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It occurs to me; this hobby - although to be certain many of small signal transistors are sent either to smoky silicon hell or a low earth orbit .. you never really fuck up. Hot rods? Well .. if you're playing it safe then you're not doing it right. What? Canadian Tire double sided tape stick-on mods? Seriously? There's balls involved plunging that cut-off wheel into a '49 Merc A-pillar .. and I suspect at first contact, said balls are fully and firmly retracted - hugging one's liver perhaps (Not entirely certain what happens to the anatomy of our fairer more feminine wrenches during these moments. Tilt-a-whirl ovaries? Bear trap vagina?). Either way, at the end of every day you've generally learned something that you didn't know at the beginning. That learnin' can get mighty expensive with rods .. But meh, at the 'lectric bench, '22A's on t'other hand aren't exactly dear. Still don't know why it doesn't work - likely because I don't know exactly what it's hearing or why. Boobs though for certain .. yup. It definitely detects speech - Yay I've reinvented VOX. Bring on that physics Nobel. Breathing and the lightest contact with the bench surface - Mic saturation and capacitive coupling ruled out respectively. In fact the only thing that it doesn't appear to detect are the actual desired frequency ranges. Curiouser and curiouser. The initial physical contact with the Glockenspiel tine coupled through the plywood bench top .. but not the actual note, Still .. at the end of this day I'll know more than I did at the beginning. Or if not today, next week. I'll work it out eventually. Admittedly I had expected this to fly together and work with little fuckery .. but sometimes being arsed is also all part of the fun.
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Oh for fuck sake. I thought it was odd that the mic suddenly went tits last week. After swapping it out today three times - the probability that they're ALL bad just about a lottery win, and the probability that two 741's gave up the ghost? Occam's razor review time - only one week late.. The passives all checked out. Surely the fucking thing is actually plugged in. Well. No.It actually wasn't. I don't know why .. but these jumpers appear to be sketch as shit. Glass half full though. We're up and running again and tomorrow is a new day.
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Whoops. Note to self: The pointy end of the boat is usually the front. Shit vid I know .. what you're looking at is my total cock up - discovered during a preliminary system pressure proof test today; twenty thousand Litres at three pounds gauge. Fail. There isn't a whole lot of room to work in the "U" shaped fuel room. The starboard fuel lines installed while cramped up cross-legged, back against the starboard tank - meaning aft to my left, fore to my right. As I brought them across the stem, I marked the two fuel lines as such - corresponding to the valve position relative to the hull. But .. when piping the port, I "forgot" that turned around (back to port), fore and aft naturally swap. Duh, and so I swapped the supply and return lines on the port side. It happens I suppose, although a bit of teasing today for the dyslexic newb oversight. And just as the project manager was telling me that he liked my work and how I just "got things done.right".
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Well I guess god won.

I understand the arrow of time .. and how "someone" in my family history most likely had a fit in the early decades of the twentieth century insomuch that they could no longer find proper tack to connect their stout mare to the logs that required pulling from the bush with all that newfangled horseless carriage shit going on.

A similar sadness a few years back at the TSC store, who purchased the old school Co-op farm supply stores at some point .. And wh...

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Very exciting!

I've been looking for this chip for over 5 years - it seemed to have vanished sometime around the time I left Hamilton; appearing yesterday while looking through and old box of salvage.

It's a 991-026003 Chord function generator IC pulled from a late 70's electronic organ found at the curbside.

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What does it do? Well .. doesn't the name say it all? But in real practical life though .. I don't have a clue as to it's actual transfer function.

I had meant to put it to some plugboard play just to see when I pulled it. Not necessarily for it's intended purpose, but rather to see what it "might" do.

What's the fifth major to Speak n Spell input? Human voice? Something? Nothing at all? The question itself as pointless as the marital status of the number twelve (This a nod to Prof. Paul Davies)?

Although I can't find a datasheet .. I did find a service manual schematic for an organ that utilized the chip which should be just sufficient to make it do.

So what will it do? No idea. And that's why I've always wanted to build this. True bench play/experimentation for the sake of doing so.

Assuming it doesn't let out the magic smoke .. I'll feed it various sounds and see what comes out t'other side. Maybe awesome, maybe odd, maybe undetectable. Maybe a newfangled effects pedal for my mate Bunny? Maybe just garbled shite.

Still .. channeling Ellesworth and Blanche this week on the bench.

Regardless of the actual results - the play will be awesome.

I don't have any of my audio stuff set up, nor do I have the room for it in the wee shop - so there's not going to be a whole lot of actual science at play .. but I figure I'll either hear something "interesting" .. or I won't.

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