In ROD We Trust

A few more Boss Micro Rack units popped up for reasonable prices, so allow me to introduce the ROD-10.

This is an overdrive/distortion unit. Overdrive and distortion are basically two versions of the same thing, but when you alter the parameters you get sonically different profiles, so people have gravitated towards a few particular combinations of those parameters over the years.

Most overdrive tones tend to produce a rather shrill and grating tone, which is, for the most part, completely unlistenable. It does have some utility when you're in a noisy band where the drummer won't shut up for even a single beat and the bassist is drunk on his own sonic mud; that screeching tone tends to cut through so that the audience can actually hear the lead guitar.

However, there are also some more gentle forms of distortion which add some spectral complexity. When listened to raw they still tend to sound a bit irritating, but if you scoop out some of the frequencies with, for example, a parametric EQ, then you can produce some chill, nostalgic tones. Like listening to an AM broadcast on an old clock radio, or playing back a tape in a deck that cost less than one week's allowance.

And wouldn't you know it, Boss was kind enough to produce an overdrive/distortion box that has a built-in parametric EQ. How convenient!

As expected, this box can take a thin, boring sound and fill out the spectrum, which can then be sculpted back to produce a warm, ear-filling tone. It's obviously quite useful for guitar, which pretty much any O/D box will be, but the ability to dial back the distortion also makes it work well for synths which are naturally more sonically complex from the start. I primarily intend to use this with the latter.

But there's two boxes here, and the second one isn't an ROD-10, but rather an RDD-10.

Boss made a few delay boxes in this series, and we've seen a few like the RPS-10 and RSD-10. Like those boxes, this one is a delay, but its party trick is that it has a built-in LFO that can modulate the delay time.

Changing the delay time on a delay unit doesn't just change how quickly the echoes come back, it also changes the pitch of anything already in the delay buffer, since it'll be playing back that buffer at a different rate than when it was recorded.

This feature can be very useful for adding a bit of pitch instability to the sound without affecting the initial pitch: by setting the modulation amount low and the rate low, the echos will be subtly detuned. You can also set the modulation rate high to get a tremolo-like effect. Or set them both to silly levels to get a truly absurd sound. You can also get swimming, phasing sounds by dialing back the delay time and cranking the feedback to give the notes a warbling tail.

I'm not usually a huge fan of delay units, despite owning a few, but the sonic flexibility to move beyond just "make an echo noise" really makes this one a keeper.

Calling The Kettle Black

I decided that today was a day to buy a new pot.

The one in the front here has been with me since, I dunno, sometime in the 80s? Whenever the "aluminum causes cancer" scare rolled through and my dad decided that cooking in aluminum pots was no longer cool and fashionable.

This was a pretty good idea, not for the sake of the health scare, but rather because the pots were always dishwasher washed and the alkaline cleaning agents in the detergent was severely pitting the aluminum. They basically looked like a dull grey moonscape.

Anyway, long story short, these pots were working quite well for me, and still do for the most part, except for the 2 quart that I cook pasta in. Because I have a gas stove, and because the burners are a bit too big, the bottom of the handle has been slowly roasting on this one over time.

So rather than letting this continue and ruining an otherwise perfectly good pot, I got a new one with a metal handle instead. It's fully gas cooktop safe, and also oven safe, and also has a bottom that isn't warped (and weighs half a ton). I also specifically went for the Demeyere because it has welded rather than riveted handles; I don't know why it isn't more common, as these pots from back in the 80s were also stainless steel and had welded handles (or, to be completely accurate, they had a welded bracket that the handle screwed into, achieving the same basic effect of having a seamlessly smooth inner surface) and it's so nice not having to deal with food and crap getting stuck around the rivets.

Moving on, some good news: I managed to fit the new pot into my pot cupboard.

It took a bit of tetrising, but I got it in there.

Feelin' Not Hot Hot

This here is my stove. It came with the house. I probably wouldn't have bought a Samsung if it had been my choice, but as of yet I have no particular reason to get rid of it.

But that doesn't mean it's working perfectly. Far from it, in fact: it has two issues with the oven.

One of those issues is that it hasn't been preheating quite as well as it should be, and it tends to sound a little hesitant when I first turn it on. Like the igniter will come on, then the gas will start flowing, but sometimes the gas will stop and start again a few times, sort of hesitating, and the burner will flame out and reignite.

But thankfully it's pretty easy to just have a little look inside, only these two screws at the back here need to be removed to get the bottom panel of the oven off.

We've still got this diffuser to get through, and it's a bit cracked down the middle but still serviceable.

And finally we can see the burner assembly.

I was concerned that it might be rusted or clogged, but it seems to be fine.

Which is nice because a new burner is around $100 or so. And that kind of confirms my suspicion that it's probably the hot surface igniter that's on its way out.

It certainly looks a little crusty in there. There's a safety circuit in the oven control board which measures the current through the igniter and if it's too high or too low then the gas valve shuts off to avoid making your oven explode. Which is, you know, I guess a nice feature to have.

Anyway, these cost about $30 to get a generic one from the House of Bezos.

And yoinking out the old one starts with pulling the oven out, so that we can access the rear panel.

This connector here is what supplies the igniter with power, and it needs to be unplugged so that the burner assembly can be removed.

Like so.

Taking a peek through the grille, it's definitely looking a bit crusty.

So let's see, did I get the right replacement?

Well it sure looks the same.

Just, you know, newer.

But the important question is: does it work?

Sure looks like fire to me.

Anyway, I said that there were two problems with the oven, and the second problem is the oven door switch.

It's been flaky and intermittent for a while, so I ordered a new door switch for like $3 like maybe 2 years ago and just never got around to installing it, for reasons you're about to see. But ignoring this problem didn't seem to make it go away, so I guess it's time to actually do something about it.

And that starts with pulling the grills and burners off the cooktop.

And then pulling off the cooktop, which is quite easy to do when you remember to push in these little clips at the front, and don't forget and just yank it off by force.

Not that I would do anything like that.

Next up these screws down the side come out.

Including this obnoxious one in the back.

And then once those, and the ones down the back, are out, we can... remove more screws and panels.

And then we're finally at the switch.

After pulling off the connectors on the back you just need to press in the little metal tab on each side and it slides right out the front.

And then it's just out with the old and in with the new.

Except there's one slight problem.

This switch is the wrong polarity.

It's supposed to be normally-closed, but instead it's normally-open.

Now sometimes you can open up these switches and reconfigure them, but that ain't happening with this one.

So instead let's just crack open the old one and clean the contacts on it instead.

As they are looking a little bit crusty.

And a tad bit tired.

But after a little scrub with a brass brush...

They... kinda look the same?

It seems to be working, though, so we'll go with it.

Hmm, yup.

Yeah, that's more like it.

As for the new switch, the return window has long since expired so it's off to become microplastics floating in the ocean.

And in the meantime I'll be enjoying a working oven.

At least until the next time it breaks.

Vitality

For a while now I've been baking bread with AP flour. This has worked out relatively well, but the recipe I'm using really toes the line of hydration and enrichment, which means that it demands a lot of the flour, and the natural variation thereof can sometimes come up a bit short in the structure department.

Back in the day I used to bake bread with bread flour, which is absolute easy-mode. I keep my pantry stocked with AP now, though, because I bake a lot of other things like the crusts for my pot pies or my chocco chip cookies, which very much do not benefit from an excess of gluten in the flour. Like, to be honest, they'd probably be fine since the fat (and sugar, in the case of the cookies) would likely tenderize things sufficiently for the gluten to never stand a chance, but all purpose is supposed to be all purpose.

The last batch of bread turned out particularly cakey and crumbly, so I decided it was time to make a change. Not by buying bread flour (because honestly, owning two different types of flour is getting a little too deep into the baking hobby than I really want to allow myself to get), but rather by buying some wheat gluten.

Sorry, my bad, it's ✨vital✨ wheat gluten. You know, as opposed to the usual optional, inessential wheat gluten.

Just look at how vital this is.

Anyway, I'm using 510g of AP flour total so I'm trying 15g of gluten to see what that does. By my calculation it should land things at almost 15% gluten. Depending how things go I might back it down to 10g, which would yield around 14% total.

There's already 30g of flour in the yudane, so 480 goes into the bowl.

And then whisking it together dry is rather important so that you don't accidentally make a wad of seitan in the middle of your loaf of bread.

My usual gauge for how well the bread will come together is seeing if it sticks to the spatula or pulls away cleanly, and we're looking good on that front.

And it kneaded up very well, with a good amount of springiness.

The first rise looks promising, with no slumping around the edges.

And the second rise shows promising structure too.

Out of the oven I got a good amount of spring that didn't collapse during baking.

And no tearing across the top, just a little bit around the edges which is quite normal.

As per usual this is just the first bake. One loaf goes in the freezer and the other loaf stays on the counter until Sunday evening when it'll get the second bake to brown it up and reset the starches. So far, I'm pretty confident in these loaves.