Despite the pandemic, so far this year LBA has seen a growth in sales of 25% over its best year, which was 2018.  I'm beyond words with my great appreciation for the people like you who have helped to support my electrical endeavors during these difficult times.  The 2020 Instrument Transformer has sold 170 units since its release earlier this year (as of this post).  Compared to the big companies that's a drop in the bucket, but for a one-man hand-made operation, I think its not too shabby.  Thank you! 

I have a fair quantity of products built and ready to ship.  Because of this I've been spending my time over the past month working on 2 things.  Number 2 is something the average bassist will appreciate and that's below.  Number 1 is my beloved Trinity channel strip design.  I'm working harder than ever on this and making great headway in all avenues (and there's a lot of avenues).  The channel strip design has been complete in the sense of a working model that I'm 100% pleased with the performance of, as of October.  The primary goal right now is to make it easy to build.  I'll quote myself, "So easy a Grandma could put it together."  The internals will be modular so if anything goes bad a module can be swapped out instead of having to send the whole channel strip in for repair.  I haven't seen a failure from one yet.  My oldest (in my possession) prototype is still performing like new after serving my studio for about 2 years.  The earliest prototypes go back to over 5 years ago, many of which were sold and some decommissioned.  Of those sold I haven't heard of any failures or issues, though I'm aware of some bugs with the early ones.  At this point the design is becoming very mature and nearly ready for market.  I hope to be able to offer the Trinity as a complete system sometime by the end of 2021.  There are a couple other complimentary products that will be offered at the same time.

2.  The past two day's I've been working on a vacuum tube powered DI Box which will be the size of one of my old pedals (Hammond 1590BB enclosure).  Further design requirements are that it runs on 9V DC and draws less than 350mA.  Well, as of today I have a working model that sounds quite special in my own opinion.  It runs a single Nuvistor vacuum tube into an LBA-MC15 transformer.  That's the same transformer as the TI Box.  The system takes a 9V DC input at 320mA and converts it to 231V DC for the B+ to power the tube and drops it down to 5.8V for the heater filament of the tube.  The filament is designed to operate at 6.3V, but with a NOS tube it will operate properly with a supply voltage as low as 4.5V.  I have chosen to run the filament voltage a little below 6.3V to extend life without affecting performance.  Initial testing of the design has shown a THD of 1.25%, which in my opinion isn't super low, but its just low enough to sound clean while displaying the sexy qualities of the "tube sound."  The frequency response is beyond what I can measure in my lab, although I do have alternate equipment in my studio which can give me better insight - in the future when I do that.  What I measured in the lab is a response from 10Hz-25kHz with very little deviation from linearity.  Basically, its a good clean tube circuit with a bit of natural tube mojo allowed through.  A feature of this design that will be unique and borrowed from my Trinity design is the "Brilliance" control.  This is literally the exact circuit pulled from the Trinity.  I measured on my spectrum analyzer a shelving boost of nearly 10dB with this knob starting at 10kHz.  Playing my bass with this knob fully up was preferable to me.  I really liked the articulation it added.  Overall the total amount of clean boost this DI provides has not yet been determined, but it is substantially louder than a passive DI Box.   The noise floor in preliminary tests was inaudible.  More scientific tests need to be conducted to determine exact figures.  Pricing is yet to be determined.  Available quantity is however, very finite.  I will only make 68 of these boxes.  That is because I only have 68 of these nuvistor vacuum tubes in stock and due to current market prices I don't intend to buy more.  I will make a promise right now that I will only make 68 of these boxes.  This is a collectors piece for sure!  
Orders are not being accepted at this time, but if interested please email sales@lightningboyaudio.com to get on the first-come-first-serve email list.        

This year marks the start of my production and selling of audio transformer based products.  Its been LBA's best year so far, so why not take it to the next logical place?  Starting next month (October, 2020) I will begin selling audio transformers... as electronic components.  I have a catalog of transformers that I have designed and prototyped over the past couple years.  The first transformer I plan to release in October will be the LBA-MC15.  This is my mic input transformer, which I designed for Trinity, but its also currently used in the TI Box.  At the same time as this release, I will also be offering another product, which I'm calling the "Universal Input Transformer Board."  This is a simple circuit board to hold any of my input transformers (I have a few) with 4-pin box header connectors and mounting holes for standoffs.  Its any easy way to incorporate my input transformers into your DIY project or to use for prototyping.  Pricing has not yet been determined.  If people show interest in the input transformers I will probably offer my small signal output transformers as well. 

Thanks for supporting LBA.  Its been a solid year so far and its because of the awesome people who continue to stand by my products.  Thank you.       

Here's a gut shot of the TI Box production prototype.  The LBA-MC15 transformer is a high performance mic input transformer I designed for Trinity.  In this application its wired backwards to serve as a "thicker" sounding DI box (more colorful than your typical passive DI).  Its a very complicated transformer to manufacture, so its more expensive than the LBA-2020 transformer used in the 2020 Instrument Transformer and the 2020i Amplifier Isolation Transformer.  The price of the TI Box will be $169 USD.  The first batch is 14 TI Boxes, of which 2 are reserved for promotional purposes.  That leaves 12 that will be available for pre-order on my website.  The pre-order price will be just $150 USD.  Pre-ordering will commence on Friday, August 21st.  Pre-orders will ship on Friday, August 28th.  Pre-orders can be placed here.  The first production run (starting just after that) will be 50 units.  The official release date is not yet determined, but can be expected for sometime in the next 4-6 weeks.  

I built up enough inventory of the 2020 Instrument Transformer in order to have some freedom to work on R&D.  The next product to be released will be the 2020i Amplifier Isolation Transformer.  Its the same size and price ($99 USD) as a 2020 Instrument Transformer and even uses the same transformer, but its very different.  The 2020i has just one application and that is to eliminate ground loop hum in stereo guitar amp rigs.  Its a one trick pony, but it does that trick amazing well.  Whenever a signal is split to multiple amplifiers a ground loop is formed.  The cheap solution is to use a ground lift adapter on the AC power plug of one amp.  That's a very dangerous solution.  If you do that you're setting yourself up for a really bad experience.  If the ungrounded amp experiences a failure and the instrument cable to the grounded amp has a broken or intermittent ground lead, the high voltage of the ungrounded amp will find its way to ground through your body.  Let me tell you from experience, a high voltage DC electrical shock of that magnitude is excruciating to say the least.  The 2020i is a safe and highly effective solution because both amps can remain grounded at the outlet.  Obviously, at your ABY box your signal is split to both amps.  One cable goes to one amp, but the other cable goes to the 2020i and then from that to the other amp.  We're basically splicing the 2020i into the audio line feeding one of the 2 amplifiers.  The 2020i is an audio isolation transformer, so it blocks the ground loop from forming in the audio path.
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The second product to be released in the near future is a production model of my TI Box, which features one of my in-house designed and manufactured LBA-MC15 transformers.  The TI Box, or "Thicker Injection" Box is a passive DI Box with a noticeably thicker, louder, and more mid-dominant sound to it than a typical passive DI Box.  It Features 1/4" input, throughput, XLR balanced output (mic level), phase invert switch, and ground lift switch (technically a ground filter).  The TI Box will sell for $149 USD.

And lastly, Trinity is still not ready for release, but I finally got back to work on her after hitting a brick wall back in March.  The wall was procuring some special electrical laminations for one of her audio transformers.  Finally found a good supplier.  Also, for a very long time there has been a known issue with the Trinity prototypes that has taken until now for me to figure out.  If the channel strip is powered on for a while or longer, then turned off and turned back on within a few minutes, it will not turn on.  The channel strip must fully cool down before it will restart.  Its not a major issue, but one I have wanted to change.  I came up with a solution over the past two days, which has tested extremely well and reduces the total parts count by nearly 20.  A drop in the bucket, but any savings is good!  Next step is to get a prototype power board made with these new changes.  I also recently put in an order with a company I'm working with on the Trinity enclosures for a new prototype faceplate.  The faceplate has seen many revisions over the past year, which I haven't published yet.  I hope this is the last revision.  If all the hole locations are correct and of the correct sizes this will be the last revision.  Still a long ways from release, but its very close to the finish line when looking at the project on a timeline of start to finish.  Thanks for checking in!               

The day has finally come!  2020's are in stock and ready to ship (order here).  Here's the latest video to usher in the new release:

The second run of 2020's is under way and about 25% complete.  I'd have them done yesterday if I didn't have a newborn, a toddler, and an overworked Mama at home.  Frankly, my household needs to stay home for the next 8 days to give us the 2 week window needed to determine if we have any COVID-19 symptoms after spending a few days in the hospital.  After we clear that my toddler can start spending weekdays at his grandparents house, while my wife stays home with our newborn.  At that point I can resume a normal work schedule.  I should be able to get this next run complete by the 8th, which will give me a few extra days to work on a press release, some photos, and hopefully a new video.  Thank you for your support and patience during these complicated times.    

My wife is scheduled to go in the hospital to be induced on the 25th, which is a week earlier than her due date.  Last time we were at the hospital for 5 days.  I think a release of May 27th for the 2020 Instrument Transformer is unrealistic.  June 1st would be the absolute soonest that I could potentially pull it off.  I'm going to try my hardest to get everything ready ahead of time, but my responsibilities at home during COVID-19 are proving to be the main challenge.  An amazing note is that 87 preorders shipped out.  That simply blows my mind.  Thank you!  I had to cut off the preorders so I wouldn't sell out before the release.  There's 26 in stock right now and I'm planning to produce at least 44 more before the official release.  Thank you for your interest, patience, and support.  

I got a lot of work done on the transformers over the weekend, but there's still a lot to do and not many opportunities for me to get into work.  All 100 bobbins are wound and the wires are soldered to the bobbin pins (600 solder joints total).  I tested each coil twice for every transformer bobbin (total of 400 tests).  99/100 tested good.  One turned out to be a dud.  99% success rate is pretty darn good in my book.  I'll attempt to disassemble and rebuild the failed bobbin after the rest of the 2020's are fully built.  The next time I can get into work is Tuesday.  I'll be stacking the transformer core laminations all day.  I hope it can be completed in one day.  It will be a lot of delicate work.  After that is complete the next job will be mounting the transformers in their shielding cans.  Once that is done, final assembly can begin, which will be mounting the transformers and jacks on circuit boards and mounted the completed boards in the enclosures.  Lastly, I'll need to spend a day packaging all the completed 2020's, print shipping labels for all the preorders, fill out customs forms for the international orders, and get them to the post office for delivery.

Of the first 110 to be produced, just 38 remain available for purchase.  Thank you to everyone who has helped to support this product and my company during this time.  I'm very grateful.  I already sold more 2020's than any model of pedal I ever produced and the 2020 hasn't even been released yet.  I think that's a good sign and it excites me.  Looking forward to the second run!  Stay healthy my friends.              

It appears I will have to push the release date back further.  Not sure exactly how much further.  Regardless, I will ship the preorders as soon as they are ready.  I believe the current number of preorders sold is about 59, plus the initial test batch of 10.  69/110.  There are still a few left, so act soon.

I have a 3 month supply of coffee, some home-made whiskey in an oak barrel, and enough flour to make pizza 3 more times.  The last part is a little discouraging.  I've been carefully following the developments of COVID-19 in both New York City, and in my area of NY (Erie County) since the beginning.  Experts believe we have not reached the Apex in Erie County, but in my opinion we're doing a whole lot better than NYC.  NY Gov, Andrew Cuomo, has pushed back the schools from reopening until April 29th.  I assume the same would be true for most businesses.  Realistically, I think he'll push that date back much further as it approaches.  Technically, Sole Proprietorships such as mine, are allowed to continue working since I work alone.  However, a few factors have prevented that for me.  Number one is child care.  I'm staying home with my toddler while my pregnant wife continues her work as a doctor.  She's due next month, which will definitely make things a lot more difficult.  Number 2 is safety.  If I'm driving to work, I'm going to need to visit the gas station where other people visit.  I don't want to become a part of the problem.  Lastly, I had the electricity turned off and the rent was placed on hold in anticipation of reduced income and highly limited work hours.  I have since gone in for a few hours to work in the cold, dark lab with just battery powered lights to continue with some hand labor aspects of building the 2020 transformers.  When I have the power turned back on I should be able to complete the first run in about 8 hours.       

All that said, I'm working out a couple different plans for getting the first run completed and shipped in a safe and timely manner.  I'm bumping back the release date by 1 week to May 1st.  I think that is doable, but I don't know for a fact.  Things could always get much worse if too many people act like selfish idiots.  Please check back to my blog as I will try to continue providing updates.  Be careful, stay healthy, and thank you for supporting Lightning Boy Audio!

​-Mike