2021 Agenda

If I had all the money in the world I probably would live on a private tropical island, but I don't so I might as well have as much fun as I can with my limited funds in the snowy North.  There are two things highest on my priority list at the moment.  Releasing the 2020S is the primary goal for the immediate future, but that is pivoting around the secondary goal of buying a specialized high-end 3D printer.  Its currently at a point of not wanting to do one without the other, so I'm trying to figure out how to best proceed.  I'm paying obscene prices for the transformer bobbins to be manufactured from a company who is 3D printing them for me with a 3D file I provided.  Furthermore, it takes 3-4 weeks for my orders to arrive, so its difficult gearing up for a product release based on these two factors.  If I drop several thousand on a specialized machine I can make the bobbins in house whenever I want them and at a price 80% lower.  Based on my sales from last year, the machine should pay for itself in under a year.  That machine is a high priority, but buying it now will put me in a tight financial position.  Contemplating my next move on that one. 

The tube DI Box.  There are 14 people on my list who requested direct notification of its availability.  That exceeds the 10 required for me to move forward with the design.  I worked on it more yesterday and made some final adjustments to the design.  I have a parts list for this project that needs to be ordered, which totals several hundred dollars.  The next step is probably the most difficult and that is to arrange the circuit to fit on a PCB that meets the dimensional constraints of the design.  The prototype is a mess of mini prototype boards and a breadboard connected together with jumpers.  Its powered by a benchtop power supply.  There are multiple pieces of test gear spliced in circuit to analyze performance attributes.  I have a bass plugged into the input and the output is connected to a Zoom H4N for recording samples so I can document the sonic effects of each circuit alteration made.  Its a big pile of stuff on the bench.  It doesn't look like it would fit inside of a pedal enclosure at this point, but I really won't know until I try.  The design currently works best with a 9V DC input.  At 9V it draws about 353mA.  Internally it steps the voltage up to 200V for the B+.  I have the tube biased the best I possibly can, balancing tube life with good tone.  There will be two control knobs on the final product.  One is for "brilliance," which is a high frequency shelving boost of 8dB starting at 10kHz.  The other knob is an input volume attenuator.  Having an input control makes way more sense to me than an output volume.  You can attenuate the output with the mic preamp you'll be plugging the DI into.  The input attenuator allows you to attenuate hot signals before hitting the tube's input if so desired.  I so desired when putting a 2020S in front of the DI.  It was such a cool sound to drive the 2020S hard and control its output with the "DiVision."  Its a sound that instantly reminded me of early 1960's recording gear.  The sound is a little hairy in a light, crisp way.  Its not overly colorful, but certainly has a tasteful amount of "vintage" tone.  That retro quality comes almost entirely from the 2020S, but combined with the 3D soundstage (big tube headroom) of the DiVision - that's what takes me to the early 60's.  Anyway, I'm not sure how much more time it will take to turn this into a product.  Its 3rd on the list of priorities, so maybe in February or March it will become a reality. 

Trinity.  Will this finally be the year?  It sure looks like it from where I'm standing.  Based on the current prototype, the thousands of dollars needed to get it to the finish line, and the amount of work needed to develop the retail packaging, marketing strategies, advertising campaigns, etc, I'm expecting the earliest would be sometime late in 2021.  Hopefully, in time for Winter NAMM, but that might be wishful thinking.  Meanwhile, my friends over at http://kingbuffalo.com/ are recording a new record and they're doing it almost exclusively with Trinity channel strips (prototypes).  I, for one, am very excited to hear the results.  I have been in regular contact with Sean throughout the tracking of this record.  He's been giving me updates along the way on how he is using the channel strips and the settings for each application.  Its fascinating.  I'm going to ask him if I can publish that information in a blog post.  I think it'll be an awesome read.  Stay tuned!