In the 70s and 80s I built a couple of Craig Anderton's devices from his book "Electronic Projects for Musicians" (which is still in print and available from PAIA Electronics, among others) including a basic six-channel mixer, an optical compressor (which never worked--it was my first attempt at a printed circuit board), and a really sweet-sounding spring reverb. All were built using components from retail electronic supply houses other than Radio Shack wherever possible. I even built a VOM from a kit during that time to test everything.

Using similar techniques I was able to get inside several of my Fender tube guitar amps and insert intermediate-stage gain controls which allowed me to use external preamps to get different distortion sounds without effects as such, and without having to crank the amps to their max to do it.

The knowledge I gained was invaluable in my pursuit of live sound and recording and helped save shows a couple of times when I was able to diagnose and correct issues during performances. I'm still willing to get inside a box or an electric guitar or bass with a soldering iron to correct a (to me) obvious problem. I wouldn't try most of the projects today, though, because of time and money; it's simply easier and cheaper to buy better sounding, more versatile digital effects, or to use VSTs or other virtual devices instead.

Richard

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."