What have you DIYed lately?

[ubertar]

My latest DIY project is pickles. I like 'em good and spicy. Lots of garlic, dill, hot peppers, and some curry spices (turmeric, coriander, cumin). Of course there's also vinegar and salt to make the brine, and I add some lemon juice and a little sugar. I added some tequila to a recent batch. The only thing I don't like about them is you have to wait so long before you can eat them (about a week). People pickle all kinds of things, but these are just the usual pickled cucumbers.
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http://spectropolrecords.bandcamp.com/album/solo-trios
“In this field, the number two is important. We count one, two, infinity.” Jill Tarter

[dfuruta]

[ubertar]

You pickle them in milk? I've never heard of that. What style does that make? Sounds interesting. I do the flash heat method, and seal the jars right away. I'd do the fermentation thing if I knew of a source for pickling yeast, if such a thing exists-- all the recipes I've seen call for leaving the lids open with cloth on top for a day or more. I don't trust the native bacteria in the air here in NYC enough to do that. They come out well the way I'm doing them; it just takes a while.

I used to make water kefir in the fridge-- basically home made soda. But I don't really like soda (too sweet) and you have to keep making the stuff to maintain the culture, so I stopped.

My wife really likes beets, so I'll have to try that. Thanks for the tip on rutabagas-- I'll try those too, if our grocery store ever has them.
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my new record:
http://spectropolrecords.bandcamp.com/album/solo-trios
“In this field, the number two is important. We count one, two, infinity.” Jill Tarter

[dfuruta]

Actually it's called lacto-fermentation because the main bacteria at work is Lactobacillus, and it produces lactic acid from the sugars in the vegetables. It's pretty simple–put whatever you're pickling in brine, weight it down so nothing's above the surface of the water and let it go. The crock I got has a seal so no air can get in, so as it ferments the gasses push the air out of the jar. Very clever. So, it's a raw form of pickling, and the sourness comes from the lactic acid. I haven't found starter culture to be necessary, provided the brine is the right ratio (around 5% salt).

This is the traditional way that sauerkraut, kimchi, and sour cucumber pickles are made, and it works for pretty much anything.

DIY pickles are great! So much more satisfying than just buying them.

[ubertar]

Ah, ok. Doesn't sound all that different from what I do, except I boil the brine before pouring it on the cukes.

They taste so much better than anything you can buy, too. Mainly b/c you can make them however you like them. Had some hipster craft pickles recently made with rye whiskey that were quite good though.

I need to get more jars. I eat them faster than I can make them. At some point I'll probably get sick of pickles.
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my new record:
http://spectropolrecords.bandcamp.com/album/solo-trios
“In this field, the number two is important. We count one, two, infinity.” Jill Tarter

[Scodiddly]

Been pretty busy at work, haven't done much DIY in the last couple of weeks.

At work, however, I made a DIY tool to hold the male (pins) end of a Socapex connector so I could unscrew the shell. This is a big lighting/power connector with 19 pins, and I made a plywood insert with a handle - drilled for the pins, so it hold everything together. Works very nicely for something that took about 20 minutes to make.

[Scodiddly]

Been pretty busy at work, haven't done much DIY in the last couple of weeks.

At work, however, I made a DIY tool to hold the male (pins) end of a Socapex connector so I could unscrew the shell. This is a big lighting/power connector with 19 pins, and I made a plywood insert with a handle - drilled for the pins, so it hold everything together. Works very nicely for something that took about 20 minutes to make.

[Brian Brock]

I realized that the hum from a power conditioner I had stopped using was from the transformer for the lights, which I never used, so I disconnected them and now have humless power conditioner...

also I took apart an old computer - mostly without breaking it - in preparation for building a new one this winter.

[vvv]

[getreel]

I haven't posted on TOMB in a long while, but I had an email from someone looking for info on a Yamaha PM700 like I used to have. That brought me back here for a look around and I saw this thread.

I've actually been restoring an Alice 828 I got for very cheap 6 months or so ago. It's a very early one so even the hand drawn schematics I got from TFPro aren't completely accurate. So far, with the help of my tech friend who used to work on Radar for the Navy, we have rebuilt the power supply board and mains cable, replaced all the faders as the old ones were shot, and have been going through each channel and rebuilding those replacing caps and bad transistors. Only 2 or 3 channels functioned at all before we started. This 828 has mostly Belclere transformers but 2 of them had Sowters that were hacked onto them. Very ugly repair work on this thing where these 2 channels had the transformers just hanging off of them and the PCBs were damaged very badly. Got one of these fixed and the last basket case channel is mostly working now(at least the line input) so everything but the mic pre is good now. The mic pre is being worked on right now and it's being handwired where the circuit traces on the PCB were trashed. Then one last channel to fix. We really made this one nice inside when we basically rewired all the cards to the jacks with better wire. It had tiny little wires connecting the cards to the 1/4" and XLR jacks. Now it's pretty sweet! I really want to hear what this little guy(or girl) sounds like. If anyone wants to see, I've taken some photos along the way. I'll be keeping this forever if I can as Ed, the tech, is such a good friend and has done so much nice work helping me with this. In other words, after all the DIY with Ed, it will have great sentimental value as well as sounding real good(I hope!). He's taught me a lot in the couple of years we've worked together and I've fixed his computers for him on many occasions as well. He's great with electronics but hates PCs!!

Back to the PM700...Earlier this year, I modded a couple of channels replacing the TA7136s with some LME49990s on Brown Dog adapters they made specifically for the TA SIL chips. They don't have these on their web site, but they made me some to test and they do work. If anyone else needs them, maybe ask and see if they can make more. I was going to mod direct outs and possibly put Hardy 990Cs in the Master, but ended up selling it trying to lighten the load because I was contemplating a move during the summer.

Next item on the agenda is to replace a bad volume pot on the DDA Interface I bought from Scodiddly a few years ago. It's my main console and the Alice is to be a nice little sidecar, I hope.

Great to see what everyone's been up to.
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Grady
studio.encoremc.com
www.absolutewebdev.net
www.fastactingrecords.com

[Jim Williams]

Been layout the pcb's for the new model of High Speed Mic Preamp. I'm almost sold out of the originals so it's long due as a replacement. This one is direct coupled, 30~100 mhz bandwidth, 2000V/us slew rate and super low noise (-136dbu EIN). THD resides under the noise floor and IMD is below .0002%. I designed some on-board power conditioning to remove any psu noise or ripple to below .5 mv. I'll also be changing from conductive plastic pots to a 12 position gain switch using precision resistors.

The goal is to make it a four channel preamp instead of two like before. It's all current feedback or transconductance design with transconductance opamps, the only one as far as I know besides the original version that was released in 1995.

Other "projects" in the works include a low frequency "harmonic generator" to fatten up the low end and some unique designs to allow you to use more than one preamp or processor at the same time on one mic or input with a lot of bells and whistles to allow mixing/combining/shaping, etc.
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Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[dfuruta]

Accidentally destroyed an old laser printer while working on it. The motor that moves the scanning mirror (inside the laser assembly) was rubbing; screwed up while taking it apart and wrecked the part. Live and learn!

[dfuruta]

[Jim Williams]

That's with a shorted input, the true way of measuring an input's self noise. All further noise contribution is by the source imperdance. It measures -133 db EIN at 50 ohms, many mics are made with that impedance. This was done on my Audio Precision analyzer, the IMD curves look like the residuals on the analyzer so I don't really know how clean it is since the AP is somewhat limited when designing cutting edge stuff. Another spec to marvel at is zero degrees phase shift, 20~20k hz, the only mic preamp that does that. Good if you like time alignment. It passes a 10k square wave perfectly. No other mic preamp can do that, ASAIK.

Yes, the best test gear has limitations and sometimes you are right up against them. Someday there may be better tools but so far this is it.
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Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[dfuruta]

[mrc]

Just a much needed computer rebuild/upgrade.