Off The Shoulder

So it's time to deal with this t-shirt again.

It's a lovely t-shirt and all, but it's quite obviously made pretty cheaply compared to your average t-shirt (which is saying something). The material is pretty thin, the stitching has already failed in a number of places previously (and repaired in other blog posts), and of particular note is the lack of a certain feature on this t-shirt that almost all other t-shirts have.

You see, a standard jersey knit t-shirt fabric stretches in the horizontal direction a lot more than it does vertically. For the most part this is fine, because the human beings inside of the t-shirts tend to expand and contract much more in the horizontal axis than the vertical one. However, this does pose one minor problem, which is the stability of the shoulders.

The shoulder seams are mostly horizontal, and as such are quite stretchy. However, we don't really want the t-shirt to stretch across the shoulders or across the back of the neck, as this will cause the sleeves to sag or the neck to gape. On most t-shirts, you'll find a piece of fabric tape sewn along the inside of the shoulder seam and back of the collar. On this t-shirt, no such tape exists.

So let's add some. I don't happen to have some exactly matching jersey fabric that I can form some tape out of (orienting the fabric perpendicular, so that the less-stretchy vertical axis supports the seam) and I certainly don't have a 2-needle chain stitch sewing machine with tape feeder that's usually used to apply this detail in an industrial setting.

... must resist temptation...

So instead I'll just be applying some fine cotton twill tape instead, using my coverstitch machine to get an even 1/4" spaced pair of seams.

Before we go sewing the tape on, though, I'll need to press the existing seam towards the back of the t-shirt, as is tradition. A sleeve roll makes this operation much easier than trying to do it flat on the ironing board.

Using the coverstitch machine means that the tape will need to be on the bottom side, and given that it's only 3/8" wide, I don't really have a lot of wiggle room to make sure that I catch both sides of it. So in order to improve my chances, I'm going to baste the tape in place first to keep it aligned.

This worked... sort of. I didn't have too much luck keeping the tape aligned over the seam, mostly because the seam itself was rather narrow and lumpy, and sewing machines in general don't really like sewing over narrow, lumpy things.

I picked out and re-baseted a few areas with the sewing machine before finally giving in and doing most of it by hand instead, which I probably should have done from the start.

This definitely would have been a lot easier with an industrial double-chainstitch machine.

Anyway, it's time to sew this into place for real, so out comes the coverstitch.

And I was quickly reminded why I don't often use this machine: it is awfully cantankerous. I did, however, finally nail down exactly what was causing it to be disagreeable, and it turned out to be the particular thread that I was trying to use in the looper.

The issue was that I could walk the machine forward by hand and it would stitch perfectly for as many stitches as I had the patience to manually make, but as soon as I stepped on the pedal to sew for real, it would instantly break the looper thread with no real hint as to why.

As it turns out, there's a particular phase in the stitch forming where the needles are coming down behind the looper, and the looper thread comes exceptionally close to the tip of the leftmost needle. If the looper thread is a little bit unruly, the needle will catch the looper thread and pretty much immediately shred it, and this will generally only happen when the machine is running at-speed.

Thankfully the solution is as simple as just using a different thread for the looper, and I happened to have some on-hand that was in a reasonable enough colour to do the job.

So onward we sew.

And I'll give a little shout-out to the clear foot here. It is, as you can clearly see, quite useful in this sort of situation.

And after what felt like hours of prep work, the tape is sewn in place.

Is it perfect? It could be better. But it's good enough to do the job, though it's not done yet. (and not just because I haven't yet removed the basting stitches)

Normally, this tape would be applied to the t-shirt before sewing the sleeves on. The sleeve seam would then catch the end of the tape and secure it into place. I don't really want to take the sleeves off of this t-shirt just to get the tape sewn into the seam, especially since I would also have to remove the entire side seam on both sides, so instead I'll just sew over the existing seam.

Away goes the coverstitch machine, and out comes the overlocker... which is also a coverstitch machine in this case; this particular model happens to incorporate both functions in one. Why didn't I use it for both operations? Largely because I wanted to put more miles on the other coverstitch machine in hopes of figuring out how to make it less cantankerous, which I did manage to do, so mark that down as a success.

Anyway, enough digressions, let's get overlocking.

A one-needle 3-thread overlock is the stitch of choice here, matching the original seam done at the factory.

Then after another quick press to help close up the stitching holes from the basting, the t-shirt now has much better stability across the shoulders, and will be way less prone to sagging and stretching when worn.

And don't worry, you won't see the white twill tape when there's a person inside it. Instead, you'll just see a t-shirt that hangs much better across the shoulders.

The Acrux of the Issue

These are my work headphones.

For some reason a few years back Google decided that just buying regular off-the-shelf headphones was for plebs, and instead decided to make their own to distribute to employees. I really don't know why. They also called them "Acrux". Again, I really don't know why.

This initiative didn't last, though, and these headphones are no longer available. What also didn't last is the vinyl on the ear pads.

Anyone who's owned a set of headphones will recognize this as a sign of the apocalypse; once it starts, it doesn't stop, and you'll be dealing with jet black dandruff until you either throw away the headphones and buy a new pair or...

... Buy a replacement set of ear pads. These are designed for the Bose QC35 whose ear pads have roughly the same shape and dimensions.

What isn't the same, though, is how the ear pads mount to the speaker cups. On the Acrux there's a set of 5 tabs that go through slots in a plastic ring around the edge of the ear pads, just snapping into place. On the replacement ear pads, though, there are no such slots.

Luckily the inner plastic ring just slips into place on the Acrux ear pads, and can be slipped out just as easily. It's also what the speaker cloth is attached to, and since the existing ones were in good shape, I'll be reusing them.

There's no little flap of fabric on the new ear pads to slip this plastic ring into, so I'll be resorting to a different technique to secure them.

Good 'ol VHB. Just need to measure out how much I'll need.

And split it down the middle since it's much wider than the plastic ring.

And then I need to get rid of the EVA gasket on the new ear pads, since the VHB won't stick to it.

It takes a little bit of coaxing to get the VHB to curve around the oval shape, but luckily it's pretty chewy stuff.

And once the red plastic is peeled off, I can stick it to the old ring.

And then it just snaps back into place.

Of course if the left ear pad is falling apart, the right ear pad will not be far behind. Plus having mismatched ear pads does really weird things to the audio quality between the two sides, so replacing both at once is the best idea on a number of fronts.

So after the second verse (same as the first) everything is refreshed and good as new... at least until the vinyl on the headband starts disintegrating.

The level of noise isolation did drop a little with the new ear pads, which is a bit of a bummer, but it's better than getting black vinyl flakes all over the place, and it'll tide me over for a little while longer before I just expense a new pair of non-Google-branded headphones to replace these.

A Solid Footing

When I originally got my "broken" Yamaha Reface CS, and subsequently fixed it by turning on the speakers in the settings with a quick factory reset, one of the things I didn't take care of right away was a small but important item that was missing from the device.

That item was one of the 4 rubber feet on the bottom.

And though some may claim that a 3-legged stool will never wobble, I can safely say that the same doesn't hold true for synthesizers.

Thankfully the solution to this problem isn't too hard to come by.

And it also isn't hard to install.

So that just leaves one last detail to take care of.

Which is the above proprietary midi port connector, which Yamaha for some reason decided to use in order to cram both the midi transmit and receive into one jack, thus requiring the use of an easily lost dongle if you want to actually connect this synthesizer to other midi devices.

Getting the replacement for the one that never came with my machine wasn't hard to do, but it took a while for it to come in. Thankfully it's here now, and I'll just have to hope I never misplace it.

Finishing Touches

There was a bit of summer weather this week, but it was quickly followed up by one last stab of winter.

So I'm hiding from the clouds outside by following up on some little details on my music setup. In particular, that one mismatched fader knob on my TR-6S.

I'm sure that you can understand when I say that this just won't do. I have no idea what piece of equipment this knob was stolen off of, but it's gotta go.

I can't just leave the bare metal stem, though, and luckily I don't have to.

It wasn't especially easy to find this replacement, but I did eventually manage, and it matches perfectly.

And then there's just one last thing. This unit is powered through its USB B connector, and as you may know, USB B does not exactly have the most positive engagement when it's plugged in. I haven' thad any issues with it so far, but since this box has a battery compartment I figured that slapping in some cells would give me a reliable backup for whenever the USB cable wiggles itself loose while I'm messing around.

NiMH batteries won't leak over time like alkaline cells inevitably do, and the self-discharge rate is pretty low, so I can pretty much just stick these in here and forget about them. It's cheap insurance against accidental power disruptions.

Robot Rock

Since we last left off, I discovered that the side of my room that I set up my music desk on gets kind of dark in the evening. Sadly, when this addition was built on the house, they didn't actually bother putting in any overhead lights and instead tried to make do with just a tiny bit of track lighting installed where a porch light once was.

But, it just so happened that I had a spare desk lamp kicking around, so I repurposed it here.

And speaking of additions to the desk, I'd been keeping an eye out for a good deal on a Roland Aira J-6. It's from the same line as the T-8 and S-1 pictured here, but while the T-8 is focused on drum and bass sequencing and the S-1 is focused on synth lead sequencing, the J-6 is instead built around sequencing chord accompaniments and arpeggiations.

Now I don't want to get too deep into music theory here, but my expectations for how the chord banks would be laid out, and how they are actually arranged, apparently did not align particularly well.

I don't feel like my expectations were too extravagant. I just assumed that within a given set of 12 chords I'd find that they were cohesively selected to align with a particular scale key and mode, with perhaps some creative selections where they borrow the occasional chord from related keys and modes.

And I certainly at least expected that they would be roughly arranged so that they generally rose in pitch as you ascended the keyboard.

Buuuuuuuut nope. From what I can tell there's really no theme at all to each bank of chords, and whether any pair of them makes sense tonally when played next to each other seems to be pretty much down to just luck. In fact, Roland seems to have put so little effort into the selection that they even accidentally duplicated at least one bank of chords. (For those curious, Bank 5, which they classified as "Jazz", contains a chromatic set of Major-9 chords, despite one being mislabeled as a Major-7 chord, and this is identical to Bank 21, which they classified as "Utility", which also contains the exact same chromatic set of Major-9 chords, note-for-note.)

So as a result you can either poke around the chord sets randomly (and the box gives you no visual indication of what chord it's actually playing when you hit each key) in hopes of lucking upon some combination that sounds good, or use the manual to try to reverse-engineer your way through the mess of chord banks.

However, the good news is that you can also just largely ignore the preset chord bank and just input your own chords into the sequencer by picking the notes on the built in 13-button keyboard. Somewhat annoyingly, you can't program the sequencer in step mode using an external midi keyboard. Curiously you CAN program the sequencer using an external midi keyboard when in live mode (where you play each step into the device in realtime) which is at least something I guess.

Honestly the J-6 feels like a bit of a half-baked product compared to the T-8 and S-1, though I expect I'll still get enough use out of it to justify the price (which wasn't much). If nothing else, it's a pretty neat 4-voice Juno emulator.

So, I think this lineup should keep me entertained for some time. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for some good deals on a few other pieces of gear that I wouldn't mind adding to the setup. An upgraded drum machine might be nice, one that would get around the 32-step limitation of the T-8's sequencer, and perhaps give me more options for different drum sounds. The Roland TR-6s would fit the bill, and just to give you an idea of what it looks like, here's a photo of one:

Oh, whoops. Well, I guess it wasn't quite as hard as I thought to find one. Of course, this one was discounted for a reason, and it was a little bit rough when it showed up,

It had definitely seen a bit of cigarette smoke, plus it had been the victim of a few curious "customizations" by a previous owner, including swapping in the green knobs (which is fine, I guess), misplacing one of the fader knobs and substituting a mismatched one (I've got a matching one on the way), and adding some sort of green trim around the edge of the front panel, most of which had since chipped off.

And it was also filthy.

Luckily it's just a simple matter of popping the front cover off to disassemble and clean things.

Or at least it would have been simple if they hadn't, for some unknown reason, used an excessive amount of super glue to stick on that green trim.

But thankfully I was able to coax the top off after a great deal of struggling, without damaging any of the plastics. At least not any more than they already were.

The result after cleaning looks much nicer, though perhaps not quite perfect.

But sounding good is more important than looking good, and this drum machine sounds plenty good enough to be added to the bench.

So as I was saying, I'm not really in any hurry to add any more pieces to this setup, though I am keeping an eye open for any particularly good deals. For example, I wouldn't mind picking up a Korg Opsix synthesizer, which is an FM-based synth that has a lot of flexibility to produce tones that my Yamaha Reface CS can't do. Just to give you an idea of what one looks like, here's a photo:

Oh, whoops. I did it again, didn't I? Well, at least this one was in really good shape and didn't need any TLC to rehabilitate it.

But this does bring up a bit of an issue, in that I've got enough equipment on the bench that switching the audio back and forth is becoming a bit tedious. While the little Aira boxes have an audio pass-thru, as does my Yamaha Reface CS, neither the Opsix nor the TR-6S have that feature, meaning that I can't just chain everything into one long line to feed into the aux input on my little baby Line 6 guitar amp.

It's not really the end of the world, though, so I'm just planning to keep my eye open for a good deal on a mixer, maybe one with a built-in multi-track recorder. Something like the Tascam Model 12 would do the trick, and just to give you an idea of what one looks like, here's a photo:

Hmm, I really need to stop finding such good deals. In this case, the deal was extra sweet because the unit was malfunctioning. There's a bit of a well-known achilles heel on this model, which is that Tascam specced a really shitty power switch, and as a result the box will refuse to turn on once that $1 part suffers its inevitable premature death.

Thankfully the fix is very easy to perform for anyone who's even slightly adventurous, as I've documented here:

Ok, phew, that should be it for now. Anything else from this point on wouldn't fit on my desk, and really the only thing I could think to add might be something like a chorus effect pedal. The chorus effect really adds a lot of space and depth to synthesizer sounds, but it's not always included as a built-in feature on every synthesizer. Notably, the J-6 box doesn't include it, despite the original Juno synth that it's based on having one of the most widely celebrated chorus effects. So I'll be keeping an eye out for a deal on something like a Boss Dimension C DC-2w, which would probably fit the bill, and it even comes in a lovely purple colour as you can see here:

Well shoot, how does this keep happening?

Anyway, this chorus effect pedal takes a relatively flat sounding mono (or stereo, as of the Waza Craft edition which I have here) signal and applies a sort of phase-modulated delay to it that really livens up the sound, and in particular it gives it a ton of stereo separation.

Of course, to really take advantage of that stereo separation I'd need something other than my mono Line-6 guitar amp to output the final mix. So, I'll be keeping an eye out for a good deal on a pair of powered studio monitors, like a set of Yamaha HS5 speakers, which look roughly like this:

Hmm, damn. Well, I guess that wasn't going to keep working forever. Oh well, let's just have a good look at the setup so far.

Ah, so beautiful and clean... and also nothing's actually connected to anything else, so sadly we must summon the rat nest.

Well, that's not nearly as pretty but at least I can hear what I'm playing, which I suppose is the important part.