Morning. The sound system at Holy Trinity Church is ailing. The installation engineers must visit to administer a cure. To oil the day, I continued inserting pdf images of my books’ covers next to their citation on the Academia site:

‘Polishing the brass’ … possibly. But today, as makers of either images, texts, or sounds, we are responsible for dressing our own shop window.

On, then, to a radical revision of Pedalboard IV. Nothing superfluous this time. ‘Keep it like that … tight!’, as Miles Davis once commanded. Short cables needed to be prepared. This is the same tin of soldering paste, or flux, that my father used when he was a young man. Of how many other consumables can it be said that they last for two generations:

Rarely is anything worthwhile straightforward. Effects pedals are like unruly school children. Some won’t sit quietly with others. Others want to be the first in the queue. And a few should be put out of the classroom. By mid afternoon, the order had settled thus: buffer > tuner > fuzz > fuzz > overdrive > wah-wah. The Dunlop Cry Baby Mini works extraordinarily well at the end of the line (contrary to the accepted wisdom). However, the Zvex Fuzz factory didn’t fare well after a buffer and before the Electro Harmonix Big Muff Nano. (The former is a temperamental so and so.):

Pedalboard IV (June 2016)

Pedalboard III (April 2016)

Pedalboard III had been modified in April. It’s now fully optimised. So, a task that I’d expected to complete in the morning ended up absorbing the whole day.

5.15 pm. Power down! 6.30 pm. An evening with my wife.