Today is moving day, a day I have been working towards and anticipating for a while.  Today is the first day of the new lab at a new location.  The last few large items are being moved out of my basement lab this morning and transported over to the new lab, which is in the same building as LBA Studios. It makes so much sense to have everything under one roof, but there was never enough available space until now.  Not only does it makes sense to have everything under one roof, but I also outgrew my old basement lab.  It would have been impossible to bring on new help with LBA unless I moved the lab to a larger space.  The room for the new lab is going to be a work in progress for a little while, but it is move-in ready now.  Its the upper level of a two story pitched-roof warehouse-style building.  The level LBA Labs is on has a very high ceiling, around 18-20' in the center.   This particular building is connected to the studio building through an added-on lobby.  The lab's building is super old - originally constructed in the 1800's as a hardware store where they made all their own hardware in house (the manufacturing of hardware items was done in the new lab area).   There have been crews of Amish men at the building over the past couple weeks working on the walls.  They put up all new steel siding on the outside of the building, but also on the inside walls.  Its a white baked enamel coating on the steel siding.  It makes the lab space look very industrial.  The newest member of LBA, Jon Clarke will be meeting up today to help with setting up the new lab.  Jon's going to be the man assembling and wiring up all the Op-2 Comp pedals I recently designed.   

I said I was done building pedals in March of 2014.  Today is no different in that sense.  I will still maintain that status, but Lightning Boy Audio will begin producing pedals again.  I'm bringing on some skilled help to build the pedals for me, so I can remain focused on Trinity and and the Flux Bender.  I'm bringing on one man, who I will personally guide and instruct in my old ways of pedal building.  Jon will be the sole producer of the pedals.  Stay tuned for more updates on that.  

The laboratory is moving to a bigger and better location to suit the added space needs of another person working with me.  The new location of the lab is going to be in an unused area at LBA Studios.  For those that have been there before, the space I'm talking about is the large upstairs attic of the barn.  Its currently being insulated and finished off.  Move in date is planned for about 2 weeks from now.  

New business model will begin after Jon comes on, which is the plan of having all products in stock, ready to ship upon order.  We're going to build up some inventory before opening day of the impressive new pedal, Op-2 Comp and of the mind bending Trinity system.      

I was originally going to build an Opti-Mu Prime pedal for Danny Imig (The Elektra Kings).  Its been a few years since looking at the schematic, and in those years I learned/developed/evolved so very much.  I decided to redesign the pedal to perform exactly the way I had originally dreamed.  Yes, I fell far short from my original dream when I released the pedal.  Honestly, Opti-Mu Prime was a very good pedal, but it always had me feeling like it wasn't good enough.  I sort of swept it under the rug, but some moment of fate brought me to take another look.  

The new pedal is very different, but is based on the original design to some extent.  On the outside it looks very similar... 2 tubes, and all the same controls.  The tubes function differently now, the range of compression has been expanded by 75%, the noise floor has been lowered by 50%, the output volume has been increased by 35%, and the pedal has a great deal more clarity than ever before.  Its so much better and so wildly different that it really needs a new name... thus, the "Op-2 Comp."  It is now a straight up vacuum tube powered optical compressor.  It has an ultra fast attack time from its LED light source, but with the beautiful and legendary auto-release characteristics of the much famous LA2A studio compressor.  The soft and hard knee controls are also more obvious sounding than in the original Opti-Mu Prime.  You can now distinctly hear a significant tonal difference between the two different compression attack slopes.  

Its a seriously badass pedal, which I promise to released in the future.     

A gentleman, who's band I'll be recording soon, asked me if I would build an Opti-Mu Prime for him.  I normally would decline to make any pedals, but since he's planning to recording with me I decided to make an exception.  This is the first exception I've made since the end of pedal production in 2014.  

I took a look at the schematic for the first time in a couple years and almost laughed when I saw it.  With all the R&D that's been going on with Trinity, I've really learned/evolved a lot in the past year, let alone the past 2 years.  I'm kind of surprised the pedal worked as good as it did.  Let me tell you, there's a lot of room for improvement and I already did it with this new build.

I was able to expand the range of compression drastically, allowing for both less and more compression than the original had.  I was also able to increase the overall output volume considerably, while simultaneously lowering the THD and noise!  There's more components now and the build is more complicated, but this new version is radically superior to the original in every way. 

I'm seriously considering releasing 1 pedal in the future, which will be this pedal.  I will call the new version, Opti-Mu II.  Its probably going to sell for about $500, so definitely not your average cheapo compressor.  My goal here was to make a vacuum tube powered studio compressor in a pedal, but for less than a $3600 tube studio compressor.    

Last night I finally finished the design work for Trinity.  Its done!  I had to sacrifice a little bit of gain to achieve the noise performance I was looking for, but that's okay since there was just over 80dB to work with.  Noise is low low low, frequency response is flat, all the controls work great, super low THD, I'm so very pleased.  Designing Trinity has been the most difficult thing I have ever done in my entire life.  I'm so very proud of it and so massively relieved to finally be finished.  That was a grueling 9 months of long days with no more than a rare day off.  Serious stress, but now I can take a deep breath and relax for a moment before going into production.  I'm planning to build a bunch of channels before the release so I can have inventory ready to ship upon order.    

Since the beginning I was doubtful 80dB of gain could be achieved with this design... at least with any kind of respectable fidelity.  Early on I set my goal at 70dB.  The first many prototypes peaked out at around 65dB and that was not with a flat 20-20kHz response.  Over the past couple days I had some major break throughs.  Trinity now has 80dB of gain, -90dB S/N ratio, 0.204% THD+Noise, and a flat frequency response (+/- 1dB) from 20Hz-20KHz with a total response from 1Hz-100kHz.  It sounds fantastic. I worked out all the bugs with this new batch, so its finally starting to look like I might be just a short step away from a final product.  A little bit of stress has been lifted from my shoulders.  Looking forward to the next step!  

In order to keep the R&D process as affordable as possible, I will have to disassemble the prototype units to salvage as many components as possible for the next batch.  It seems like such a shame since they were looking pretty decent, but I have no choice.  There is no way to salvage the situation without a complete rebuild from the ground up.  The greatest loss is my time, but I'm not too upset about that because I learned some very cool things along the way.  My previous blog posts cover the details of this past prototype phase in greater detail.

I wanted to take quick photo of the builds before disassembly so I have some documented record of that particular phase in the development of Trinity.         

Trinity is my curse and salvation.  Every step closer I get to the perfect scenario, I take a 1/2 step back due to unexpected hurtles.  It seems like a constant battle that keeps dragging me down, but I keep getting back up because of that 1/2 step forward.  I can't complain about it taking 8 months so far because the end goal is a life goal.

I had to face a stark realization today.  I f-ed up and there's no one to blame but myself.  I made a gamble and I lost.  To sum things up, I made a number of design changes.  Some things really worked out amazingly, others not so much.  The things that worked out pertain to the sound being much nicer, the THD is down to 0.177%, and the frequency response is flat from 10Hz-23KHz with a range that extends out to 65KHz.  However, the downside is the noise.  At -70dB, that's just unacceptable in my book.  Sure, lots of vintage gear is worse than that, but this is a brand new design.  -70 is not going to fly.  My minimum goal requirement  is -90dB RMS with no weighting.  That's challenging, but not an insane goal IMO.  Problem here is that the things I did with the most recent prototype build are irreversible and will require a complete rebuild from the ground up.  The good news is I can salvage most of the components to keep the R&D cost to a minimum.  There are, however, some new components and a couple replacement chassis' that put this mistake at ~$300.  That's not the end of the world, considering the entire build costs thousands.  Lessons have been learned - the hard way.  I will not release a product unless I feel it is as perfect as a human can make something.

Many have said before, "There is always room for improvement."  As my customer, investor, and now friend, Joe Griffin has said, "It's done when the Artist says its done."  I think the later is a better method of thought.  It will be done when the noise is acceptable in my book.  Aside from that, the sound is absolutely glorious.    

Joe Griffin, of Bamboo Room Studio in Kentucky, funded the construction of the first production prototype of Trinity.  That unit (#002) is a stereo version which now lives and works at the Bamboo Room.  Joe and the Bamboo crew were so impressed by Trinity they had to have more.  About a week ago Joe placed another order, but this time its a bit different.  I decided to make some changes for the better in terms of the layout and component quality in both the power supply and Trinity.  The biggest difference is now the power supply is much bigger (2U rack mount) and Trinity is mono and a single rack space.  The power supply can power up to 4 channels of Trinity.  Joe wanted 4 more channels of Trinity, so his order is for the new Beast Mode II power supply and 4 mono Trinity channel strips.  When completed, the Bamboo Room will have six channels of Lightning Boy Audio Trinity channel strips, more than even LBA Studios has (at the moment).  

As the first person outside of Lightning Boy Audio to hear Trinity, this is what Joe had to say:

Okay, that's good news.  lol.  I then asked Joe if he had the chance to play around with the EQ on Trinity at all.  Here's what he had to say about that:

All good feedback and I really appreciate Joe's support for the development of Trinity.  When the job is done I'll update the Trinity page, but the product still won't be released.  I have to first built a 4 channel Trinity system for Lightning Boy Audio to keep.  That setup is in the financial funding stage (almost there!) and when its complete a lot of photos, videos, and reviews will have to happen in order to release the product.  We're getting closer to an actual product release, but its still a ways off.  Meanwhile, I will continue to accept orders for pre-release Trinity channel strips and I'll give you a super sweet deal!  

Just wrapping up with the first Beast Mode II Power Supply Unit.  No expense has been spared in creating this.  It is the biggest, most badass power supply I have ever created.  It has been said that bigger is not necessarily better.  However, in this particular situation bigger is absolutely better.  The Beast Mode II has been designed to supply ultra low noise, high current power to four Trinity channel strips.  It has separate power transformers for the B+ power, phantom power, and tube filament supplies.  The big blue transformer supplies the B+ and also has a 6v tapoff, which powers the LED circuitry.  Inside is a massive power filter choke, a pair of low noise toroidal transformers, and the electronics necessary for regulation of each power supply within the Beast Mode II.  On the back side can be seen the can caps, a thermal relay tube, a pair of voltage regulator tubes, the heatsink associated with the tube filament regulator supply, and the octal power sockets used to connect power to each channel of Trinity.  

Its definitely a strange hybrid, but it performs unbelievably well.  Silicon diodes were used for all power rectification (B+, filament supply, phantom power, LED power supply).  A very expensive military-grade solid-state voltage regulator is used to perfectly regulate the DC voltage for the vacuum tube heater filaments in order to achieve supremely low noise.  The square black heatsink can be seen on the back side of the Beast Mode II.  The two large vacuum tubes on the back are actually not vacuum tubes.  They are filled with Xenon gas and are used to regulate the B+ voltage - in conjunction with capacitors & a filter choke. The resulting B+ power is perfectly free from ripple or voltage swing.  The small tube on the back is actually a thermal relay vacuum tube.  It controls an automated start up sequence that's much like a standby switch on a guitar amp.  This standby switch automatically flips on 60 seconds after the power switch is turned on.   The phantom power section offers a dedicated power supply for each channel, with each one being regulated to provide up to 2 amps of direct current at exactly 46.6 volts.  The LED power section is the only non-regulated supply in the Beast Mode II.  It provides 4 amps (way overkill) of direct current at 6 volts to power the LED lights on each connected channel of Trinity.   

Outputs (via rear panel octal sockets):

• B+1 = 363vdc @ 250mA
• B+2 = 345vdc @ 250mA
• Phantom Power = 46.6vdc @ 2A
• Filaments = 6.3vdc @ 5.5A (7A peak)
• LED's = 6vdc @ 4A