You may have noticed this website was crippled for several days (at least).  I'm not exactly sure how long, but its back now and sorry for any inconvenience.  That was my fault and I wasn't aware of the issue until yesterday.  I have been preoccupied by very much work.  I'm bouncing between pedal builds and a channel strip I'm building for a studio owner.  The channel strip is eating up most of my time and my brain.  Its about 2/3 complete.  I haven't started on the vacuum tube part of the electronics yet.  Its mostly relay routing.  switches controlling relays, timers controlling relays, relays controlling relays... my brain hurts.  I think this might be considered a basic analog computer! lol.  Its certainly the most complex and sophisticated thing I ever designed.  Looks like a mess right now because I'm right in the middle of building it, but here she is (phone camera shots):  

If you're following me on Instagram, you likely heard about this several days ago, but to be official, here it is again:  

In this update the big change is more headroom, but there are other minor updates as well.  I changed the switch for the Thunder to a new setup that uses simpler and more reliable switch to trigger a relay.  This setup is a little more expensive, but I was able to shave those pennies off in other areas.  The larger switch I was using before broke during shipping twice and one customer experienced failure after a month.  I can't have that bad behavior going on with my children!  The new switch is much higher quality, so its far less likely to fail.  There's a new PCB, well a couple new ones, which speed up my assembly and provide improved rigidity of the internals.  I also decided to upgrade the vacuum tube slightly.  Before was the bog standard JJ ECC83 (12AX7).  Now I'm using JJ's ECC803s, which basically is a higher quality 12AX7.  Another added expense, so I had to reduce cost somewhere else to maintain the same price for the pedal.  My thinking was the vacuum tube and the B+ are the two most important factors in the sound of the pedal.  Get those right and the rest is icing on the cake.  The new PCB design allows me to use unshielded wire exclusively, whereas before there was about 5" of super expensive shielded silver plated avionics wire.  I found further savings by replacing one low significance paper in oil capacitor with a silver mica version for about half the price.  That cap is responsible for attenuating some upper high frequencies when the Thunder switch is off. 

All in all, the new version of the Thunder Knob sounds better and is more robust, and I did it without having to increase the price of the pedal.  If you have an older version of the Thunder Knob and would like it updated to this new "Revision B," I would be happy to perform the mod for $55 plus shipping.  The mod does not include a tube swap.  If you'd like the ECC803s tube installed with your mod, the mod would cost $65 plus shipping and you'd get the old 12AX7 back too.  Please email me to setup mod work at sales@lightningboyaudio.com.  

Yesterday I came up with better compression circuit for the Op-2.  Today I improved on it a bit and made another update.  The new update of today is I decided to run the Op-2 on 24V DC instead of 12V DC.  Double the headroom makes for a cleaner/more high fidelity sound.  Since I was already including a 12v adapter before, now I will include a 24v adapter instead.  The new 24v design will not work on 12v.  

To my ears, the sound of the new compression circuit paired with the higher headroom of 24v makes for a much smoother and detailed sounding pedal.  These changes have prompted me to name this as "Revision B."  I decided to maintain the same price, despite a slightly higher build cost.  Owners of older Op-2 pedals can send their pedal in for the full Revision B update (new power adapter included) for $40 USD plus shipping.  Contact sales@lightningboyaudio.com for details.  

First off, this is amazing.  Second, the tone of the pedal has not changed.  What's new?  The range of compression.  There's a wider range with the new update and a side effect (and bonus) is a slightly lower noise floor.

My notes indicate that I released the Op-2 in April of 2016.  I remember for a couple months before then I was struggling to come up with an all-tube compression circuit that operated on 12v.  The struggle was creating a lot of compression.  It was impossible with just 12v.  That was the same issue I was dealt with Op-2's predecessor, Opti-Mu Prime.  I will stress that no one ever asked me to make either pedal compress more.  I am a studio producer and engineer, so under the microscope of the studio I always wanted a studio compressor in a pedal.  I felt the Op-2 came a lot closer to that than the Opti-Mu Prime, but for me neither one had the range of compression that I wanted.  Before and ever since the release of the Op-2 Comp I have been trying to figure out how to get it to compress more severely without altering its tone, physical size, price, or a variety of other parameters.  Its now been over 2 and a half years and many times I said, "this is as good as it gets."  But, today everything changed.  I felt a stoke of genius hit me today.  A feeling I rarely have, but when I do I feel very fortunate.  An idea came into my mind that would essentially triple the compression range of the pedal without compromising the tone people have come to love (especially bass players).  I decided to put my scheduled work aside for the day so I could experiment and try out this new idea.  BINGO!  I feel like there are so very few times when an idea comes to mind and it actually works flawlessly... unicorn moment.  Basically, the original design split off a portion of the signal to drive the light element of the compression circuit.  It was essentially directly coupled to the audio signal.  While this worked to a noticeable degree, it also created a subtle amount of distortion and introduced a minor amount of noise.  The new design is much better for several reasons, but first because it isolates the audio from the "light drive."  It then takes the isolated signal and converts it to DC to drive the LED, but not before boosting it 3 times.  It does all this in a super simple and cost effective manner, which means the price of the pedal shouldn't change much at all.  It takes about 15 minutes to build this new "light driver" circuit, but that could potentially be reduced.  The 15 minutes of added build time is a cost that I will try to figure out how to minimize.  I was playing my bass through the new design today and comparing to the old design.  Its a no-brainer. 
If you already own an older Op-2 and would like to get the compression expansion mod, fret not.  Its just $15 plus round trip shipping. I don't have sufficient parts on hand at this particular moment to do a whole ton of mods at once, so depending on the demand it may take a couple weeks.  Definitely not months!  Email sales@lightningboyaudio.com for details.  Thanks for your time!

There's still a week or so left in the month and its already been the best month this year and one of the best ever for LBA.  Sold out of Thunder Knob pedals, with just one NuVision and Op-2 left in stock.  The sole NuVision is only available at Reverb.com.  Pedal sales have been higher all year than last year, but this month has been nearly triple over the average, setting a new record for sales in one month for LBA.  I'm very excited and I have my great customers to thank for their continued support.  

On Halloween I'm planning to upload a new video to my youtube channel, which will be the start of a 3 episode mini series on building an analog plate reverb.  The first video will take a look at and a listen to the plate reverb I built 8 years ago for LBA Studios.  The next video will take it apart to start building a much better version.  The last video will be the before and after comparison.  Stop on by if you have any interest in the wonderful awesomeness that is analog plate reverb.    

Between building gear and working sessions at the studio, I've been making some upgrades to some of my studio gear.  One of these upgrades was done to the prototype mixing board I built from scratch several years ago.  Its 12 channels of vacuum tube powered analog mixing.  

I added 12 volume controls to the board and improved its output amplifier.  Previously I was controlling volume either in Pro Tools or with outboard analog gear.  The out amp got a boost in headroom, making for a cleaner, punchier sound.  This is a prototype board.  It works and sounds great, but definitely not a product.  I'm using this as a developmental stepping stone for creating a larger, more complex board.  If you're in the area and would like to check out the board in person, contact to set up an appointment at www.lbastudios.com.

Yet another invention for the DIY'er.  This one is super easy to build and offers 3 different functions in one box!