Junior & Me

I’ve always wanted a Les Paul Junior.  Single P-90 pickup in a mahogany slab body.  It’s the Telecaster of the Gibson world.  Or, the Esquire, I suppose.  Anyway, it’s a bad-ass rock and roll instrument, and I wanted one.  So when an Internet forum member that I knew lived nearby put a cheapie sunburst Epiphone Junior up for sale I jumped on it pretty quick.

It probably wasn’t the smartest purchase I’ve ever made — body and headstock beat to hell, cheap electronics and tuners that make me extremely nervous.  I probably could’ve found one on Craigslist for a few bucks less, but this was an fast, cheap and easy transaction from a guy I know and trust, so I went ahead and brought it home.

The previous owner had swapped out the original cheap plastic nut with a Graph Tech TUSQ replacement.  It was certainly an upgrade, but the nut itself required a bit of sanding and filing that hadn’t been done.  (In fact, noodling around on this guitar with the unsanded nut for a week gave me a nasty case of tendinitis that didn’t go away for a few months.  Man, I hate being old.)  Luckily, the nut came out with just a few taps of a hammer and a flathead screwdriver, and, after a couple rounds of sanding, a tiny dollop of glue, a tweak on the truss rod and a new set of strings, Junior was ready to go!

Just in time, too.  Los Padres are scheduled to play the KIP fundraiser this March.  I gave Junior a spin at last week’s rehearsal and I think I like it.  If it holds up over the next few weeks I might just keep the tele tuned to Open G and only bring it out for select numbers.  We’ll see.

junior-and-me

Arduino Dual-Effect Superswitch, part 1

You know what’s been missing from my life?

Yup.  Microcontrollers.

I got this idea several months back to create a few two-in-one effects pedals.  I had an EA Tremolo board and a one-knob reverb ready to go, and I thought they might pair nicely.  While I was doing the layout for the 1590BB enclosure I thought it would be cool if the pedal ran in two modes: Separate Mode, where each switch activated it’s own affect; and Together Mode, where the right switch activated both effects simultaneously.  I spent days thinking about this and mocking up switch diagrams, but all to no avail.  It was too complicated for me to figure out — at least with some room left in the enclosure for the actual effects boards.  For a while I had a brilliant plan to use optoisolators, and while they do simplify things, the switching was still a catastrophe.  That’s when I broke down and started thinking about microcontrollers.

Two weeks later, I have an Arduino Uno and a working prototype on breadboard.

arduino-dual-switch

Arduino Dual-Effect Superswitch

With the added flexibility of the microcontroller, I’ve added a third mode: XOR Mode.  Very exciting!  More details to come….

Three-Mode Dual-Effect Superswitch Prototype_bb