Little Victories

It's Black Cat Day

Eccles demonstrates how not to be seen

Hot Tub Freddie...

...is back !

Modulation Is Our Vocation

I just finished putting together this case of random modulation sources. It contains four chaos oscillators, two slope detectors, a dual sample & hold, but not one LFO

We Grow Cosmic Tomatoes

It's a sign...

The Croglin Vampire

It's on its way
It's going to be a monster

(This is only a test panel BTW)

Garlic Dread

I wasn't looking forward to pulling this Printanor garlic as while the weather currently is perfect, my garlic generally seems to rot or get blight. Not this year, I seem to have a good crop and the scapes will freeze quite nicely

Panel Games

I got tired of taking blank guillotined stock and marking it out, centrepunching, drilling in steps, de-burring holes, filing sharp edges etc etc etc. So I found someone to CNC panels from scratch and ordered my first batch - It's so much easier...

Vile Farm

Soon it will be time...

That's Shallot

I've harvested the remaining shallots this week. These Longor shallots look pretty good this year and they keep really well. They'll dry for a couple of days before I clean them again and then leave them to cure in the sun for a few weeks. After that they'll be ready to string up and store in a cool dry place

Dial M For...

...Attenuation. I've been looking for some stepped attenuation for a passive recording interface, and after messing around with switches and resistors for a while I came across these lovely Painton Type M attenuators on eBay. I've cleaned them up and even found some ex BBC rubber sleeving for the wiring. Now I need to sort out the panel...

The Goddess Elektron

I posted this on Soundcloud two weeks ago and forgot to post it here. This is a feedback loop using the Tudor3 (details here) and a Roland VT3. It's a live take, and this is a warts & all extract. The Tudor3 is manipulating the feedback and the VT3 is interpreting the signal and outputting that ethereal voice. There's a Korg DL8000R over the output for reverb duties

Sunset Over 666

Been here years and didn't realise that...

The Courgette Set

My potted courgettes have just started fruiting - hurray !

Pistols At Dawn

I discovered that my bat detector picks up processor noise from my Tascam DR44 so I decided to start work on a new microphone array - like a stereo bar, only wider. The grip is actually taken from an old grill pan. The shockmount is made from a drainpipe fitting, and somewhere in the workshop is a nice bit of aluminium for the crossbar

Mr Soft

I bought one of these Softpots a few months ago with the view to making a simple ribbon controller. After casting around for a nice flat bit of hardwood, I settled on an offcut of the strip shelving that I seem to use on everything. The softpot is wired to a TRS jack

Unit Operator

I finally got around to making a case for my sine to square wave converter (aka distortion unit). The face plate comes from an old military surplus morse key and the case is made from some old strip shelving that I've used on nearly a dozen projects

Leaner Lovage

The lovage is ready for picking, so I went out a cut a few fronds for drying. So you could say it's now looking a little leaner. The toobs, tender at this time of year, were chopped up and frozen

And my lucky number is 23

Wyld Scallyns

Okay, more likely wild garlic, but I was still pretty impressed that it managed to travel about two feet from the wild garlic patch. I quickly repotted it ready to replant later in the year

Beech Leaf Noyau

The beech has been coming into leaf this week, so it's Noyau time !

Let's Do The Time Warp Again..?

...Or...   ...The Beast From The East...

I picked up this little beauty through VEMIA recently, the Korg DL8000R. It's a little known but really nice sounding delay with a pretty idiosyncratic operating system. Once you 'get it' (which might take some time) it's a really powerful machine

From Industrial To Agricultural

I still have a load of these old compilation albums floating around, so decided to put them to better use in the garden to scare off the pigeons who have managed to get to my Japanese Spinach

Filter Fun

I've a bit of a panel backlog at the moment due to the cold weather. Yesterday I finally got around to finishing the classic Moog passive filter set. As it's just a bunch of capacitors and two resistors (and a switch) it's something I've been meaning to do for quite a while

Wild Garlic Ahoy !

It's on its way...

You're So Square

While it was snowing today, I took the opportunity to put together a completely passive sine wave to square wave converter. Why do I need one of these ?

Because this is where distortion lives...

The Horror...

Not tomatoes this time but HTML. I finally edited down and posted the entire Un! back catalogue. You can find it here

Tuberosa Time Again

They've been in the ground long enough, time to harvest the Oca

Reyt Hundred

I recently found a cheap Roland RE-800 on eBay, it's one of those lost digital effects from the early 90's. Designed as a successor to the Space Echo but before they cottoned on to the value of that brand. The tech specs don't give much away but it's a very simple to use, tweakable and pleasing set of effects. And nowhere near as noisy as say a Quadraverb. Here's a one take test:

Evil Tomatoes

Still evil (or maybe just slightly menacing)