET.  As stated in my post about JFETs, these transistors are used to buffer voltage and control the flow of voltage throughout the circuit.

Alice Microphone 2N 4416 JFET Spec Sheet

This post relates to my last post on ECMs and JFETs.  It is the spec sheet for the JFET used in the Alice Microphone Schematic

http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys3330/phys3330_fa11/pdfdocs/2N4416a.pdf

Why Electret Condenser Microphones use JFET's

Hey all,

So during my construction of the Alice Microphone, I put together the circuit and was able to pass signal (noise) but couldn't capture audible noise such as speech or intelligible audio.  I figured doing a little research on the parts would help.  I've started with the main part of the circuit, the JFET (Junction Field Effect Transistor).

After doing some reading, the JFET is the most commonly used transistor in Electret Condenser Microphones (ECM's) being that it serves as a high impedance buffer/amplifier for Analog to Digital Conversion at the input stage.  As most of us know, an ECM holds a pre-charged voltage in its capsule.  When the sound pressure enters the capsule, the moving plate will adjust accordingly, thus changing the capacitance and output voltage.

Below you will find some of the benefits of a JFET when it comes to ADC.

Here is the link to the site http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/snaa114/snaa114.pdf