: or how I learned to stop worrying and steal material from SKOS

1. Have at least three children.  I know, I know. That seems like the easiet of all of these to accomplish.  The time will come.  But being that I am basically the last Horne male, continuing my family line is important. Naturally that is not the only reason.  There’s the Biblical mandate to be fruitful and multiply. Then there’s this strange internal, unexplainable drive toward parenthood.  There seems to be this innate desire to beget which I think is one of the marks of the Creator that is on man.


2. Publish a book.  I have bits and pieces of ideas and many of those bits have ended up as posts on this blog.  Hopefully one day I will be able to put those down on real paper.


3. See the abolition of the income tax. This may not see like a lofty aspiration but I believe that the income tax, which gives the federal government an enormous amount of power over us, is a vehicle for tyranny and I do not want my children (see #1) or grandchildren to live underneath it.


4. Purchase a Gibson Firebird. As you can see by the price I am going to have to amass a small fortune to do so even at Musician’s Friend’s discounted price.  But oh, they are so awesome. I love Gibson guitars.


5. Own a DMC DeLorean. This has been my dream car ever since I saw one take Marty McFly back in time. You’d think more manufacturers would include that feature. Go figure.


6. Go to Disney World.  No, I’ve never been.


7. Visit all 50 States.  And I mean in a vacation sort of way in which I actually do something and not just pass through.  Visiting friends or family also counts. So far I have been to Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and New Jersey.  I went to Texas when I was a kid but I do not remember much about it so that does not count.


8. Go on a cruise.  I know several people who have done it and it sounds so fun.


9. Meet a friendly alien.  A Vulcan would be nice.


10. Give my wife a Chevy Corvair.

So I have been getting nerdier in my old age. I have been a guitar geek more years than I can remember (okay, I can remember: 16 years). Looking for great tone and talking about the latest (and the oldest) gear are among my musical past times. Lately I have discovered a new level of guitar geekery: effects pedal modification.

I am just dipping my toe in the water at this point. My first project is to repair and modify a 90’s era Electro-harmonix/Sovtek Small Stone Phaser pedal. Two problems are inherent with this pedal. First it is not true bypass. This means that even when it is not engaged you can still hear the faint swirling of the effect going on in the background. True bypass means that the signal is routed directly from input to output (bypassing the circuit altogether) when the pedal is not engaged so that only your true, unaffected tone comes through. Replacing the footswitch with a 3PDT true bypass will remedy this. It should be a straightforward repair.

The second problem is the volume drops when the effect is engaged. The fix for this is a little trickier. It involves removing two resistors from the internal circuit board and replacing them with two higher impedence resistors. I know this may sound like greek to some of you but trust me…it’s going to be tricky for a newbie like me. However I am looking forward to giving it a shot.

I may also release my inner design geek and remove the guts from it’s ugly army green enclosure and put it in a new enclosure of my own design. We’ll see how the initial repairs go first.

My other endeavor is to build a footswitch for another pedal of mine out of a pill box, a basic momentary switch, a 1/4” mono jack and two pieces of wire and do it as cheap as possible. This will be a very easy build but will be fun nonetheless.

I hope to get to do more tweaking and building in the future. But one step at a time: let’s see if I can fix my Small Stone without ruining it.