PLAN B analog blog

For reasons of sanity, unless there's a particularily hectic work week and I need to catch 
up, or unless I've got a new circuit I'm wrapped up in, outside of my weekly programming 
session with Phil Gallo on Sunday evenings, I have again begun to reserve the weekends 
for composing.

Why am I telling you this?

Because this Saturday morning I sat down to begin putting some ideas I"ve been kicking 
around on disk, and noticed a pesky hum coming from my analog rig and decided to 
temporaily abandon my writing and instread give the behmouth a long overdue overall.  
Something I suggest we all do in the next few weeks, especially those of you who may be 
using Model 15's that are up to or over a year old.  Trim pots are for adjusting - the otrher 
side of the same coin is they go out of adjustment.   Spring cleaning takes care of this.

I spent the whole weekend - you need not take this much time.  Along with rewiring some 
of the power lines, I removed the last of the steal boats I originally used to secure my 
modules out of the main cainet and replaced them with the last two Vector moutning rails.  
Been meaning to do this for six months.  ThiIngs fit together much nicer now and the 
cabinet, which originally weighted over 75 pounds EMPTY, is now a stealth 45 pounds fully 
stuffed.  That's how much the four 16 gage steal boats weighed!

In the next few days I will be putting up a Model 15 tuning and calibration procedure on 
EAR site.  It'll outline the proper method for 1V/oct adjustment, as well as waveshape 
adjustment if you so happen to own an oscilloscope (highly recommended - you can get 
them on the 'bay for under 100 bucks).

Back to the weekend:  Along with calibration, I converted the system to a single voltage.  I 
have some beloved Blacet modules I still use constantly which were running off their own 
15 volt supply since forever.  I've now changed this so the entire system runs off of two 3 
amp 12 volt supplies and in so doing, my hum disappeared.  I've got Jensen transformers 
in my audio path so I'm quieter than most - but even with these (highly recommended) 
devices, I had enough system noise that I didn't feel comfortable recording quiet passages.  

If any of you are using a dual VCC standard, you may consider doing this.

Look for an anouncement once the cal procedure goes live.

- P