Craig Sawyers

Happy birthday - have a truly great day!

Looks like a DIY version of an early STAX unit. Whatever it is, it is really nicely made with high quality components. The ceramic tagstrips are the ones used in 1960's Tektronix tubed oscilloscopes, which is a sign that the builder was very aware of their quality in a point-to -point wired build.

I was a few days ago adding up how few of the original Star Wars cast were still around. It is missing one more that has gone - Jeremy Bulloch, who was Boba Fett, only a few days ago. Oh - and Alec Guiness of course...

In my shop in my converted garage the power tools I have are: A Wadkin BRA350 radial arm saw. Although this three phase beast can do any compound angle, I have it accurately set up to do 90 degree cuts. To the extent if you use a square on a cut edge, you can't see light through. An industrial grade bandsaw which I've fitted with a Kreg fence with microadjuster. An Axminster planer/thicknesser. That is a 3-blade 30cm cut. Lousy for interlocking grain woods because of tear-out. A router table with a Dewalt 2000W router with depth adjuster. A biscuit jointer. I've also got a pretty comprehensive set of hand tools. But no table saw - and oddly enough have never found a piece that has needed one. The things I make are quite small. I've already got more machine tools than my all-time hero Krenov used to build his iconic furniture, for which he mainly used finely tuned hand tools, many of which he made himself. Even when Krenov was so elderly that he lost his eyesight, he was still making wooden planes (to sell) by feel. Amazing guy. He was also a realist - many of his carcase joints used dowels. But he said that if biscuits has been available when he was working he would have used them instead in a heartbeat.

Oh damn - Tim de Paravicini. I didn't see that coming. RIP a guy who designed a landmark series of products.

Boba Fett actor Jeremy Bulloch, RIP. Too early from Parkinsons at 75. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55358301

When we bought our house, newly built, around 30 years ago, I jumped up and down on the floor - "woohoo - it is a concrete raft! Let's buy it!" So fortunately I get none of the bouncy floor stuff at all In an earlier house maybe 35 years ago, which did have bouncy floors, I had a custom slab of slate made (from here http://www.delaboleslate.co.uk/ ) and put it on on wooden bearers which I screwed into the walls in an alcove for the deck. But Stretch hand me down or not, that sir is a hell of a deck!

Dead easy if you make it from two pieces. Make the join a feature with a row of really nice countersunk brass screws. Make it from two contrasting woods. Or, if you want to hone your traditional skills, contrasting woods dovetailed together. Or a finger joint. You also need tough woods given this thing is going to get walked on and scuffed. So for contrasting tough wearing woods that won't warp - hornbeam for the flat bit and iroko for the vertical bit. Nicely contrasting too,

RIP Barbara Windsor. Probably not that well known in the US, but in the UK famous for being in all the Carry On movies, and long time member of the cast of a popular soap East Enders. Aged 83 from Alzheimers. She continued acting for three years after diagnosis. Quite a character; in her 20's she had affairs with the East End gangsters the Krays.

RIP David Cornwell (John le Carré). Superb novelist over the decades. Aged 89, so not too bad an innings.

I can just about understand how mains power and line level cables can impact sound quality through management of RF ingress. But digital cables? Provided they are fed and loaded by the characteristic impedance of the cable, job done. There is some subtlety to the "fed and loaded", but that is outside the scope of a half way decent $15 cable. Incidentally, the way to get around the "fed and loaded" problem is to use long cables (~10-15 feet). In that way any termination reflections come back during the flat top of the waveform, and not during an edge, where it will impact jitter. But such simple pragmatism does not sell $5k digital cables.

It is a Chord product. They must have bought, or licensed, the copyright to use the EE logo on one of their designs. Which is not a design as such - it is a $30 8-port network switch with a different clock (perhaps) in a custom case. What is the term? A fool and their gold are easily parted?

If you live in Birmingham! Ha ha ha!! Brilliant.

Blimey - 20! That is impressive Ours is either 17 or 18, and eats like a horse. Deaf as a post now, lost a couple of teeth, and too old to get out of the garden any more - she can't leap onto the fence. And she doesn't groom so well now, but thinks I am the cat god when I get the comb out! But she does all the usual cat things - feed me, cuddle me, let me out, let me in, and sleep for 18 hours a day.

Hope you had a superb day, Todd!

They have to be B&W speakers - the pod on the top with the kevlar midrange started off in the 801 back in 1980. I used to lust after those so badly it almost hurt. Forty years ago now, and they are still drop dead gorgeous. And I'd still like a pair - just because...

RIP David Prowse. I had no idea he was the Green Cross Code guy - thanks for that Grahame!

This to VPI's post on Tuesday: You need to watch where you use purpleheart. If it is exposed to bright sunlight the surface oxidizes to a rather dull browny-purple. But freshly cut it is a spectacular wood.

The moving magnet cartridge shown (the Elys-2) is pretty quirky - it does not have a removable stylus. It is similar to a moving coil in that regard - when the stylus wears you return it to Rega for rebuild or exchange. https://www.rega.co.uk/products/elys-2

Bloody hell Jose - I had no idea you were going through all this. As Tice says - fingers firmly crossed.

I have a Garrard 401. Stylus drag doesn't slow that sucker down. Oh - and a Thorens TD150II, and that is a pretty weak force unit. But I'm using that with a Shure V15IV with Jico stylus. Since that thing runs at 0.75g tracking, it is just fine. That feeds, via a phono stage, a BH original, with all the unobtainium silicon, and a pair of SR007. That is one of my wife-is-asleep headphone systems. Don't ask...

Have a great one!

I've just checked into this thread again - I can hardly type for laughing! OMG the thread moved on - that was in reply to Tice's comment on the last page on Nov 9th!! Back to the current posts. So sad that Maradonna has gone. Such a flawed genius in the same way that George Best was. Best drank himself to death, and Diego Maradonna had the same demons.

Ugh. What a hideous product. Also I don't know about the FCC mark, but the CE mark is fake - it does not conform with the very precise requirements of the mark geometry. The not so far from the truth joke was that CE from a Chinese product was not a CE mark at all - it stands for China Export.