Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.

Random.org says the 28th comment gets the autoformers.

by my count that means oneinthepipe gets them.

All we need now is a real name and a shipping address.

the intactaudio link at the top of the blog will lead you to the appropriate email address to send the info to.

dave

A fistful of nickels.

I'll be the first to admit I am no George Costanza but read on because these 80% nickel chokes are headed out to serve an interesting duty.

A few months back I received a call fro Dimitri at Ronin Applied Sciences about the possibility of using an inductor as a plate load in a microphone capsule.  Of course I am always up for a cool new idea so I did up prototype.  Apparently the recent showing at the NY AES convention created a bit of a stir and more inducors are going out tomorrow.

Below are some pictures of the finished product and at an introductory price of $4200 it should be a giant killer!  Total props go out to Dimitri for thinking outside the box and trying something as silly as a 140hy 5ma 80% nickel choke loading a c3g in a mic capsule!  (full specs from Dimitri)

In talking to a few of my historian friends there was some recollection of an inductive loaded tube in a mic capsule by telefunken in the 30's and if anybody out there has any references to others who used inductors in capsules please chime in.

dave

stop the insanity.

occasionally we have to try crazy stuff and a customer recently needed a different attenuation range for his speaker level autoformers and new pair of tasty 49% nickel units are going out tomorrow.

Since the most economical way to ship them is a flat rate box, I can slip another pair of toys into the box for him to play with.  It just so happens that his crossover uses a 2.5mhy choke so a pair of amorphous inductors it is.

Coming in at nearly 5 pounds each and using something like #8ga wire with a rectangular cross section they have a massive 50 milliohms of DCR.   Compare that to a 12ga aircore with 350 milliohms or a 14ga steel cored inductor with 120 milliohms of DCR and I surely have some chest beating bragging rights.

OK seriously, I had the bobbins left over taking up space and rather than recycle the copper I figured I'd rather send them out for someone to listen to.  As always I encourage public reports (both good and bad) since I really don't have anything at risk here and ultimately they would have to sell for a huge amount of money.  I guess the point is that I have a sucker (oops cusomer) willing to give them a listen and I gots to know.


Oh yeah,  the monk cover was what I was listening to and I needed some fill light for the hack photos.  A professional would have photoshopped it out but i am not worthy to touch monk.

dave

RMAF 2011 via Manho...

blatant post of Manho's pictures....

He obviously spent too much time in the room. Now that I think about it, we all did. Next year, I vote we take Saturday afternoon off and go hiking. The Fall color is just too good.

However, as Dave would say, "This is why we go to shows." These pictures are full of people I have known for years, if not decades. It was great seeing so many friends.


Me

Enjoy the Music giveaway.

A few months back Dick Olsher reviewed the autoformer modules for the DIY section of Enjoy the Music.  I sent him a pair of modules and he put them in a simple plastic box for the review. (PDF of the review is here)

We agreed that after the review was done the final enclosure needed to be given away.  Steve Rochlin was cool with us giving it away here.

The only rule is if you win it, you need to use it.  If it doesn't work for you pass it along to someone who can use it.

To enter simply add your name n the form of a one line comment below and random.org will pick a winner in a week or so.

good luck!

Cavity Search

I'm not talking about dental procedures here!

It seems every time I fly, I end up with one of these nice reminders from the TSA that they have searched through my stuff.   This time upon arriving home I opened my bag and some of the contents in plain sight alarmed even me. 

pulling back a bit shows the whole picture of the contents.

The IED's tag was a joke at the display table and I have no idea how it found its way into my suitcase and if I would have seen it while packing up I would have tossed it.  I know Johhny wanted to go through security with me to film the events so maybe he hid the IED card with hopes of a million hit youtube video.

Luck was on my side and I made it home without issue and I want to leave you with a pic of the two revolutionaries that wore those badges all weekend.

  More RMAF coverage to come.

dave

32... the magic number.

more memphis horns...

.
not the famous horn group, The Memphis Horns, but.. well.. somehow still memphis horns...


I know the Occupy Wall Street group is not using horns as they feel they are too forward and off-putting, but maybe this person did not get that message??... or maybe because of her message, she is allowed to be forceful..


in any case, yet more memphis for you guys who do not live here.. I realized that I need to complete the Memphis picture for "ya'll", so I will start sneaking more memphis into the texts...

Me

More Autoformers.....

.
finished two more autoformers a while back... forgot to show you guys...


the first is in a mahogany case with black base to match an amplifier... toggle up and down for volume.. simple toggle for source selection... and of course remote.....



the second is a more modern horizontal hifi style... note the name on this one.. later this week we will have a related giveaway... tied in with his online rag....



Me

Godzilla.

Good friend and family member John  Ngo at Par-Metal / Antek was doing some chassis work for us for some upcoming products.  I'll admit I use and like toroids and when perusing his catalog I saw this beast.  It is 1900VCT @ 0.7A  and comes in at just about the weight of the 320hz field coil compression driver.

Scale always being the issue,  here it is with a more traditional 350V tube transformer and the much smaller ($10) filament transformers they offer.  Since I don't smoke I needed to use a different vice for true scale.

On their website they have an extensive catalog with current pricing and stock amounts which brings me to the topic of the post and that is Berger acting up amongst a metropolis of stocked toroids 5 miles from NYC in the beautiful swamplands of New Jersey.

Shameful Shameful Shameful.

a few thousand words of shameful self promotion of the Kahn LCR.  Although technically I am not promoting myself... so what the heck.

crazy loot delivery day.

four packages showed up today all with some nice loot inside.  The first one came from Mr. Oh and had an assortment of 49% nickel lam sizes they recently acquired.  I have to come right out and say that that even though many people consider me crazy,  Those guys are insane and set goals for me to aspire to.

without the 300B for scale the family looks pretty pedestrian and it doesn't really hit home until you see the basic autoformer sized lam in the picture for comparison.

 

 

The next two boxes had goodies from a different realm.  One had a panasonic strain gauge and the other had a Euphonics U15-2 which is one of the earlier lower output Euphonics.

The last box is the one that made me nervous since it actually cost me some real money and since they were not fully tested they represented a bit of a risk.

 I must be living a charmed life these days since not only do they test perfectly, In circuit they are nearly matched  (13ma & 15ma) which is very difficult to get.  Given a random sample of 10 tubes, you would be lucky to get three pair this close and for a given 150V B+ and -2V bias you might see a pair at 10-12ma  a pair at 18-20ma and a pair at 28-30ma.  They all sound great but man they are all over the place.

dave... knocking hardly on wood.