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Well actually yesterday, but we closed on the sale of our house. We are officially no longer home owners.

What Your Favorite Sad Dad Band Says About You https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/what-your-favorite-sad-dad-band-says-about-you

I'm starting to think that I should be in the sad-grandad-band category

Al's siblings contacted me a while back. They wanted to buy him a tool for his shop, and asked my suggestion. I told them to buy a Titan Capspray 115 HVLP system, and made sure to send a link to the right one. It's the Mercedes AMG of the HVLP world. Built like a tank and smooth as silk.

Me too... I thought the Pixies was closest to my kind of music in that list (and it's still not that close).

Crikey! A very tasty "Kiwi" Sausage roll, consumed in a very gentrified Healdsburg Plaza. Not shown: Steak & Cheese Pie, Steak and Mushroom Pie.

Tried out a new finish today, Total Boat Halcyon in satin. So far pretty impressed (minus the price). As easy and as fast drying as lacquer in a water based varnish. After thining a little with water it was easy to spray with a HVLP gun. Being a marine varnish it should be pretty durable.

What a difference a week makes. Today it was 55F and most of the snow is gone, so switched vehicles.

Tweets that aged like a fine wine:

I like Death Cab for Cutie, and that could 99% be my life. That's really depressing.

V for Vendetta Why so serious?

Speaking of finishes, I'm anxious to try Rubio Monocoat. It's a wax oil product that many Youtubers are enamored with. I have to admit that Doug has steered me toward natural finishes. One big benefit being ease of repairing/refinishing such a piece. No need to remove the old finish first. Just reapply and buff. And the dull glow fits my esthetic sensibility.

Digging the looks of these 2022 cars with the big wheels and everything.

Are you making stops for the Woodpeckers track you put in? Steve found some flip stops from Rockler if you want to check out a fast cheaper option than the Woodpeckers StealthStop I bought (and haven't received yet). I tried my HVLP sprayer for the first time today. Three coats of shellac on the base and drawer faces of my dad's desk. Super easy and smooth once I got the hang of it. Controls for air flow, material flow, spray pattern, and size of pattern takes a little effort to dial in but it was definitely a lot easier than the alternatives. And a much nicer experience than the airless sprayer I tried a couple of times. In less happy news, I learned that the maker of the 8' LED lights I installed wasn't playing around when they said not to daisy chain more than five lights together. I had one string of seven lights that I had originally intended to split up with an extension cord at some point but forgot all about it. Yesterday that group of lights started flickering and went out. Turns out the first one in the chain was melting. 😳 I've now made sure five is the most and might reduce that to four.

Alden likes to play parts of that travesty for people because of how god awful it is. 😆

I remember watching this as a kid. I must have purged 97% of it. I didn't remember how god awful it was.

This week I've been building a lot of specialty stuff at a book store/coffee shop that we're doing for a repeat client. She literally told my bosses that I'm the only one allowed to do any of the finish carpentry, and that they need to make sure to make me available to her and the project. I did a lot of fun, unique stuff at her beachfront home build about 4 years ago, and we have developed a special working relationship. She was directly involved in helping me get a $10 an hour raise about 4 months after starting with this company. Needless to say I am very thankful and loyal toward her. This project includes some custom wood countertops that I'm building, lot's of outdoor projects out of reclaimed wood (there's a huge backyard where kids can read in a very cool cabana, and has huge planters/benches and a very cool recycle bin out of recycled Cyprus. But one of the projects that I'm really going to have fun with is and indoor tree house that I am designing as well as building. It will be another cozy nook for kids to climb in and read or just hang out. Pics to follow at some point soon.

I meant to post this last week when I actually built it, but forgot to. I also forgot to take finished pictures with the newel caps in place, but use your imagination. A couple of weeks ago one of the bosses told me that he forgot to call the stair guy to build railings at the new addition of a smallish job. By the time he remembered, the stair guys schedule was too far out to meet our deadline. The railings needed to mimick the existing railings of the San Francisco Victorian home. He asked me if it was something I thought that I could do. Stairs and railings are usually a specialty, and as such are usually subbed out. A sub genre of finish carpentry, if you will. I haven't actually built indoor railings before, but I knew it was something that I could accomplish. There were no solid newel posts available in the size that I needed, so I built my own. As these will be painted, I used Poplar. It's a good, stable wood that doesn't have the most beautiful color or grain pattern, but is easy to mill and takes paint very well. The exception are the pickets, which are Alaskan Yellow Cedar. Kind of felt right using a wood from my home state. It's not soft like the usual Cedars, and has a very unique smell when cut. I got to use a lot of tradesman tricks and practices, and a lot of the math that I told my teachers I'd never need. Yes, they we're right. I did a lot of good preparation, so it wasn't just dumb luck, but it did fall together beautifully. The absence of a lower rail that the pickets sit on is a bit unique, but the existing rails pickets also connect directly to the stair treads. It actually works quite well at tying the newer, somewhat modern addition to the classic Victorian style. The caps not pictured are a pretty simple double cap design, with the bottom cap being 5/4 material, with a smaller top cap of 3/4.

Ran my first (mostly in person) conference since COVID this weekend. It was nice to see people in person!

Finally, I’ve had some time to sit down and dot down my final thoughts on the CRBN. They’ve been here for a couple of months, but I really wanted to have a Carbon CC up and running to try them on before I wrote anything final. I rustled up some pretty ghetto front and back panels this week, so I finally have one for my own system. Feeding it is a Denafrips Terminator DAC but I’ve tried it with a number of other sources plus whatever amps I’ve up and running at any given point, KGSSHV, KGST, CCS modified Stax amps etc. Now I want to start with how it’s been living with them for the past two months, in a word flawless. No issues at all with this second set, no imbalance, noises from the drivers… nothing like that. They are also supremely comfortable, and I’ve worn them for hours on end with no discomfort. Now this is Iceland so not exactly warm and the all-leather earpads might be an issue in warmer climates. Audeze might make hybrid pads like the Sennheiser HE60/90 but here I just open a window to cool down... 😉 Also, a word on driving them. They are inefficient and do need a lot of power. Anybody claiming otherwise is just full of it and thinks gain and position of the volume knob has anything to do with power levels. They are not quite 007 bad in this regard but they do reward a more powerful amp when pushing them. Baseline for excellent performance would be the KGST/KGSSHV line but even with the CCS modified Stax amps they work well at moderate volume levels. Push them though and yeah… you need power behind them. So how do they sound… well TLDR, how I’ve always wished the Sennheiser HE90 should have sounded but never did. These were my first impressions, slightly oversized soundstage and not as precise as others but far from the mess that is the HE90. Plenty of deep, well controlled bass too but not quite up to the 007 level. They can get bright when the source calls for it, slightly excessively so at times, but far from the forward nature of the 009’s. The soundstage is a bit larger than life, but it makes for plenty of presence and separation so while not pinpoint accurate, they are very close to it. Overall, they are just so balanced and pleasant to listen to regardless of what you feed them. Now for the only real issue, the damping is something which has annoyed me more and more. Now as some might know… I’m a bit picky… just a tiny bit… 😛 and while it is not always apparent, some songs or parts of them just sound off to me. This generally true for every headphones I use so I remove all damping when I can. Also, a large part of why I like the 007’s so much due to their innovative air damping. Now on the CRBN the damping is damn good, but I can still tell it is there. This is not like the Sennheiser HE-1 for instance, where that bloody amp with its mosfet based output stage and joke of a front end just spreads its dirty fingerprints on everything. This is far more subtle and only affects some tracks so for instance, it is too closed in when it shouldn’t be, bass has a twang to it that shouldn’t be there… something like that. This is a very minor gripe, and this is me being super picky so take it as you wish. Still, I’d love to try these drivers with less damping… 🙂 So, this aside, there is so much to recommend here. They are certainly not cheap but just holding them you can see where the money has gone. Plug them into a good amp yeah, they will impress. The only issue for me it they have rekindled an old project, take some LCD-2’s and fit them with custom electrostatic drivers. Anybody know of a cheap set I can buy? 😉 Now I’ve not received my SR-X9000000000000 yet so I can’t compare them but on its own the CRBN is a great product. They are not perfect (what is?) but as a first stab at making electrostatics, they are damn impressive. I’m adding this set to my collection, and they are certainly in my top 5 all-time greats. I really must say they are a breath of fresh air as the releases over the last few years have been such a disappointment. It really has been a 10-year slump now so here’s hoping we get something excellent over the next 10 years.

Switched from Megatron to the Blue Hawaii this morning. Different sound signature but equally as satisfying. This one is not the BJT version but the one that uses 2SK216/2SJ79 with cascoded CCS and adjustable plate current.

I have run the amp without the balance servo, just by carefully adjusting the trimmer, but the opto coupler is connected to the dc offset (i.e. make the average of the + and - audio signals 0v with respect to ground) not the balance servo (which makes the average of the + and - audio signals 0v with respect to each other only. also check the valves/tubes if you have a tester... I have found the 6922s to be a bit fragile and the el34s have -400V on their heaters so if the negative 560V rail has gone crazy there could be heater to cathode leakage... do you have a variac? I always bring my new builds up to full voltage slowly... My amp has two transformers one for the heaters and +-15v and one for the high voltages. I connected the low voltage transformer directly to the mains and only connected the hv transformer to the variac. What resistors did you use? I used vishay crcw1206 which are rated at 200v and crcw0805 for the 1/8w which are rated at 150v., they were the highest rated voltages I could find on mouser for 100ppm 1%... I have a dca75 from peak electronics, https://www.peakelec.co.uk/acatalog/dca75-dca-pro-semiconductor-analyser.html#SID=24 its been very useful for post mortem checking (if I de-solder a transistor I can compare the dca75 measurement with a spare transistor of the same type. I often find failed transistors simply show up as dual back to back diodes or dead shorts. Note the DCA does have trouble identifying 10m90s and similar). I have even found some fake transistors using it. Its not designed for in circuit testing, but it can be use in circuit for comparisons between transistors in the left and right amp boards. If you have not got a dca75 I highly recommend it. You can also get an adaptor for sot23 https://www.peakelec.co.uk/acatalog/pca23-peak-component-adapter-sot23.html and I found an adapter on ebay for sot23-6, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SOT23-SOT23-6-SOT23-6L-IC-Testsockel-Programmieradapter-Einbrennsockel-F3I4/383314954496?hash=item593f5a0900:g:dWoAAOSwTYZd8frU so I can test dual smd transistors too. I also created a little op amp test circuit on a bread board, unity gain just so that I could power it and feed in a test signal and scope the output, I got a adaptor for 8 pin smd from ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SMD-SO8-SOP8-SOIC8-DIP8-2-54mm-DIP8-Programmier-Adapter-SMD-Sockel-150mil/252912033731?hash=item3ae2bb5fc3:g:yKcAAOSwmE9b-JqP so I could also test smd opamps.... I love having lots of test jigs. Good luck with your troubleshooting and repairs.

Was supposed to pick up my new lappy and iPhone yesterday, but an unforscene complication on the other end put the kibosh to that at 9:30 in the morning. Currently everything is up in the air.

RIP to a random person: Krysten Gentile. Krysten died a few days ago, at age 40, of stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. She worked at the same company as my wife Karen; I was able to meet her once when she and Karen had a Zoom call with each other. I poked in and had a brief but very pleasant chat; Krysten's persona - so bright and beautiful - shown through even in that brief moment. A truly beautiful and amazing woman, she fought hard, and was public in her fight and in positive thinking to help others. She created a web site & podcasts with another Philadelphia-area woman with stage 4, "Making The Breast Of It." She touched Karen's life, and even a tiny bit of mine. Obituary: Krysten M. Gentile (nolanfidale.com) And....FUCK cancer!