{"id":167,"date":"2012-11-30T02:28:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T08:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2014-06-19T19:13:10","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T01:13:10","slug":"ah-the-slow-time-of-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/ah-the-slow-time-of-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Ah, the slow time of year…"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, I haven’t worked in about two weeks. And I’m having the time of my life.<\/p>\n

My daughter’s home from college, watching her become an adult is like, what… a butterfly emerging. My son’s been out of (home)school for Thanksgiving,  and we’ve re-roofed the doghouse, hit the skatepark, cleaned his room, and broke into the fireworks.  Sally’s made a stunning amount of Thanksgiving food that’s all gluten-free. I’ve been raking leaves, washing windows,  playing with the dogs, and projects. Ohhh, the projects.<\/p>\n

There’s some home projects, it’s true. I have 20 reflectors on our flat roof that keep the 2nd floor cool in summer, that I stacked and tarped for the winter. We had a lot of tree work done, and Joey and I sliced it up into firewood. Good lesson for Joey on the circular saw. I replaced my 2001 GMC Safari Van with a newer model, and finally got around to selling the old one. Treadmill 30 minutes every day. Did it twice on Thanksgiving. (Still loosing the war, tho…)<\/p>\n

Watching “The Walking Dead” on the treadmill. All caught up on “Homeland,” waiting for the new episodes to emerge. Waiting for the mid-season break of “Breaking Bad,” or is it just me? My illegal download site doesn’t show any episodes beyond #8.<\/p>\n

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Just took delivery on three “Greta” tube amplifiers from Fender, so I can see how they can be hacked\/modified into Ipod docks or something… got ’em for half price on Black Monday. $99! No Tax! Free Shipping!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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The Fender “Greta” table-top amplifier.<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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And finally, digging deep into a restoration, a Stellavox SM5 portable reel recorder. A stunning Swiss Watch of analog recording heaven…if only I can get the DC motor to hold steady speed. Take it apart, and it explodes…an overnight run test should bear out if I have the solution- seems like a victim of water damage.  This tiny recorder is a jewel, and the record electronics are working upon power-up. Just have to re-finish the cigar-box wooden case (what color?) , get that motor running, make a custom drive belt, and re-assemble. I’ll soon have 50-12000hz response in a 7″x4″ box with 3″ reels of recording tape. Machined gold-anodized aluminum parts, lots of tiny screws, massive flywheels and vintage germanium record electronics.  And a hot modulometer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Stellavox SM5, full track mono with synchronous recorder with pilot, 1961<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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Also working on the Nagra Ipod Dock at the same time. Trying to incorporate some kind of record capability into this beast… Having trouble finding a record amplifier with bias oscillator to create a slap-back echo affair on the tape drive. While still a functioning custom Nagra-based Ipod dock. And then the Lightining connector had to come along. Shit. This thing’s been in the works for over a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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The Nagra Ipod Dock on the bench. . It must record. Or will it? <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know, I haven’t worked in about two weeks. And I’m having the time of my life. My daughter’s home from college, watching her become an adult is like, what… a butterfly emerging. My son’s been out of (home)school for Thanksgiving,  and we’ve re-roofed the doghouse, hit the skatepark, cleaned his room, and broke into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/txsound.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}