As a professional programmer by trade, I spend most of my days sitting in front of a computer.  Many of my hobbies put me right there in the same chair too.

Every few years, I go through an ergonomic wake-up call – the really depressing, getting-old variety like “oy, my <body-part> is <depressing-pain-symptom> from <computer-activity>”.  

Some typical examples:

“oy, my left hand is numb from trackball-clicking” 
“oy, my right-shoulder is getting tendonitis from mousing”
”oy, my back is killing me from sitting all day”

When my years of right-hand mousing starting torquing my shoulder, I switched to left-hand trackballing.  Now that’s been a few years, and I’m getting lots of bad left-hand pains and numbness.  A couple years ago, I went to the sadistic pins-and-needles doctor who poked me and sent electric shocks through the nerves in my arm (fun for about a minute, then downhill after that).  The conclusion was that I don’t have carpal tunnel, yet, but it’s obviously some form of repetitive strain injury.

Clearly the human body isn’t designed to sit in a chair all day, typing.  I’m only 40 and my body is falling apart.   I try to take breaks during the day, but programming requires an obsessive mind – the kind of focus that has you sitting in your chair for long hours not noticing that you’re freezing cold, starving, dry-eyed and tired.  I go to the gym a couple evenings a week, which really does help, but it just isn’t enough.

This obviously affects my ability to enjoy guitar, keyboard, woodworking, even holding hands with my kids.  It’s a sad moment when you have to tell your four-year old daughter, “Ouch sweetie, please don’t hold my hand so hard- it hurts my fingers”.   

I definitely need an ergonomic overhaul.  I’ll write up some of my experiments in the next few weeks.

As I prepare and edit a video in Sony Vegas Pro 9, I tend to get a bit disorganized, bringing in source pictures, video, animations from various places on my hard disk.  I’m especially bad about saving pictures temporarily on my desktop.

Sometimes, I do a bazillion takes of voiceover audio, and end up with countless unused wave files in the project.

So, in order to eliminate those unused takes, and to consolidate the files into a single location, ready to be backed up, here’s what I do.

Removing Unused Media From Project

To remove audio and video clips which are referenced by the project but no longer used (e.g. discarded audio or video takes):

1. Open the Project Media tab in the Sony Vegas project window.
2. Click on the Lightning Bolt in the Tool Bar
3. All unused media will be removed from the Project Media folder (but will not be removed from the hard disk)

Consolidating Source Files to a Single Folder

To consolidate all source files from wherever they may be on your hard disk to a single location, choose Save As from the File menu.

In the file dialog, create a new folder and type the name of the project to save.  Then click on the checkbox “Copy Media With Project”.

This will cause all the files used by the project to be copied to the new folder location.

When you click Save, you will be offered the option of trimming the source media to the actually used portions.  This is useful is you’re trying to conserve disk space or fit onto a backup DVD, or if you’re 100% you’ll never want to edit this project again.  If you’re not sure, it’s best to copy the full source media, just in case there’s some source material you might need later.

Purging Those Unused Files

In order to permanently delete the unused files that were removed from the project in step 1, you’ll need to use Windows Explorer to find the source locations and blast em away.  Generally I accomplish this by simply deleting my original project folder (which is where all those voiceovers were sitting).  Then I also have to go delete the junk I left on my desktop too.

Back It Up

Now to back up the project, you just need to copy the consolidated folder onto a DVD (or wherever you want.)

Well, part 2 of the tone video took waaaay longer than I anticipated!  I spent a ridiculous amount of time editing, and animating illustrations of the tone circuit.

Here I present a tutorial on how to read cap values, an explanation of how the capacitance and resistance work together as an RC filter in the tone circuit, and some audio examples to help in selecting a useful cap value for a tone circuit.

I play through a series of Orange Drop polypropylene caps with values (pictured right-to-left) .047uF, .022uF, .01uF, 6800pF, 4700pF, 3300pF and 1000pF.

I purchased these Orange Drops at Mouser – significantly cheaper than at guitar specialty stores.

As with part 1 of this video, everything is played on my Epiphone Riviera P93 with Vintage Vibe Guitars P-90 pickups, through my Vox VT30 on the Boutique Clean model, mic’d with a Rode NT1 large diaphragm microphone.

After much deliberation, experimentation, determination, and the inevitable procrastination and distraction… I’ve finally completed this comparison of tone capacitor material types and capacitance values.  In part 1, I’ll evaluate a bunch of different dialectric material types to see how they change the character of the sound.  In part 2, I’ll cover how different capacitance values affect the range and usefulness of the tone pot.

First, I built this Tone Thing   It’s a piece of cardboard on which I mounted 7 different capacitor material types, and 7 Orange Drops of different capacitance values, and one Bourns 500k audio taper pot.  This is connected up with alligator clips to my Epiphone Riviera P93, in parallel with the signal at the output jack (the same place as the master tone in a regular guitar circuit).

The caps in this corner are all .022uF of different dialetric material types.    Pictured left to right: Orange Drop 225P 100V (polypropylene), Mallory 150 series (metallized polyester film), Russian K-409 PIO (paper in oil), mystery vintage yellow cylinder (possibly paper in wax), the original Epi tone cap (probably mylar polyester film), mystery vintage gray cylinder (possibly paper in oil), and a vintage tropical fish (polyester film).  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a .022uF tropical fish – this one is a .033uF.  It will have a slightly different cutoff frequency, so it’s not quite all apples and apples, but I wanted to include it here anyway because it does have an interestingly different sound to it.

For each material type, I play at 4 knob positions: 10, 7, 5 and 1 (measured on the multimeter at 499k, 238k, 41k and 3k ohms).   For the examples, I wanted to keep each part short and simple – not too melodic or difficult, both to avoid distraction in comparing, but also to try with my limited playing skills to be as consistent as possible between each take.  By the end of this video, you will be very sick of the three little phrases I play 28 times each in the video!

Stay tuned for part 2, covering all the Orange Drops at different capacitance values, and the exciting conclusion

p.s. Thanks Jack for sending the PIO!

Some day I’d like to build an all-wood enclosure for my amp.  These beautiful cabinets from Matchless, Fuchs, and Mesa/Boogie are really inspiring.  Check out the nicely figured hardwoods and dovetailed joinery.  Those Matchless speaker grills are really cool too.

These amps are not standard production models, but can be built custom at Mesa/Boogie (and possibly at Matchless too?)

The Fuchs Overdrive Supreme is a 10th anniversary limited model, with only 10 being made.

Manufacturers:

http://www.matchlessamplifiers.com/

http://www.fuchsaudiotechnology.com/

http://www.mesaboogie.com/

Marc at The Wood Whisperer has posted the final part in the video series Birth of a Guitar, documenting Rick Urschel’s classical guitar project.   If you’ve been watching, part 2 ended on a cliffhanger, Rick having mistakenly glued on the fretboard before tapering it.  Disaster!  This video starts with Ricks laborious fix with Japanese saw, chisel, scraper and sandpaper.  Then Rick goes on to shaping the neck with a spokeshave, installing fret wire, and positioning the bridge.  The finish starts with pore-filling with pumice, then applying 5 coats of shellac and 5 coats of satin polyurethane.   Finally, Rick installs the nut, tuning machines, and uses a fancy vacuum press to glue down the bridge – how cool is that!?  You can also see Rick’s homemade walnut guitar stand.  

The final result is beautiful, and a testament to Rick’s persistence, patience and determination!  This really makes me appreciate how much effort goes into building a handmade guitar.  Even after all that effort, there’s some kind of “rogue” harmonic thing going on with the open G string that he was unable to figure out.  If you have any ideas, contact him!

Take a look:

In years past, Grizzly had an enormous booth at the NAMM trade show demonstrating all their power tools, table saws, planers, sanders, shapers, etc.   While they were absent this year, there was still plenty to excite and inspire.

For the aspiring luthier or woodworker, there’s nothing more appetizing than stacks of gorgeously figured exotic hardwoods. 

Here’s a few products from this year’s NAMM trade show that were surprising, unique, or just downright silly:

Manufacturers:

http://visionaryinstruments.com/

http://bulletproofguitars.com/

http://www.voyageairguitar.com/

http://www.lagguitars.com/

http://www.strumstick.com/

http://www.coffincase.com/

http://guitargrip.com/

http://dbzguitars.com/

http://www.rockettdrumworks.com/

http://www.hapitones.com/

At this year’s NAMM, Vox announced a series of new guitars.  These things look beautiful.  They’ll be available in April 2010, pricing TBA.

VOX Series 55 Specifications

• Scale Length: 638mm (25.125″)
• No. Of Frets: 22
• Nut Width: 43mm (1.7″)
• Bridge Pickup: Coaxe
• Neck Pickup: Coaxe
• Body: Mahogany
• Top: Ash or Maple (depending on finish)

I recorded a short demo of Freddy DeMarco playing the vintage cream SSC-55 single cutaway through a Vox AC-30 amp.  The pickups sound really versatile, the build quality feels superb, and the styling is understated and excellent.  Take a look:

When I met with the friendly CTS guys at the NAMM trade show, they talked up their new 450G series of guitar pots.    Compared with the EP086 pots I’m used to, these 450G pots have slightly lower torque when turning.  The CTS rep said this is due to less contact surface area on the underside of the pot, as you can see in this photo (EP086 on left, 450G on right).

Another of the primary goals of the new 450G pots is to address part numbering confusion.  The rep told me that EP086 is an AllParts number that CTS stamps onto the pot.  It’s really a series 450 pot made specially for AllParts, but there’s no cross reference back from EP086 to a CTS part number.   The rep told me that CTS builds guitar pots a bit differently than they do commercial/industrial pots, so they internally assign a different 450 part number, built special/custom for the ordering customer.  The customer (like AllParts, Mojo, DiMarzio, etc) can have their own part number (like EP086) stamped on the pots.   The new 450G series will hopefully help to standardize this part numbering, making it less confusing to the average guitar-geek like you and me

The datasheet doesn’t appear to be up on the CTS website yet, so I had the rep send it to me.  Here it is.