I know Bud and Janice ride trail bikes, I know Notes writes styles, I know Pat Marr does animation, I know Herb trains dogs for search and rescue... What do you folks do outside of music?

My is dictated by my being single, as I have no "couples" things to do. I like small woodworking projects. (Like I needed to rack mount some gear so I rigged up a rack from spare 2x4s.) I love cooking. I play backgammon against my computer and rarely lose. I have played in online tournaments in the past and in fact got to the last 8 in the bracket in one nationwide tournament. The girl I beat to get to that round of 8 posted a comment that said "If you draw this guy, be prepared for the match of your lifetime. He plays like a textbook. Don't wait for him to make a mistake. He won't make one." I also enjoy chess but I don't play it often. I have played matches against people I met on AARP's web page by connecting on Zoom, opening up my online game, and sharing the screen control so the other side can roll and move. Really like strategy based games like that.

I DON'T like yardwork (though I do it), painting (inside or out), and could do home repairs if they were inside the scope of what I can physically handle. I just had my back gutters replaced and while it was something that in years past I could have done, I don't have any desire to be up 30 feet hanging on a ladder. I grudgingly vacuum and wet mop, but things like dusting can wait. It'd be different if I ever had company but it's just me and Chunk and nobody ever visits. That's probably not a shock to anybody knowing my shining personality...

Stuff like Herb did when he built that amazing studio just blow me away. I have tinkered with the idea ever since to buy a 12x24 shed kit and put it the backyard to be my studio. I might even do more actual work with a nice environment. The 2nd floor of mine is dreary and uninspiring. It'd be insulated, have 4 skylights, seating for 6, maybe a 6" raised floor so all the cabling is hidden...

What do you guys do away from music?

I was gonna pop in and post but you got me covered pretty well.

I never forgot how great that studio looks. Here in the city I am limited to a 10x10 size before I need a permit, but I am really thinking about it... All cuz of YOU, you SOB you!!! Studio envy has me considering spending money! Everything about that room of yours is perfect, right down to the color!

I do a lot of stuff other than music....but the boss is calling at the moment so I will post later. Happy wife, happy life...lol

Billy

ok...back

Riding my bike



Shopping foe food



Growing a few flowers



Building electronics



I think this is called pigging out...lol



Hanging out in Gindelwald Switzerland

[img]https://i.imgur.com/xctrOrg.mp4[/img]

Going whole hog, eh?

It's just a Cuban crime of passion...lol

Billy

Damn, that pig looks good!

The pig was good Bob. We do this every Christmas. This is a pretty normal Cuban traditional thing to do. I am not Cuban but my business partner is. His kids are at my house so much I am not sure they know where they live...lol

We did not do this last Christmas because of the pandemic. THe pig has been in the barn so long now he is becoming a pet and none of us has the heart to kill him...lol

WE have a lot of chickens but if the kids find out I killed one they will not eat it. They eat the ones from the store without issue....go figure.

The kids will eat the pigs, sheep or goats or cows I kill and butcher but not the chickens.

The weather here lets us grow vegetables here pretty much year around. I bring seeds from Europe so we have vegetables that you don't see here.

A lot of tropical fruit grows here without issue.

I think I may be the last generation to grow our own food.

Billy

Woodworking, LeatherCrafting, Making and eating Pierogi

When I was stationed in Oklahoma after Vietnam there were a fair number of Puerto Rican soldiers there and twice a summer they did a pig roast. They had this wild looking contraption that was chicken wire on every side welded to a metal frame held together at the corners by pins. The sides were hinged as well. When they pulled the pins the sides fell down. The pit they dug had allowed for about 9 inches on every side and they lowered that cage down onto cinder blocks at the bottom of the pit and thus had heat on the bottom and all 4 sides of the pig. And they had a vented metal hood that laid on the top to trap most of the heat and let some of the smoke out. When it was done they hooked a cable onto the cage and lifted the whole thing up with a hook on a tow truck crane arm. It was quite ingenious how they rigged it. The pig itself sat on it's own metal grate. These guys were all welders and metal workers and built this whole thing from an idea and scrap metal they got from the base. They were all lifers and where we were early 20-ish they were nearing the end of their hitch, like early 40s and up. We would all show up with side dishes and beer.

Mainly beer.

Between those guys they had a car repair business (this the tow truck), had built a race car to run at the local track, and were just outstanding welders. Being in the motor pool I got to know them well and when we had something that was a difficult weld I knew exactly who to call. I used to tell one guy he was so good he could weld air to water.

THAT I can relate to!!!

When I was growing up we raised hogs and chicken so we always had a good supply of meat and eggs. Dad also hunted and fished so we had plenty of squirrels, rabbits, raccoons and catfish. We also salt cured our meat so we had a year round supply.

We also raised all of our own veggies and Mom would can them so we had a year round supply of veggies too. One of my favorite things to eat was when she would open up some home grown/home canned tomatoes and fix them with macaroni. It's still my most fond memory of pasta dishes.

We didn't have to buy very much at the store food wise. Sugar, salt, flour. corn meal, milk, cheese and pasta were our main purchases.

Man I would love to have a bowl of my Mom's macaroni and tomatoes!

Pierogi is a new word for me. I had to go look it up. My wife makes something like that based on the recipes I read.

The best part was this quote...lol

"While the origin of the pierogi is often under debate, the exact origin of the dish is unknown and unverifiable. It likely originated somewhere in Central Europe or Eastern Europe, and has been consumed in these regions long before any of the present political nations existed. Today, it is a large part of many Central European and Eastern European cultures.

One legend relates that in 1238, Hyacinth of Poland visited Kościelec, and on his visit, a storm destroyed all crops; Hyacinth told everyone to pray and by the next day, crops rose back up. As a sign of gratitude, people made pierogi from those crops for Saint Hyacinth.[15] Another legend states that Saint Hyacinth fed the people with pierogi during a famine caused by an invasion by the Tatars in 1241.[15] One source theorizes that in the 13th century, pierogi were brought by Hyacinth from the Far East (Asia) via what was then the Kievan Rus'.[16] Some believe pierogi came from China via Marco Polo's expeditions through the Silk Road.[17] None of these legends is supported by evidence, such as the etymological origin of the root pirŭ-."

A food that has it's own saint...that has to be good!

Billy

LOL... well the paint was left over from painting my daughter's bedroom ceiling and the living room of the old house. I was just being cheap, not so much creative.... This room, is BTW.... 16x16 just so you know. And yeah, I did have to get a building and electrical as well as an HVAC permit to fix it up and do what I did. So yeah... get that permit if you need to and build your dream studio. Life is short.... enjoy it now.

Outside of music I design, build, and repair electronics - guitar amps, pedals, mic preamps - and I am working on more repair videos for my youtube channel.
I also do some sound design for video games (as well as playing a lot of video games) or other audio recording/engineering.

I go swimming whenever possible, as they're one of the forms of exercise I can actually do with a spine injury, though I do like an occasional light walk in the woods. Otherwise I'm cooking or baking something with my partner, or maybe reading comics. Being autistic, I tend to get very deep into other hobbies from time to time, but those usually don't stick around long enough to be worth mentioning.




Nice! What amp is that?

Hobbies...
Reading, light hiking, light biking, light canoeing, light roller skating. I hate throwing / replacing things when they can be saved, so some appliance repairs, light electronics / electro mechanic repairs, not sure if its considered to be a hobby, but I get a feeling of satisfaction if I am able to fix something, especially if I never touched device before.
I do have a passion of sculpting creatures, but that requires a lot of quiet time which is scarce with 2 children

Simon, please post a link to your Youtube channel!

So many people with the music creative thing are also creative in general. Cooking, art of any kind, building with wood from an idea rather than purchased blueprints, designing electronics... all creative endeavors.

I was a boy raised in the 50s when there was a ridiculous thought process that drew a thick and firm line between what boys did and what girls did, and boys who cooked or baked were teased. My mother, who I realized MUCH later in life was really smart, made sure I knew how to cook at least basic things and made me learn how to do enough sewing to handle emergency repairs. When I was in the Army, a lot of the guys would come to me with a panic stricken look because a button fell off their last clean uniform shirt and I got a lot of free beers because I could sew them back on. Then when I moved off post they would land at my house on weekends with all kinds of food and say "Here. Cook something with this."

I really enjoy creative people! A whole different zone of intelligence coming from the right side of the brain!!

Now what I'd like Simon to build for me is a MIDI thru box with a foot switch that lets me change from setup 1 to setup 5 to setup 3, etc... from a foot switch similar to the Line6 shortboard. Of course that's what a Digital Music MX-8 does, but the cool factor of having it custom built, ya know?

Those are cool. And your kids have little toys nobody else will ever have.

A failure...lol

What I wanted to do was to design a two channel amp that could be switched with a foot switch. One channel would sound like a Fender Vibroverb and the other like a 100 watt Soldano.

Both channels sounded pretty good but I could never get them to switch properly at high volume. One speaker cab with a 15 for the Vibroverb and two 12's for the Soldano. I tried several brands of speakers. Mercury Magnetics input transformer and custom made output transformer. Four 6L6 output tube ( I messed around with some 6550's) and 5 12Ax7 pre tubes all matched for me by Eurotubes in Portland.

I have been fooling around with it for a couple of years. Lots of conversations with Bruce Zinky. He could most likely design what I wanted...I just could not afford the four or five thousand design fee...lol I think I got to ask Roy Blakenship a few questions but he is a really busy guy.

It is loud as hell so I have to take it away from my house to test it.

Actually I am not sure what I will do with the amp....I have a small fortune tied up in parts...lol

Billy

ALL.
heres a little challenge for the diy electronic gurus here.
(ive tried and failed on several occasions in the past.)
i call it the MOJO PRE. an in line 20 db mic pre with one xlr input, and line out to sound interface line in.
mojo pre has one control a "mojo pot". ie character.
specs.
1. easy to build low cost diy under 30 buks.
2. single low voltage supply. 9 volt battery would be great.
(with bipolar op amp supplies, one often ends up with too many darn components. and yes i know bout the 5 buckie mic pre.)
3. low component count.
4. maybe useing a low voltage cheap "new technology tube" or a couple of germanium transistors ?.
i'm not an electronics guru. lol.

best
oldmuso
my interests are songwriting crazy songs, singing,
jaunts/travel with my lovely wife who i adore and who spoils me rotten lol
(jaunts now limited due to covid. just got the pfizer jab. so far no side fx.)
just happy to be alive on this crazy planet after surgery over a year ago.
a particular interest of mine is researching space travel,
and whether certain types of future tech like magnetic propulsion might be the solution rather than current fuel technology. which i feel is old tech.

Sadly, 2 and 4 don't mix. A 9 volt battery isn't going to reliably give the 100volt+ HV that the anode requires of a vacuum tube, and supply the heater current. Germanium transistors? I would have thought that at the very least, a low noise analog op-amp with feedback set for the right gain would have been a much more effective option. But just my 2 cents.

Sounds similar to my Rivera Knucklehead - one channel can do Fender Blackface (with a pull knob for Tweed) and the other does Marshall-style crunch (with a pull knob for boost that gets quite hairy). It has fewer gain stages than a Soldano might have, but probably would sound pretty close. Anyway, keep at it, hopefully you'll get it working!





I agree, 2 and 4 won't mix without "too many darn components". From a 9v, you'd need a voltage booster to be able to drive a tube, or even an op-amp, and this style of voltage booster would add noise to the circuit. Even with a Nutube, it requires 17ma of heater current alone, and would flatten a 9v battery in half a day or less. AA's would be better, or 18650's.

Germanium transistors are most often not low noise. They're sensitive to temperature in regards to noise output. Any germanium transistor available these days is going to be "new old stock" at best, or used and half dead at worst.

Low noise analog op-amp, sounds like a perfect application for the 5 buck preamp. Still requires more than 9 volts though.

This is the perfect discussion to ask the following: have any of you checked out the Finhol Blues Bass Board? If you haven’t, please check it out on YouTube (just do a YouTube search for “Finhol Blues Bass Board” and check out the video). For some reason, it is no longer being made....but, in my view, it’s really neat and it sounds great particularly for playing BLUES music!!! I’d love to have one for sure....can one of you tell me where one can be found OR CAN ONE OF YOU BUILD ONE? Please respond back with any suggestions about how I might get my hands on one of these....THANKS TREMENDOUSLY!!!
Cecil

Never a failure. Just an early draft!

Here is one on Reverb for sale.

https://reverb.com/item/7058938-thomann-finhol-blues-bass-board-2017-wood-aluminum

Billy

Billy......thanks tremendously!!! I’ll pursue getting it if it’s still there!!!
THANKS VERY MUCH,
Cecil