Rating: 5
Year: 1989/20006 (3rd Ed.)
Genre: Technical
Read again? all the time.
Maybe it's a little too big for a pocket, but this hefty little book is incredibly useful.
Do you need to know the hand signals for guiding a crane or hoist operator? Page 105.
Wiring diagrams for common trailer wiring harnesses? Page 41.
Perpetual calendar? Page 737.
Airport 3-letter codes? 290.
...for Frankfurt, Germany? 301.
If you look on page 384, you'll note that rabbit skin glue can be used for bonding wood but is mainly used in gilding, artwork and furniture repair.
Page 537 starts a section on knots.
This little book seemingly has it all--mathematical formulae, physics and chemistry, masonry, military ranks, automotive, carpentry & construction, first aid, surveying and mapping, tools, weather, welding, and conversion tables packed into nearly 800 pages.
Showing posts with label Technical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technical. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Getting Great Guitar Sounds (Ross, Michael)
Rating: 5
Year: 1988/1998
Genre: Music/Technical
Read again? Yup.
One thing a serious musician will spend endless hours and wallet-loads of cash on is getting good tone, whether it's from a guitar or a trumpet. It starts with an instrument that will play in tune--and stay that way. It needs to be comfortable, too--if you're fighting the thing, you're not going to play it well.
Michael Ross starts us out with the instrument itself. The sound you get from an electric guitar depends on more than just plugging it into an amp. The big factor is wood. What's it made from (alder? Ash? Maple?) ? How is the neck attached (bolted on? Glued on? Neck-through-body?)? What's the neck material (maple is typical)? Is it a hollow-body? Solid? Semi-hollow?
From there, you get into string size, scale length, and hardware, all of which contribute to how the guitar itself sounds both before it's plugged in and to the overall sound. Then you've got pickups and controls, on-board electronics...
Lots of choices, there; to the non-musician they might all sound the same. But to a tone junkie, there's a huge difference between the sounds of classic Van Halen, Angus Young, Alex Lifeson, Joe Satriani, Billy Gibbons, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Keith Richards, and James Hetfield. Each has a distinctive sound that begins with his guitar.
Ross doesn't overdo it; he keeps his descriptions clear and non-technical, discussing how each component will affect the overall sound of a guitar.
That's just Chapter One.
With the second, Ross guides us through pickup choices (single-coil, humbucker, active) and location (bridge, neck, middle), wiring, controls (active, passive), and then finally to amplifiers. The amp itself will affect your sound--it doesn't just make the guitar louder, it colors the tone depending on how you play through it.
In Part Two, Ross discusses effects pedals, the tools a guitarist can use to further affect his tone: compression, distortion, preamps, delay, reverb, chorus, flange, and pitch shifters, all available as stand-alone "stomp boxes" or in all-in-one multieffects units.
Part Three sees us putting all this stuff to work; many of the effects sound better when they're arranged in a certain order, but there will be songs when you want a clean sound, your guitar's natural voice, without all the extra trimmings. From here, he looks at "live" vs. "studio" sound and the give and take of using vintage instruments, amps and effects.
His final note is about musicianship: none of these things matters if you don't have the chops. Alex Lifeson will sound like Alex Lifeson no matter what guitar/amp/effects he's using--the instrument's tone is important, but not nearly as important as what Lifeson does with it. The single most important part of your sound is...you.
Ross' advice:
--Play with authority. Play each note like you mean it--even if you screw up. Screw up like you mean it.
--Make your sound and playing fit the song! If you're going to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you have to lay into it with both hands. Stevie played hard, till his fingers were bleeding--and he meant it. But you can't play like that if you're supposed to be subtle and romantic.
--Listen. Pay attention to your favorites and try to figure out how they got that sound.
The closer is a rundown of some guitar greats and how they got their sounds: Jeff Beck, Clapton, Van Halen, Hendrix, David Gilmour, Andy Summers, The Edge, and Kurt Cobain, to name a few.
The book is a little more than 70 pages and sized to match standard music books. Pics are in black and white. Ross discusses various brands without pushing any of them in a sales pitch, making it clear that the thing that matters in any of this is that you pick what you like to get the sound you want.
Year: 1988/1998
Genre: Music/Technical
Read again? Yup.
One thing a serious musician will spend endless hours and wallet-loads of cash on is getting good tone, whether it's from a guitar or a trumpet. It starts with an instrument that will play in tune--and stay that way. It needs to be comfortable, too--if you're fighting the thing, you're not going to play it well.
Michael Ross starts us out with the instrument itself. The sound you get from an electric guitar depends on more than just plugging it into an amp. The big factor is wood. What's it made from (alder? Ash? Maple?) ? How is the neck attached (bolted on? Glued on? Neck-through-body?)? What's the neck material (maple is typical)? Is it a hollow-body? Solid? Semi-hollow?
From there, you get into string size, scale length, and hardware, all of which contribute to how the guitar itself sounds both before it's plugged in and to the overall sound. Then you've got pickups and controls, on-board electronics...
Lots of choices, there; to the non-musician they might all sound the same. But to a tone junkie, there's a huge difference between the sounds of classic Van Halen, Angus Young, Alex Lifeson, Joe Satriani, Billy Gibbons, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Keith Richards, and James Hetfield. Each has a distinctive sound that begins with his guitar.
Ross doesn't overdo it; he keeps his descriptions clear and non-technical, discussing how each component will affect the overall sound of a guitar.
That's just Chapter One.
With the second, Ross guides us through pickup choices (single-coil, humbucker, active) and location (bridge, neck, middle), wiring, controls (active, passive), and then finally to amplifiers. The amp itself will affect your sound--it doesn't just make the guitar louder, it colors the tone depending on how you play through it.
In Part Two, Ross discusses effects pedals, the tools a guitarist can use to further affect his tone: compression, distortion, preamps, delay, reverb, chorus, flange, and pitch shifters, all available as stand-alone "stomp boxes" or in all-in-one multieffects units.
Part Three sees us putting all this stuff to work; many of the effects sound better when they're arranged in a certain order, but there will be songs when you want a clean sound, your guitar's natural voice, without all the extra trimmings. From here, he looks at "live" vs. "studio" sound and the give and take of using vintage instruments, amps and effects.
His final note is about musicianship: none of these things matters if you don't have the chops. Alex Lifeson will sound like Alex Lifeson no matter what guitar/amp/effects he's using--the instrument's tone is important, but not nearly as important as what Lifeson does with it. The single most important part of your sound is...you.
Ross' advice:
--Play with authority. Play each note like you mean it--even if you screw up. Screw up like you mean it.
--Make your sound and playing fit the song! If you're going to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you have to lay into it with both hands. Stevie played hard, till his fingers were bleeding--and he meant it. But you can't play like that if you're supposed to be subtle and romantic.
--Listen. Pay attention to your favorites and try to figure out how they got that sound.
The closer is a rundown of some guitar greats and how they got their sounds: Jeff Beck, Clapton, Van Halen, Hendrix, David Gilmour, Andy Summers, The Edge, and Kurt Cobain, to name a few.
The book is a little more than 70 pages and sized to match standard music books. Pics are in black and white. Ross discusses various brands without pushing any of them in a sales pitch, making it clear that the thing that matters in any of this is that you pick what you like to get the sound you want.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Projects for Guitarists (Anderton, Craig)
Rating: 5
Year: 1995
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of my three project books, this is the one I never really cracked open. By the time I got this one, my interest in building my own guitar effects--and my interest in electronics--went on a back shelf in favor of other things.
This isn't a re-packaging of Anderton's "Electronic Projects for Musicians"; he does give some basics in the first couple of chapters, but the 35 projects in this book are all new, many gathered from Anderton's columns in Guitar Player Magazine):
Wall-wart tamer (mini extension cord with switch)
AC adapter hum-buster
Making crossfade & pan-pot pedals
Effects-order switcher
Power/Status indicator monitor
Stereo/Mono breakout box
Buffer Board
"Clarifier" On-board preamp/EQ
Beat the DI blues with IGGY (direct-injection box)
Frequency Booster
Phase switcher
AC power supply/battery eliminator
AC-powered practice amp
Signal switcher
Volume pedal de-scratcher
Cheap & Cheerful (Guitar) tone mods
Humbucking Pickup Tricks
Pots & Pans (pan-pot add-on to guitars)
Telecaster Rewiring
Balanced/Unbalanced Adapter
Direct Injector
Tape Recorder to Echo-unit conversion
Building a Better Bypass
Restoring Vintage Effects
Vintage Effects de-hisser
Adding Presets to Vintage Effects
Go/No-Go Cord Tester
Testing Impedance
LED Level Meter
"Tri-Test" Cord Checker
Designing an on-board (in-guitar) pre-amp
Octave-doubling fuzz
Quadrafuzz
Rocktave Divider
"Stack in a Box" tube preamp
One very helpful section helps you translate between American and International capacitor values (this information would have been useful in Penfold's book).
Well-written, with plenty of drawings and parts lists. There's no "sound page" as with Anderton's other book, but I won't quibble over something like that.
Year: 1995
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of my three project books, this is the one I never really cracked open. By the time I got this one, my interest in building my own guitar effects--and my interest in electronics--went on a back shelf in favor of other things.
This isn't a re-packaging of Anderton's "Electronic Projects for Musicians"; he does give some basics in the first couple of chapters, but the 35 projects in this book are all new, many gathered from Anderton's columns in Guitar Player Magazine):
Wall-wart tamer (mini extension cord with switch)
AC adapter hum-buster
Making crossfade & pan-pot pedals
Effects-order switcher
Power/Status indicator monitor
Stereo/Mono breakout box
Buffer Board
"Clarifier" On-board preamp/EQ
Beat the DI blues with IGGY (direct-injection box)
Frequency Booster
Phase switcher
AC power supply/battery eliminator
AC-powered practice amp
Signal switcher
Volume pedal de-scratcher
Cheap & Cheerful (Guitar) tone mods
Humbucking Pickup Tricks
Pots & Pans (pan-pot add-on to guitars)
Telecaster Rewiring
Balanced/Unbalanced Adapter
Direct Injector
Tape Recorder to Echo-unit conversion
Building a Better Bypass
Restoring Vintage Effects
Vintage Effects de-hisser
Adding Presets to Vintage Effects
Go/No-Go Cord Tester
Testing Impedance
LED Level Meter
"Tri-Test" Cord Checker
Designing an on-board (in-guitar) pre-amp
Octave-doubling fuzz
Quadrafuzz
Rocktave Divider
"Stack in a Box" tube preamp
One very helpful section helps you translate between American and International capacitor values (this information would have been useful in Penfold's book).
Well-written, with plenty of drawings and parts lists. There's no "sound page" as with Anderton's other book, but I won't quibble over something like that.
Electronic Projects for Guitar (Penfold, RA)
Rating: 4
Year: 1992
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of the three musical electronics project books, this one was the most difficult to understand, since the author uses British (or European? Metric?) notation on some components. Once I got used to that, though, everything fell into place.
Not that I ever built any of the projects. I got some ideas from Penfold's book, all of them added to a big folder with all my other electronics/music stuff, but nothing ever seemed to get built. I was always working on something else--fixing a car, learning a song, playing along with Rush tapes (NEVER the LP's!), stripping electronic components from broken TV's, radios, or whatever. I've got a sizable collection of resistors, capacitors, and all that...in storage.
Penfold gives us 16 projects after a cursory course in soldering, assembly, and testing:
Guitar preamp
Headphone amp
Soft distortion
Compressor
Auto-Wah (he spells it "Waa")
Wah-wah pedal
Phaser
Dual Tracking effects unit
Expander
Treble booster
Dynamic treble booster
Dynamic tremolo
Direct-injection box
Improved distortion box
Thin distortion unit
Guitar tuner
The schematics, assembly drawings, and parts lists are well-done; the projects are built up on simple breadboard with point-to-point wiring, but since there doesn't seem to be anything critical you could probably get away with the "dead bug" assembly method to make things take up even less space.
Some of the schematic symbols and part numbers didn't match anything I'd seen before, but that was before the Internet and Google, so sourcing most of the active components (transistors, integrated circuits) or equivalents shouldn't be too hard.
Year: 1992
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of the three musical electronics project books, this one was the most difficult to understand, since the author uses British (or European? Metric?) notation on some components. Once I got used to that, though, everything fell into place.
Not that I ever built any of the projects. I got some ideas from Penfold's book, all of them added to a big folder with all my other electronics/music stuff, but nothing ever seemed to get built. I was always working on something else--fixing a car, learning a song, playing along with Rush tapes (NEVER the LP's!), stripping electronic components from broken TV's, radios, or whatever. I've got a sizable collection of resistors, capacitors, and all that...in storage.
Penfold gives us 16 projects after a cursory course in soldering, assembly, and testing:
Guitar preamp
Headphone amp
Soft distortion
Compressor
Auto-Wah (he spells it "Waa")
Wah-wah pedal
Phaser
Dual Tracking effects unit
Expander
Treble booster
Dynamic treble booster
Dynamic tremolo
Direct-injection box
Improved distortion box
Thin distortion unit
Guitar tuner
The schematics, assembly drawings, and parts lists are well-done; the projects are built up on simple breadboard with point-to-point wiring, but since there doesn't seem to be anything critical you could probably get away with the "dead bug" assembly method to make things take up even less space.
Some of the schematic symbols and part numbers didn't match anything I'd seen before, but that was before the Internet and Google, so sourcing most of the active components (transistors, integrated circuits) or equivalents shouldn't be too hard.
Electronic Projects for Musicians (Anderton, Craig)
Rating: 5
Year: 1975, 1980
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Around the same time I was learning to play guitar--late '80s, early '90s--I was also into electronics.
I figured it'd be fun to build my own guitar effects and such...but I never built anything. I studied, planned, tinkered with stomp boxes I already had, but to this day I've yet to start or finish any of Anderton's example projects.
It's not him. It's me. Always wanted to say that.
The book's a reasonably comprehensive mini electronics course. In the first four chapters, Anderton introduces various electronic components and where to source them, what sort of tools you'll need, and assembly techniques, enclosures, soldering, testing, and the all-important "smoke test" when the project either catches fire or works like it's supposed to.
Chapter 5 introduces the books' 27 projects, including a simple pre-amp, headphone amp, tone controls, distortion, an 8-input mixer, phaser, talk box (think Joe Walsh or Peter Frampton), and a noise gate...hell, here's the list:
Preamp
Metronome
Passive tone control
Headphone amp
Mini-amp
Ultra-fuzz
Bass fuzz
Compressor/Limiter
Ring Modulator
Dual-filter voicing unit
Adding bypass switches to effects
Guitar rewiring
Bipolar AC adaptor
Treble booster
Electronic footswitch
Tuning standard
Super Tone Control
8-in, 1-out mixer
Using a volt-ohm-millammeter
Practice play-along
Phase shifter
Making patch cords
Talk box
Tube-sound fuzz
Envelope Follower
Spluffer
Noise gate
Chapter 6 discusses different ways of patching the effects together, since your overall sound will be affected by the order in which effects are connected.
As a bonus, my copy of the book came with a flimsy record page with examples of many of the effects in action.
Looking over the list, I can't see me building a Tuning Standard because in the past 20 years small tuners have become cheap and small enough to fit in your guitar case. Most of the rest might bear revisiting, though--I'll need to dig out my big folder full of scribbled notes and schematics. It's always more fun to just look at the stuff, try to figure out how it works.
Overall, the book's well-written and illustrated, with parts lists for each project and plenty of assembly photos. Of the three books like this in my collection, this is the best.
Year: 1975, 1980
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Around the same time I was learning to play guitar--late '80s, early '90s--I was also into electronics.
I figured it'd be fun to build my own guitar effects and such...but I never built anything. I studied, planned, tinkered with stomp boxes I already had, but to this day I've yet to start or finish any of Anderton's example projects.
It's not him. It's me. Always wanted to say that.
The book's a reasonably comprehensive mini electronics course. In the first four chapters, Anderton introduces various electronic components and where to source them, what sort of tools you'll need, and assembly techniques, enclosures, soldering, testing, and the all-important "smoke test" when the project either catches fire or works like it's supposed to.
Chapter 5 introduces the books' 27 projects, including a simple pre-amp, headphone amp, tone controls, distortion, an 8-input mixer, phaser, talk box (think Joe Walsh or Peter Frampton), and a noise gate...hell, here's the list:
Preamp
Metronome
Passive tone control
Headphone amp
Mini-amp
Ultra-fuzz
Bass fuzz
Compressor/Limiter
Ring Modulator
Dual-filter voicing unit
Adding bypass switches to effects
Guitar rewiring
Bipolar AC adaptor
Treble booster
Electronic footswitch
Tuning standard
Super Tone Control
8-in, 1-out mixer
Using a volt-ohm-millammeter
Practice play-along
Phase shifter
Making patch cords
Talk box
Tube-sound fuzz
Envelope Follower
Spluffer
Noise gate
Chapter 6 discusses different ways of patching the effects together, since your overall sound will be affected by the order in which effects are connected.
As a bonus, my copy of the book came with a flimsy record page with examples of many of the effects in action.
Looking over the list, I can't see me building a Tuning Standard because in the past 20 years small tuners have become cheap and small enough to fit in your guitar case. Most of the rest might bear revisiting, though--I'll need to dig out my big folder full of scribbled notes and schematics. It's always more fun to just look at the stuff, try to figure out how it works.
Overall, the book's well-written and illustrated, with parts lists for each project and plenty of assembly photos. Of the three books like this in my collection, this is the best.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
51 High-Tech Practical Jokes for the Evil Genius (Graham, Brad & McGowan, Kathy)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 2008
Genre: Nonfiction, tech/electronics
Read again? Yup.
They're baaaaack. I see this as a companion book to Graham & McGowan's "101 Spy Gadgets for the Evil Genius" because many of the the spy toys could easily be re-purposed to serve practical jokes.
This is a book of little mechanical gimmicks that go bump in the night, make random cricket noises, or jump out of a box and scare the living crap out of you. It's good for all year 'round, but what Halloween display is complete without a brain in a jar?
What about a stink machine that can be hidden in a victim's room?
Some of the projects require basic electronics skills; others require some basic woodworking. With some creativity, anything in this book will give you ideas for your own evil projects.
Year: 2008
Genre: Nonfiction, tech/electronics
Read again? Yup.
They're baaaaack. I see this as a companion book to Graham & McGowan's "101 Spy Gadgets for the Evil Genius" because many of the the spy toys could easily be re-purposed to serve practical jokes.
This is a book of little mechanical gimmicks that go bump in the night, make random cricket noises, or jump out of a box and scare the living crap out of you. It's good for all year 'round, but what Halloween display is complete without a brain in a jar?
What about a stink machine that can be hidden in a victim's room?
Some of the projects require basic electronics skills; others require some basic woodworking. With some creativity, anything in this book will give you ideas for your own evil projects.
101 Spy Gadgets for the Evil Genius (Graham, Brad & McGowan, Kathy)
Rating: 5/5
Year:2006
Genre: Nonfiction Tech/Electronics
Read Again? Yup.
This is one cool book, a combination of build-it-yourself projects and simple hardware hacks broken down into 15 sections.
Wanna see how to make a parabolic microphone out of a wok lid? Page 12.
Wanna hack a rifle scope to make a telephoto lens for your digital camera? Page 48.
Wanna build a robot that uses some of the other stuff the authors introduce, including a panning camera mount, night vision, radio control, a microphone, and payload drop? Page 219.
We find out how to modify everyday items into sneaky spy tools: a magic marker becomes a camera; a stuffed animal becomes a nanny-cam; a soft drink can becomes a room bug.
If you think you're being spied upon, there are some nifty gadgets for you! A laser pointer can toast a night-vision camera. Hack a cheap camera and re-purpose the flash unit into a 1,000-volt shocker (either portable or mounted on something you're trying to protect).
For the computer-hacking folks, there's a hardware key-logger that plugs in between the keyboard and computer. Kind of bulky-looking, but who looks behind their computer all that often?
All around, it's a fun and interesting read for the hobbyist, tinkerer, and nosy curtain-twitcher in us all.
Year:2006
Genre: Nonfiction Tech/Electronics
Read Again? Yup.
This is one cool book, a combination of build-it-yourself projects and simple hardware hacks broken down into 15 sections.
Wanna see how to make a parabolic microphone out of a wok lid? Page 12.
Wanna hack a rifle scope to make a telephoto lens for your digital camera? Page 48.
Wanna build a robot that uses some of the other stuff the authors introduce, including a panning camera mount, night vision, radio control, a microphone, and payload drop? Page 219.
We find out how to modify everyday items into sneaky spy tools: a magic marker becomes a camera; a stuffed animal becomes a nanny-cam; a soft drink can becomes a room bug.
If you think you're being spied upon, there are some nifty gadgets for you! A laser pointer can toast a night-vision camera. Hack a cheap camera and re-purpose the flash unit into a 1,000-volt shocker (either portable or mounted on something you're trying to protect).
For the computer-hacking folks, there's a hardware key-logger that plugs in between the keyboard and computer. Kind of bulky-looking, but who looks behind their computer all that often?
All around, it's a fun and interesting read for the hobbyist, tinkerer, and nosy curtain-twitcher in us all.
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