Sunday, December 29, 2024

DIY Wah, or DIWAH?

Checks notes Back in April of 2023 I built a Colorsound Inductorless Wah clone, without any real plan beyond building it. Afterwards I thought that maybe I would come across a dead wah pedal and just put my circuit in that housing. The reality is, if this scenario were to ever present itself, I would most likely just repair the original circuit, leaving my own circuit to remain homeless. So what is a DIY wah clone circuit supposed to do? Go to Aliexpress, of course! Aluminum wah enclosures are all over the place on that website, and during their holiday sales I decided it was time for me to go ahead and bite the bullet on buying one.

Now, I currently have my brother's BBE Ben-Wah in for repairs, so I can compare this enclosure to a genuine wah. Alright, I hear you snickering at the fact I just called the BBE a genuine wah. I know, I know. Anyway, the BBE is MUCH heavier, and feels much more substantial than this enclosure. My only concern is the longevity of this aluminum. The 1590B and 125B style cases are fine, because they're smaller, but this one being bigger gives me a bit of concern for how many wahs this pedal will let out before it wahs no more from stepping on it too much. Time will tell!


As you might have noticed I had to do a little modification due to my supplies. Most wahs use an internal power jack, as where all mine are external, but it works. The treadle tensioner is an oldschool design, but it also seems to work. Instructions on this are really tough to find, but if you're curious look up Mammoth Electronic's tutorial on their 4SWAH enclosure. Pssssst. It's the same thing! Shhhhhhh. Keep that between us. In 2023 I built the Colorsound inductorless, as well as a Bespeco Weeper clone. This one will be the Colorsound and when the Weeper will get a home is beyond me. If you do decided to buy one of these from Aliexpress please note that sometimes they're missing parts. The parts with mine came thrown into the box, and probably fell out of the cracks in the box in transit. Just a buyer beware situation. Overall, not a bad deal for a DIY wah pedal.

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

My Christmas Gift to Myself: Healing

For the past twelve years of my life I've dealt with pretty serious anxiety off and on. This year was one of the worst relapses, and I'm still having a hard time shaking it. In previous years, when I had a relapses, I relied heavily on the most amazing support systems I've ever had, but sadly she decided in 2019 that was all she could take. I understand, sometimes I don't want to be with me either. She always promised me, up to the day she left, we were going to be together. It was never a matter of if, it was a promise of someday. Either way I have to stop staring at that closed door hoping it will ever open again. What hurt me the most was, to semi-quote Take That, in the twist of separation she excelled at being free. It was as if her escape was planned very well in advance. That's her choice, and I fully support it as I'm sure she's happier without me.

Now I look at my life and realize I can't let everything around me fall into disrepair anymore. I need to take my health, my happiness, and my life more seriously and find what I deserve and where I deserve to be. It's going to be a long, hard road, but I've got some really great people on my side already. I also have you, the readers. If you've come here for a new pedal building update, or small electronics fix tutorial, I'm sorry. That's why this blog is called Sam's (or my idiot younger self chose Samz) Asylum. It's my little place on the virtual world; a hodgepodge of all things I'm feeling, working on and what I want to share with whomever will read it. For those of you who have stuck around through all my personal entries that aren't fun to read, thank you. I promise you 2025 has some more pedal builds, and hopefully here soon I'll be able to give an update on a build from 2023.

No longer can I wait, unhappy and longing for the past to return. No longer can I sit back and let life pass me by. It's time to take charge of what I can control, and hope what I can't control shows me a bit of grace and mercy. I'm super excited about a few major events in 2025, and we'll just have to hope for the best with everything else. Hopefully things will be better than the past five years have been. Hey, I love building pedals, but I was never doing well emotionally. Now let's put a positive mental attitude and my pedal building skills together and see where that gets us. I'll keep those of you who wish to know updated. For the rest of you, the pedal build stuff will start back up in Spring, so only a few months to go. I'll see you then and wish me luck. I'll need it!

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Virginia's Run (In With the Trailer Park Boys)

Here we go again! I watched a movie just to find the Trailer Park Boys connection. This time I watched Virginia's Run, which had been on my radar for quite some time. This movie doesn't focus around any of the actors from TPB, but rather a little girl, named Virginia, whose mother died in some horse related accident. The father, being so angry at the horse that killed his wife, has sold the horse, but Virginia still tends to it. The horse bites the dust while giving birth, so the foal imprints on Virginia as its mother. From here we have your typical, cookie cutter early 2000s coming of age movie. Father and daughter disagree, father makes a huge (and financially irresponsible) gesture to apologize to his daughter, and now magically has complete and total faith in adolescent daughter's decision making skills, after having spent the first part of the movie questioning them.

I know this movie isn't aimed at me, so I won't judge it too harshly. I'm not into horses, nor could my family ever afford one, so two strikes right there, but that's on me. Much like with Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor I hope the target audience find their solace in this film as well. After the huge apology gesture from her father, Virginia enters into a horse race, but not before she has an interaction with the town bully, a rich kid, whom Virginia and her horse completely smoke in an unsanctioned race. As revenge for this, and to avoid losing in front of the whole town, the rich kid horsenaps the horse, causing Virginia to be late to the race.

This is where all four of the Trailer Park Boys actors meet up. In the first few minutes Mr. Jeremy Akerman appears, and later comes back as the overseer of the horse race. While recovering her horsenapped horse, Virginia runs past a traffic stop, where none other than John Dunsworth is portraying the sheriff. Once Virginia is escorted into town, by Sheriff Jim Lahey (not really the character's name), she is held back from entering the race by Mr. Akerman's character, who is a DICK! Which causes a pair of men in the crowd (credited as JP and Rob, aka Julian and Ricky) to chant "Let Virginia ride!", repeatedly.


This is where all four of them interact, before Akerman's character finally relents and allows Virginia to enter the race. The scene switches to Virginia who is now mounted up and in hot pursuit to catch up to the race, even though she's like fifteen minutes behind. Do not fear though, as this is a feel good, coming of age movie it only takes a few minutes before she's battling for the win. This leads to a side by side battle between Virginia and her rival, which results in him pulling some typical rival bully tricks and causing Virginia to take a tumble. In true feel good movie fashion she recovers and within a few more short minutes they're both battling it out to the finish line.

Sheriff Jim Lahey!

My only real complaints about this movie are the jaw harp that had to be used for almost any reason at all. Does it need more cow bell? No! It needs more jaw harp! And Gabriel Byrne did a pretty abysmal job with his accent. His acting was good, but his accent wasn't sure if it wanted to be his native Irish, or hillbilly American. As for the Trailer Park Boys connection, Mr. Akerman, JP and Robb were all featured pretty heavily throughout the final part. As for Sheriff Jim Lahey, well he was there at the end, but didn't say much else. Now shit hawks here, folks!

Freedom 35?


Friday, November 29, 2024

A Quick Thank You

Yesterday was Thanksgiving for us Americans, and no the irony of the holiday is not lost on me. I figured I would take a moment to thank all of the readers who have put up with my ramblings for over thirteen years now. On the backend of my blog I can see where views come from, and sometimes I'm surprised at where my little island of incoherency is being viewed from. While these are purely statistics, and put no face to the viewers who actually take the time to view the blog, I want to say thank you for reading, whomever you are. I've tried to make sure that my blog is accessible to everyone who wants to read it. If the page doesn't automatically translate I've made sure there has been a translation option on the right-hand side of the page.

I'm not a writer, a fact that is obvious by reading any entry in this blog. I just wanted a small space to express what I find interesting in the world, and to share my hobbies and my (very limited, and sometimes questionable) knowledge. I've done reviews, some might call needless, and I've done some tutorials, some might call those needless as well, but I've always tried to be helpful in some way or another. I can see my blog has been quoted a few times in forums seeking help, and I'm glad that I could be useful. After all, that's really all I've ever tried to be. I don't know who you are, but if my blog has helped you in any way shape or form, I thank you for taking the time to read it.

Sunday, November 24, 2024

Sam's Movie Review: Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor

I've mentioned it here a few times that I love Trailer Park Boys. That show came to me at a time in my life where nothing made sense. Even though it was a comedy mockumentary, to see that I wasn't alone in life making absolutely no sense made it make sense. Does that make sense? Apart from Trailer Park Boys I knew there were a few other film projects the cast and crew worked on such as The Cart Boy, One Last Shot, and even Virginia's Run. More recently I watched Vandits, starring Robb Wells, and enjoyed it quite a bit. After that I decided to see what else Mr. Wells had been in, and a movie by the name Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor showed up, so I decided to give it a watch as well.

I have to preface this by saying, while I did enjoy this film, there were so many moments where I was like "This is totally connected to Trailer Park Boys.". Aside from starring Robb Wells, this movie was written, produced, and directed by the lovely Shelley Thompson, aka BARB FRIGGIN LAHEY! Whose scalloped potatoes, I am sure, are not fucked. There were a lot of moments where I could see Ricky coming out of Robb. I totally admit that's wholly on me, because I went into this movie with the mindset of finding the Rickyisms in Robb's other work. For that, I'm truly sorry. Again, I did enjoy this film!

The story focuses around Dawn (formerly Don), who transitioned from male to female, and trying to circumvent the tribulations that brings to one's life. Robb Wells portrays her father, who just lost his wife, and both Dawn and her sister, plus her sister's boyfriend, come back to be with their father to help him through this tough time. While back in town Dawn's family slowly but surely accept her for who she is now, but there are some typical troublemakers in the town whom needlessly cause quite a bit of trouble. While trying to reconnect with her father, Dawn takes an interest in her mother's old tractor. As a way of showing support for his daughter the father helps her restore the tractor. Said troublemakers complicate this by burning down the barn in which the tractor was stored, which only causes an outpouring of support from the community in restoring it one final time, so that it could be used in a communal event.

I'll say it again, I did enjoy this film. It felt like a low budget, tight-knit community film to me, which is in no way a bad thing. The actors who normally do plays at the Blandford Recreation Centre finally got their time to shine. (Sorry, I couldn't resist!) I grew up in very rural America and I understand the small town mentality, so much of that felt very genuine to me. Transitioning isn't something I've personally experienced, but just like Trailer Park Boys helped me feel less alone in my life not making sense, hopefully this film will help those struggling in the same way as Dawn find their own solace.

Friday, November 15, 2024

I'm Bored: Let's Review Taco Bell Sauces

There for a while I was addicted to a hot sauce called Valentina, thanks to my ex fiancée. To fill the void when she left I started trying dollar store hot sauces. Louisiana Hot Sauce was my favorite, with Texas Pete being adequate. I then started to wonder where Taco Bell's sauces would rank. I used to love their Fire Roasted salsa packets so much that I would order Taco Bell for no other reason than to have an excuse to hoard the salsa packets, or just drink them straight. So where does their current line up of sauces rank?

Mild

I've never been a fan of Taco Bell's mild sauce. It's always tasted and looked like dish water to me. There is a slightly sweet smell that doesn't really excite me one way or another. I'll use it, if forced to, but I usually try to avoid it. 

Hot

Hot has the same flavor and texture as mild, but with a little kick to it. The overall experience is pretty much the same as a mild packet, just a tiny bit of heat and some chunks. If you read the ingredients it's just mild with some jalapenos thrown in to add bite.

Fire

Fire is thicker, has some chunks and brings the heat. A nice flavor, a nice texture and a good amount of heat. It has a very olfactory pleasing smoky scent that gets my salivation glands working overtime. 

Diablo

Diablo sauce has a smoky scent to it that immediately excites my taste buds. It's slightly thinner than fire, but still thicker than mild or hot, with a nice smooth texture. As soon as it hits my tongue I detect a sweet, smoky flavor that quickly evolves into heat engulfing my palate. The heat lingers for a while, much longer than with fire.

Breakfast Salsa

Breakfast Salsa was introduced to me when I chose Taco Bell's breakfast burritos on the road to thrift stores, slathered in their breakfast salsa. These packets are slightly taller and contain the nectar of the Gods! It's a bit sweet, thinner than both fire and diablo, but still thicker than hot and mild, and is filled with chunks, as good salsa should be. The heat is somewhere between hot and fire, leaning more toward the hot sauce. The jalapeno chunks add something, but not too much.

Avocado Verde Salsa

These cost money, so it's rare that I will ever use them. I did give them a try and I wasn't very impressed with it. I remember it was thin, but the flavor wasn't bad. It was about what you could expect of something called avocado salsa. Again, since they're charging 20 cents for these I don't get them.

Of all these sauces I prefer Fire, Diablo and Breakfast Salsa. If it's not going onto Taco Bell, directly into my mouth, or onto a Mexican inspired meal, it's usually going on tuna salad. You see, that ex fiancée that I mentioned earlier once made some really good tuna salad, and I've been chasing her recipe ever since. She ghosted me after ten years, so I can't just outright ask her what it was, but I try to replicate it the best I can. I shovel a little bit of my tuna and mayo concoction onto a cracker and then cover it in one of my favorite Taco Bell sauces. For purist results these reviews were written after drinking a packet of each flavor straight. I couldn't give accurate reviews with pesky food sullying the flavors.

Saturday, November 9, 2024

Reaching Beyond My Capability

One of my greatest passions in life has been doing small electronics repairs as a hobby. Never in a billion lifetimes did I think I would become the repair person in the family. My brother has asked me to look at a few things, and it's usually a simple repair. Things are slowly progressing in difficulty though, and that's forcing me to learn a little bit more to reach that next level. On the repair list is a Peavey Bandit that my brother picked up super cheap. It turns on, it just doesn't producing any sound. I opened it up and did a board inspection, which didn't yield any results in showing what was wrong with the amp. All of the components looked fine, nothing was scorched or broken. Fuses were ok too.

At the end of the signal was the 12" speaker. I popped off the leads and checked the speaker to see what impendence it was and the multimeter read -- nothing. He's dead, Jim. So I haphazardly  hooked up a small speaker just to see if this amp produced sound, which it did. I reported back to my brother all he needed was a replacement speaker and it's good to go. Well, that's been a few weeks and it's taking up quite a bit of space, so I decided to take it upon myself to see what I could do to move this project along a bit.

The first thing I learned was the Scorpion speakers have removable magnets. Interesting! Once the magnet is removed the voice coil is right there. Let's check some continuity. From the lugs to what should be the start of each side of the coil is fine. Then I found continuity throughout the entirety of the coil. After probing around with my multimeter I found the break in the coil is RIGHT BESIDE where it should connect to the output lug. Solder bridge to the rescue! Except, it's not that easy. Dealing with the speaker was tough, and trying to solder in such a small space was even worse. After some trial and error, mostly error, I finally got a solid 6.2 ohms through the speaker consistently.

I carefully replaced the magnet, snugged it up, placed the speaker back into the Peavey and it worked. For a brief period of time. I checked the speaker and the continuity was yet again broken. I painstakingly ran another solder bridge and got the continuity back and tried one more time. Again, the speaker worked and after about ten minutes decided it was done. I'm not trying it again. If it's done, I'm done dealing with it. I'm not a speaker repair person, I'm just someone who can search on Google and then apply that knowledge to real life. The real MVP here is the ability to remove the magnet that gave me the chance to find the fault and attempt the repair. I've made sure the solder bridge isn't massive and rubbing up against anything, but it shouldn't be so frail it falls apart. I just think this speaker is done and doesn't want to be repaired, so I will abide by its clear wishes. At least I tried.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

O Cartridge, Where Art Thou?

Sometimes I'm more shocked by the games that I don't own rather than the ones that I do. I own a few games that are difficult to find, but only because I found them cheap during my thrifting adventures. What I don't own, however, is a North American version of Super Mario Kart. I bought a Super Famicom version a few years ago, and since the menus are super easy to navigate, even for a dolt like myself who can't read Japanese, the cartridge was perfectly serviceable for my needs. I don't own a copy of Super Mario 64 either; I don't even own the DS remake. I don't own a copy of A Link to the Past, Super Metroid or even Kirby's Adventure. All ubiquitous games, I've just never found them in the wild.

To say I've never found them would be inaccurate, but what I consider to be in the wild is in a thrift store, flea market or at the outlet store. All these games are readily available at almost any media resale store around me, but I always held out hope I would find them for cheaper in the wild, where prices used to be less regulated by greed. I remember thrift stores having stacks of common games that I had tons of, for exceedingly cheap prices too, but most of the time they had already been picked through and the good games were gone. What was left were things I would pick up for trades or to fill out my collection.

Perhaps I'm frugal to a fault, but I feel I don't need something unless I'm comfortable with the price. As time moves on prices are shooting up, and that's really exacerbating things. I'm not looking to have a complete collection, or to own all the rare games on any given console. I just want to own the staples of each console, that way I can enjoy them like most people my age did when they were kids. As if it's a Friday night and I just rented this game, or came back from Toys R Us with a new game for getting good grades and I was going to use it to numb my mind for the weekend.

Sure, I can emulate all of the games in question, and I certainly have throughout the years. I still retain there is something to be said about genuinely having the cartridge, or in the case of the Playstation the disc, and playing it on the original hardware. I found a PSOne console a few weeks back that I have no clue where it came from. It's not on my spreadsheet of consoles, but it was hidden inside a bag of my stuff. I decided to spend the day fully testing it, and let me tell you being 41 never felt so much like 16 this entire year. It was an absolute blast! So again, I could easily replicate the gameplay with an emulator, but for me personally nothing beats the original hardware, software and controller. I just need to find the staple games of the consoles I love and live that reality.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

My Adventures in Illusion of Gaia

Taking inspiration from having finished Breath of Fire, I decided it was time to finish this one off too. There are RPGs that hold your hand, and there are RPGs that don't care what kind of mess you get yourself into with no hope of rectifying the situation. Illusion of Gaia falls at the tail end of the former and leans over into the latter. You see, you don't earn stats the normal way by grinding and leveling up, you earn stats by clearing out rooms. The final enemy of each room gives you an upgrade of strength, health or defense. There is no magic really to speak of, rather you transform into stronger characters.

While Illusion of Gaia is kind of an entry level RPG to ease people into the genre, I felt I had a pretty good grasp on finishing the game. Everything was hunky-dory until I hit that final home stretch. An often overused trope is to force the player to defeat every single boss they've already defeated, just to pad out the game's play time due to developer laziness. While Illusion of Gaia was very generous with save points, which double as healing stations, in the last few parts of the game, I figured I was perfectly fine and this was going to be a piece of cake with ice cream and chocolate pudding on top. The sad reality was the game was luring me into a sense of false superiority and plotting my downfall with each step I took.

In any normal RPG you would carry a stock of healing items, or at the very least healing spells, again of which there are none in this game, to supplement any damage you take after a battle. With Illusion of Gaia I was lured into a false sense of security with as often as I could just pop into a save point, heal and save my progress. Herbs are available to take with you, but that is if you can be bothered to find them as they're hidden in chests, rather than sold by vendors. I felt there was really no need, instead I chose to keep my inventory open for the items I felt I would need along the journey, rather than needlessly hunt down herbs to heal what the save points would already do.

Illusion of Gaia also has a life system, which is kind of useful, but not really to me. Most enemies will drop an orb, each orb gives different points towards an extra life. You can have a maximum of 9 lives and 100 points from collecting those orbs earns an extra life. If you should die in battle one life is spent and you're allowed to restart from the entry of the room where you died. I've used a few lives along my journey, mostly due to my lack of patience. When it comes to bosses though, your life is spent, your health isn't completely replenished and you're forced to start the fight all over again. Meaning you're worse off than you would be just restarting from your previous save, no matter how far back the previous save was.

Some might say that Illusion of Gaia's traps are my fault, and I would say maybe you're right. However, when an item has been useless 90% of the time you've played a game, and you forget it's even a thing because it has been so useless, but when you finally need it the game doesn't allow you to leave the tower to go back and find it, well the item is still useless and this game is just a trap. I did beat this game, but it was a long, hard road. I don't hate this game, that hatred is reserved for Lagoon! Fuck that game! Illusion of Gaia was a nice, charming little introductory RPG that I did enjoy most of my time playing through. I'm glad I finally got through it. I might even play through it again, but just to unlock the final red jewel mansion.

"I want to burn you into my memory."

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Autumnal Shift

Autumn is upon us and pedal building season 2024 has come to a close. Against all odds, and desires, this year I built one more circuit than I did in 2023, which I swear I did not plan on doing. I still have kits I put together that will now have to wait to be built in 2025. Beyond these kits I've only found a few things that have inspired me, but I swear it won't be 46 (or more) circuits in 2025! I don't plan on quitting, I just feel the need to move on to other projects for 2025.

As the days turn colder, the nights grow longer, the urge to play RPGs grows stronger. With having beaten a 20+ year old save on Breath of Fire I'm started to wonder what I should tackle next. There is an entry coming up that explains what RPG I beat after Breath of Fire, so I won't spoil that here. I own an SNES multicart that has both Actraisers, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Terranigma, Link to the Past and a few other RPGs on it I'd love to get stuck into. Although I have saves for both Chrono Trigger and Earthbound from at least 2017, and a more recent one for Dragon Quest 5 on my Wii. Maybe I should take care of those first. Who knows, we'll see!