Despite very cold conditions, poor electrical grounding, dim lightning, and a bare bones recording setup, I managed to get a video done while under stay-home isolation.  

All non-essential businesses are forced to close in New York state as of yesterday.  LBA is essential for my survival, but apparently they mean a different sort of essential.  At the end of the day yesterday, I loaded up my truck with a pile of instruments, 2020's, an amp, a basic recording setup, my camera, and my video/photo computer, and then headed home.  My home office is very small, but is now functioning as a makeshift mini studio until the threat has passed.  I'm extremely limited with the work I can do from home, but I will try to stay productive.  This will be a difficult time for everyone, I'm sure.  I still have business bills to pay during this period, although I was able to get them lowered.  Your support during this time will help me to stay afloat.  You can place an order for a 2020 here, which will ship out as soon as I'm allowed to go back to work... even if the release date is after the date I can return to work.  I will attempt to create demo's of the 2020 in my very makeshift home studio until I can get back into LBA Studios for proper demo work.  Thank you for your support during these trying times.  Please be responsible and stay healthy.  

The pre-orders for the 2020 Instrument Transformer sold out pretty quick.  As a result, I'm now accepting orders for the first production run.  They will not ship until sometime around mid-spring, but you can get on the list here.

My Trinity channel strip design is consuming my existence, but its necessary to get this thing done in my lifetime.  I have many goals for her, but one of the big ones (and last ones) is to make it so easy to assemble a grandma could do it.  That's actually extremely difficult to pull off.  I've been working hard on that one for the past few months and its getting close to the point of extreme.  I even dream about it every night!  When I achieve that I'll be ready to move onto retail packaging, setting up reviews, working on advertising and seeking distribution for Trinity.  Its still a long ways to the finish line.  

Since I'm not building pedals anymore, I needed to come up with a substitute form of income until I release my channel strip.  I zeroed in on one idea, which is not a pedal, but similar... The LBA-2020.  Its basically a 1:1 audio transformer in a metal box the size of a tiny pedal and has 1/4" in and out jacks.  Its intended purpose is to be placed between instrument pedals to inject some transformer mojo.  The idea was spawned from customer requests to put a transformer in the Op-2 Comp and NuVision pedals.  I always have to respond that its not possible due to the dimensions of the pedal verses the size of the transformer.  This new idea of a transformer in a box is a much better approach in my opinion because it can be used with any pedal, not just inside one of my creations.  One of the ideas around the application of this box is that a user could have multiples and place them between various pedals to help create the warm sounds akin to high-end professional studio equipment.  I designed the transformer and made a working prototype, so it definitely works and imparts a high fidelity warm tone.  The transformer is a high performance layer-wound gapped style with faraday shields between the coils.  It uses a nickel alloy core for an extremely wide and linear frequency response, and its encased in a MuMetal can for magnetic shielding.  I will be manufacturing it in house on my transformer winding machine to keep the cost as low as possible.  The prototype PCB is designed and in the manufacturing phase.  I hope to sell the finished product for $99.00 USD.  Beta testing will begin sometime in the next month or so.  Anyone interested in beta testing can get in touch with me for a discounted beta version at sales@lightningboyaudio.com.  If you don't like it you can absolutely return it for refund.  Thanks for checking in on me!      

If you haven't noticed, I'm not selling new pedals anymore.  What I am doing is working on a few new very cool products, which are directly related to the audio transformers I'm now making.  Here's a quick video of my transformer machine in action. 

The computer controlled transformer winding machine has arrived.  I'm in the process of getting custom tooling made for it so I can mount my various custom bobbins on it.  Also in the process of learning how to program it.  I posted a photo recently on Instagram of one of my input transformers with the machine in the background.  I have now designed a mic input transformer, a line input transformer, and two different iron output transformers.  All of these designs and the whole point of making transformers is for my beloved Trinity channel strip, which brings me to the next order of business.

Its the end of 2019 and I have decided to stop making FX pedals by the end of this month.  Its not profitable enough to justify continuing.  I could potentially spend a lot of time redesigning them to be more profitable, but I'd rather put my time into completing Trinity and moving forward with that.  Its a project that requires as much time as I can throw at it.  Its currently in beta testing at several studios, so definitely nearing product completion.  I'm currently developing a big revision that introduces a mid-band, inductor-based, passive EQ control on the front panel.  Waiting on the new front panel prototype to be manufactured.  The new control is like the bass and treble knobs in the sense that it can boost or cut, with a flat response when centered (noon).  There is also going to be a mid frequency selector which allows the user to choose 300Hz or 2kHz.  I'll be manufacturing the mid-band inductors in house on the new computer controlled winding machine.

Last week I did two extensive and scientific vacuum tube shootouts (for the purpose of finding the tubes I will use in the production model of Trinity).  Each tube was allowed to warm up for exactly 5 minutes.  I ran the same audio passage (part of a pre-recorded song) through each tube for 1 minute and recorded that back into my DAW.  After each tube was recorded I proceeded with extensive listening.  I also measured the total gain (volume) of each tube.  The first shootout was for the EF86 (EF806S) vacuum tube, in which I compared a GE NOS tube, the regular pin JJ tube, the gold pin JJ tube, and a regular pin EH tube.  It was no surprise to me that the NOS tube sounded the warmest, but I was a bit surprised to find that it also had the highest amount of gain. 
NOS GE (USA) EF86 - Highest Gain, Warmest tone
JJ Gold Pin (Slovok Republic) EF806s - Nearly as much gain as the NOS tube and almost as nice sounding.  It was a close runner up!  .1dB volume drop over NOS.  
JJ Regular Pin EF806s - Similar tone to the gold pin version, but definitely murkier sounding/a bit dull.  This had the least amount of gain out of all the tubes.  .6dB drop. 
EH regular pin (Russia) EF86 - This was the least expensive tube tested and surprisingly it was not bad.  Its brighter and more detailed sounding than the regular pin JJ and also considerably louder.  It doesn't have the warmth of the JJ and NOS tubes, but its price outweighs those factors for me considering it had a volume drop of just .2dB over NOS and I like the sound of it much more than the regular pin JJ.     

Next shootout was for the 6DJ8 / 6922 vacuum tube.  
NOS Philips (USA) - Benchmark.  I've used these for years and love them.  
JJ regular pin 6922 - Not a fan of the tone here.  Its similar to the EF806s regular pin version in tone.  .4dB volume drop over NOS.
EH regular pin 6922 - Wow.  That's a serious tube for the money.  Similar tone to the EH regular pin EF86, but this bad boy has  +.2dB in volume over NOS.  The JJ 6922 is a little less expensive, but not by much.  This tube is a clear winner in my book.
EH gold pin 6922 - I tested this just out of curiosity since the price is too high to justify putting it in a product.  Much to my surprise and happiness, this tube sounded so similar to the NOS Philips tube I couldn't really tell the difference.  The gain was also spot on with NOS.  Unfortunately, the price is also spot on with NOS.   

In summary, I really didn't want to like the Electro-Harmonix tubes because I didn't want their brand to be associated with mine, but the price is really nice and they are actually very good tubes.  I will be using them in the production of my Trinity channel strips.  As for the gold pin tubes, I really thought it was just marketing until I conducted this shootout.  I didn't expect the gold pin tubes to sound much better at all.  Sure enough the gold pin tubes sounded closer to NOS than anything I came across before.  Their price is also about the same as NOS tubes, so is it worth it? 

        

Its been an intense past couple months.  The main point of my focus is getting Trinity to be retail ready.  This has proven to be a nearly insurmountable task due to unreliable manufacturers of necessary components.  By unreliable I mean they take 3-4 months to deliver if they actually deliver at all.  This constant source of stress and frustration has led me down the road of transformer design.  My Great Uncle Joe Marino has been helping me wrap my head around transformer design and all the nuances of it for years.  Sadly, he passed away a couple weeks ago at the age of 93, though not without helping me reverse engineer a much needed transformer!  He was a great mentor to me and to others as well.  I'll probably dedicate a future post.  Anyway, I now have several necessary transformers designed for the channel strip and built some impressive models.  I'm purchasing a professional transformer winding machine next week to scale up production and improve accuracy.  The transformer manufacturing could be a business in itself, which is what I'll eventually build it into.

I have been very busy designing and building a custom tube powered stereo inductor-based passive EQ for a customer, which I find quite exciting.  Despite that, I managed to find the time to make an instructional video for the diligent DIYer.  Have you ever considered rolling your own paper-in-oil tone caps?  Its not impossible.  Here's how you can do it: 

I recently bought an ultra low budget ($42 after shipping) manual powered coil winding machine.  Last week I posted a photo on my instagram of an audio transformer I successfully made with it.  I bought the winder to attempt to make some of the transformers I need for my Trinity channel strip.  If it worked, and it did, the next step is to buy a professional computer automated transformer winding machine.  The whole point of this is to try to make 2 of the 5 audio transformers for Trinity myself instead of going through a certain well known transformer company.  I would love to get away from relying on them because I really can't rely on them when my phone calls result in a request for an email, my emails rarely get responded to, and then if I do hear back (after a month if I'm lucky) its a 6 week lead time at best.  There's no way I can work with that and not lose my marbles.  Sorry for the frustrated run on.  Problem solved!!! 

I bought this little Chinese coil winder on ebay with very low expectations.  The device is very simple to understand and to care for.  Before using it, I oiled it well with light household oil.  Next, in order to use it without burning up my fingers I needed a way to control the wire layering, so I made a sliding wire guide (manual control).  The wire needed to be tensioned, so I made a tensioner and the wire bobbins needed a way to freely rotate without getting tangled, so I made a bobbin holder.  Basically this winder won't do much without some additional rigging.  I'll save photos for the video if I make one.  

It wasn't only about making the specific transformers I need, it was also about making them on PCB bobbins so I could easily incorporate them into my channel strip design.  Unless you've done the research and know already, its surprisingly difficult to find transformer core material and bobbins, so procuring a source for the exact materials I needed was a major step in justifying a professional transformer winding machine.  I found a lot of companies that will sell you transformer core material, but only if you open up a line of credit with them and then place a minimum order the size of Maryland.  That seems to be the case if the core material you want has any amount of Nickel in it.  I settled on some annealed grain-oriented silicon steel laminations and I'm very happy I did.  The difference with that compared to a high nickel ratio alloy is the steel has more of a vintage sound due to a higher degree of harmonic distortion an limited frequency response.  To tell you the truth, the difference isn't huge.  I actually prefer the sound of the steel core transformers and I was able to get a flat frequency response that extends beyond 10Hz-22kHz with my first successful transformer, which has a step down ratio of 4:1. 

Leave a comment if you'd like to see a video of me making a transformer and talking about this simple manual machine, or let me know if there's something specific you'd like to see related to this topic.  BTW, I'll be out of town from today until August 17th, so limited to no response from me till then.   Thanks for reading!  ​