A few days ago I unpublished the "store" page from this site.  Its proven to be too difficult for me to cross manage inventory and orders between my site and Reverb.com.  To simplify things I'll just be selling on Reverb.com.  I can imagine this might be a problem for people who don't shop on Reverb.  If that's the issue, just email me with your request and I'll put together a custom Paypal invoice for you.  Sorry if this poses any inconvenience.  

In unrelated news, I've been working on some new videos.  There's been a decent bit of interest in the analog plate reverb video I posted in October.  I said in that video that it would be a mini series documenting the deconstruction and rebuilding better than ever of my plate reverb.  I'm sure the upgrades will be very interesting to those analog lovers of the studio world.  Yesterday, I made the first big step in following up on my word.  A couple friends came by to help me move my plate reverb out of the basement, up two flights of stairs, into the lab, where I can work on it.  I managed to catch a few video glimpses of the move.  I'm sure it will take me a long time to do the actual upgrade work.  So no new vids will be coming immediately.  I've also been working on some video material for Trinity in preparation for its eventual release.  That's a whole different story for another day.     

Nobody is perfect!  But, I'm trying to make the best darn compressor I possibly can and I'm not stopping till... will I ever? lol.  Actually there has been one thing bugging me about the Op-2 since day one and since Rev B. its become far more obvious.  Strangely, its not something anyone other than me seems to care about.  Distortion.  Its subtle, but its there and certain settings bring it out more.  I have been wresting it lately with various sub-revisions.  It seemed like some pedals would be less "hairy" than others.  I tried everything I could think of to reduce the background distortion.  I can now say that was most likely just variances in vacuum tubes, but the hair was still there to some audible degree.   

Today I had some free time (the rarity akin to that of a solar eclipse).  I used it to tinker with an Op-2 I was building.  I loaded the circuit into a computer simulation, which I never did for the Op-2 before.  That's the sort of program I use for designing high end studio gear.  A wise choice.  It told me why the distortion exists and how to reduce it.  Simple update really.  Only a couple resistor values changed, but the level of THD (total harmonic distortion) went way down.  Serial #045 is the first with this update.  If anyone with a revision B pedal wants this mod, its actually super simple so the cost of shipping will be your biggest expense and its not much if you live in the USA.  One thing I'd like to point out is that the overall tone of the pedal has not really changed much.  It still has the same general tone, but with less fizz/hair in the background.  In my opinion, that makes it sound better.  Its cleaner, but not less toneful - in my opinion.  I think this is a very flavorful device and now more useful than ever!  Can it get better?  I don't know, but my biggest issue with it has been overcome.          

It pains me to have to push back the release of Trinity, but its necessary.  I need to spend a lot more time and money on trying to make it a less expensive product.  After building 3 in a row I realize its impossible to release it as a product for the target price of under $2000.  The cost in parts is nearly the asking price and then the labor... the labor - oh my.  It takes me 60 hours to build a Trinity channel strip, and then because its hand wired there is an additional 20-24 hours of trouble shooting to find and eliminate the errors in my work.  80 hours of labor?  I would need to charge well over $5K per channel for it to be even remotely profitable!  That's just insane.  

I decided the only way to make Trinity a viable product for under $2K is to eliminate as much wiring as possible, which means printed circuit boards.  Also, I'll have to say goodbye to my lovely paper in oil capacitors and adopt the much less expensive and more modern WIMA film caps that everyone else uses.  And no more NOS tubes.  Anyway, I designed some new boards, which I'm working on getting some prototypes of made.  Prototyping is expensive, let me tell you... and I'm not just talking about circuit boards!  The enclosure has seen its fair share of revisions and that's no 2 cent part!  Its really putting a major strain on my bank account.  Its simply too stressful and financially difficult to try to release this by the summer.  I think a more reasonable time for the official release is around December.   

Another thing I'm trying to figure out is the interstage transformer situation.  I made several toroidal transformers by hand, which sound very nice and perform perfectly, but they take 4 hours each to make.  That's also insane.  I can't possibly make a product with such labor intensive parts.  So, I bought an inexpensive Jensen transformer to test in the circuit and it performed very poorly (frequency response looked like a camel's back).  This is not a shot at Jensen.  I'm using other transformers from them in Trinity and those transformers perform excellent.  That particular one did not work out.  Next, I tried a Carnhill transformer and it performed with flying colors, but it rattles when I shake it.  That's odd!  I took the transformer apart (enclosed in a metal can) to see what was up with that.  Looks like they used some brittle glue to hold it in place and the glue broke free - presumably during shipping.  I can't have that in a product either!  Reached out to Cinemag, about a custom transformer after that.  They're usually really cool about doing custom things, but from my experience, a long wait is always to be expected.  Meanwhile, I'm working on "the plan" and I'm thinking Cinemag is my backup plan.  "The plan" is to buy a toroidal transformer winding machine (which I found) and start producing my own toroidal audio transformers in bulk.  I'm in talks with a company about manufacturing custom cores for my transformers.  The type of toroidal transformer I'm making is a style known for being as close to electrically perfect as a transformer could possibly be.  My hand-made jobbies fall a bit short of perfect (not at all bad), but I'm sure the winding machine will ace it.  The bottom line is I need a specific transformer for the interstage job and there aren't a lot of options.  The off-the-shelf options are above average in terms of transformer prices... nearly $140 each.  In theory, I can make a better transformer for less money with the machine I have in mind.  My ultimate goal is to decrease the price of my product so I can sell it at a competitive price and still have room to make some sort of profit.  Where it stands now I'm losing money every time I build one.  My Great Uncle Joe put me on to the toroidal transformers and he thinks I could make a business out of that alone.  That was his business back in the old days.  I'll keep it in the back of my mind for now... one step at a time!