Your other hobby's anti-science bias?

[Bignose]

I really enjoy this forum, if only from the large number of rational thinkers on here that have no problem on calling some dodgy or suspicous claims. Phil should be happy to know that I recommend his book (and Sagan's Demon Haunted World) to as many people as I can.

But what I am really curious about is the other hobbies this forum members have where pseudoscience seems to abound. Let me give an example:

I also like to keep tropical fish. It is a neat hobby to me, lots of different species, means lots of different activities and behaviors. One of the challenging things is that, unlike your dog or cat, if your fish gets sick, you often have to diagnose and treat it yourself. (I.e., very few vets know how to treat fish diseases.)

Well, it seems for every human 'naturalist' or 'herbal' remedy out there, someone also wants to sell that to you for your pet. A few months ago, I had to preach skepticism when a fish forum member wanted to put grapefruit seed extract in her tank. Today, it is someone wanting to use colloidal silver. About a year ago, someone was trying to use an "Eco-Equalizer" that used the earth's natural magnetic field to purify water. In all these cases, I try to say, "well, ok, where is the proof?" and I get webpages from the manufacturer claiming it will cure everything.

And then, I always have to put these long, almost ranting posts, where I have to explain that science would embrace these different cures, if there was proof that they worked. And that anecdote does not equal proof. And that just becausen nothing bad happened, that does not mean that anything good is occuring either. ("My cousin Vinny put marinara sauce in his tank and his fish lived for 7 months!")

So, I am curious, what other hobbies do you have where science seems to take a backseat? I cannot possibly be the only one who has to fight with other forum members to do a little thinking on their won.

[BigDon]

Brother I know what your talking about.

I'm a long time contributer to Fishindex and the things some folks will come up with not to have to wait the 6 to 8 weeks for their tanks to cycle is astounding. I love the "bacteria in a bottle" crowd.

Me: Now wait a minute! The beneficial bacteria that detoxifies the fish waste doesn't sporate, and requires oxygen to survive! Correct?

Them: Yes.

Me: So whats in that tiny, sealed bottle?

Them: Uhhh, bacteria?

Been there, done that little bro.

[Musashi]

Brother I know what your talking about.


You're.

[BigDon]

Caught my spelling gripe thread did you?

[Captain Kidd]

Wet coal burns better.

Eh? :eh:

That's one that crops up every now and then.

[Dragon Star]

You're.

The irony of me saying I have a problem with that in BigDon's thread and you pointing that out is amazing.:D

[TheBlackCat]

Although within the scuba diving community there don't tend to be too many major science myths that I am aware of (generally those who do don't live very long), but there are tons of them in the popular media and among non-divers. You can't imagine how many times I have seen drawings of pencil-thin female divers with no no BCD, and no weight belt either, and they seldom seem to show SCUBA masks with snorkels even in movies.

[peter eldergill]

wait the 6 to 8 weeks for their tanks to cycle

Could you please elaborate on that statement...I've been interested in getting my aquarium back up in running order

Pete

[yuzuha]

Most of my hobbies are either hard science (geology, fossils, ancient Japanese history etc.) or totally non-science (Asian horror films, anime, etc.), but I do like to watch shows about UFO's, Atlantis and that whole bit... I don't believe LGM are visiting us or that Atlantians built pyramids all over the earth or anything like that, but I do find them entertaining (in the same way I find folklore and mythology interesting).

[cjl]

The simple nature of my primary hobby (rocketry) weeds out most pseudoscientific junk. After all, the rocket either flies, or it doesn't, and it doesn't make a bit of difference if you sprinkled dandelion leaves plucked at the last full moon in the payload bay...

I'm sure there are a few people in it who have some sort of nonscientific procedure or something, but I have yet to notice any.

[94z07]

The irony of me saying I have a problem with that in BigDon's thread and you pointing that out is amazing.:D

Actually it should be written "...my saying..." not "...me saying..." and "...your pointing..." not "...you pointing..."

[Dragon Star]

I'm only human, leave me alone.:D

[farmerjumperdon]

As with scuba, in skydiving the buying into incorrect beliefs about the sport can have dire consequences; so the sport is pretty much self-correcting of poor thinking skills. Thankfully, most experience a non-fatal mistake and correct the behavior, or sell their gear and take up golf. After a certain point on the experience curve, there aren't too many incorrect beliefs left in play.

The whuffo crowd however is another story. (A term we use, similar to woo-woo used here). Funny thing is, the beliefs go to both extremes. There are folks who think (and will argue with you about it) that a skydiver can land on the ground without a parachute if they tuck and roll juuuuuuuust right.* I've met others who insist that hitting water at terminal velocity (on average about 120 MPH) is automatic death; even after referring to the stats of attempted suicides where jumpers off of very tall bridges "accidentally" survive.**

*These usually come in the form of an urban myth about a friend who has a cousin who met a person who knew a guy who's uncle survived a skydive without deploying a parachute. Usually if you give them an out during the explanation of why that can not happen, they take it. But some will argue to the point of hilarity just to avoid admitting they might be wrong.

**So yes, there is a strategy for survival if you happen to be in an airplane that breaks up and puts you in freefall unexpectedly. If you're still in your seat, unbuckle and get away from it. Find water, any body of water, fly to it, slow the descent as much as possible, and cannonball at the last moment, impacting the water seat first. Course you have to have good body pilot skills to make it work. If you laugh at this possibility, that's OK - I laughed keying it in.

p.s. - On another tangent, the facts that a skydiver at terminal velocity absolutely can not survive hitting the ground, and that a suicide jumper at terminal velocity can survive hitting water also destroys the buzzline that "At that speed, hitting water is just like hitting concrete." I'm sure that at some speed, hitting water is as unforgiving as hitting concrete; but there is a huge difference in impacting the two at the speeds attained by a human body in freefall.

[mid]

Wet coal burns better.

Eh? :eh:

Depends what you've got it wet with, I imagine. A light splash of your hydrocarbon of choice might well help things get started...

[Donnie B.]

Well, I'm sure you're right -- but I once read about a pilot who ejected from a damaged plane, had a total parachute failure, fell several miles onto terra firma, and survived the experience.

He landed on a steep slope covered in deep snow, then kinda rolled and slid to a stop over a few hundred meters. I don't recall what injuries he had -- possibly a few broken bones -- but none of them was life threatening.

Is this a real incident or just a myth? The article I read was written by the pilot himself. Maybe he was just a good talespinner?

[Swift]

Given that my other hobbies are model railroading and photography, and I don't recall any science discussions with either, I can't say that there is a bias or not. :shrug:

[ToSeek]

I got stuck on a panel once at a science fiction convention that was supposed to be about the possibility of alien life but got taken over by another panelist who spent the whole time talking about how she was abducted by aliens.

[Matherly]

Wet coal burns better.

Eh? :eh:

That's one that crops up every now and then.

Speaking as an amature outdoor chef, I will say that wet wood smokes better. If you put wood soaked in water over your hot coals it will smoke profusly but will take a long time to actually burn (advantagous if you want the taste smoke imparts but want to keep a low tempature for long duration cooking)

[ktesibios]

Donnie B: You may be thinking of Nicholas Alkemade. He was a rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber which was attacked by fighters and set afire over Germany in 1944. His parachute, which was stowed forward of his position, was on fire and useless. Deciding that being gished would be less unpleasant than being burned alive, he jumped anyway.

He fell approximately 18,000 feet and landed in a fir forest, crashing through many feet of branches and striking a snow-covered slope. Apparently the combination of the branches slowing his fall and the fact that he didn't come to a halt immediately on striking the ground but rather rolled down a slope were enough to allow him to survive with minor injuries.

He was captured by the Germans. His captors intially refused to believe his account (quite understandably) and insisted that he reveal where he had concealed his parachute after landing (they may have been motivated less by military concerns than by the thought of what that nice big piece of silk would fetch on the black market). He eventually convinced them by demonstrating that the fittings on his parachute harness to which his parachute would have been clipped were still sewn down and that the stitching would have been broken had the parachute been clipped on.

Having been convinced by this evidence, his interrogators wrote up a document attesting that they had investigated his claim and found it correct, signed it and presented it to him.

There are two other cases of WWII airmen surviving long freefalls. They're listed here (http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffallers.html).

There are other cases of people surviving impossibly long falls from aircraft, notably Vesna Vulovic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovic)

[farmerjumperdon]

Donnie B: You may be thinking of Nicholas Alkemade. He was a rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber which was attacked by fighters and set afire over Germany in 1944.

Those are close, but do not constitute hitting the ground while in freefall. I'm aware of the guy who landed in the fir trees. Talk about lucky. He managed to hit enough small branches to slow him down, and no big ones that might have killed him. I know that one has appeared in Reader's Digest, possibly on multiple occassions. According to that article, he was freed by his captors (not held as a POW) after they determined he was telling the truth.

I had a friend who fell 20' and landed flat on his back on a slab of rock. Significant permanent injuries, the worst being paralysis of one arm. His ortho surgeon told him that 80% of people that fall 20' to a hard surface die. I got nothing to back that up, but am curious now about what the speed would be at impact after freefalling 20'.

I'd like to know the exact details of the guy who fell thru the skylight, such as the material the skylight was made of, what other obstacles slowed him down before he stopped, etc. Big time scrutiny is necessary when reading the anecdotes from sites like that. The media and casual observers typically describe these kinds of events very inaccurately. The FFA and USPA dissect and analyze them very precisely and with a thorough understanding of the factors involved. In general, they are the only parties I would trust to provide an accurate description and assessment of a skydiving accident.

It's all just a matter of applied physics. If you slow down too quickly, your innards get all jumbled up. We call it Sudden Decelleration Syndrome. The aorta seems to be a weak point. Autopsies often indicate a torn or burst aorta as the official cause of death.

[GeorgeLeRoyTirebiter]

One of my hobbies is building audio equipment, especially vacuum tube equipment, for hi-fi and electric guitar. Unfortunately, audio electronics is one of the fields most beset with pseudoscientific nonsense. The field seems to have fragmented into two camps, real audio engineers and the ignorant, some of whom are well meaning but uninformed, some of whom are self-aggrandizing, and some of whom are hucksters and swindlers. Have a glance at Stereophool magazine sometime; you will be horrified. Nothing gets tested objectively. Opinion and conjecture get repeated until they become “facts”. The word of self-proclaimed “experts” is regarded as gospel. It’s enough to make me “sick” (sorry, couldn’t help it).


A few examples from hi-fi:

-Conventional distortion measurements, coupled with psychoacoustics, cannot be used to determine if an amplifier has Good Sound. Only subjective listening tests (but not blind testing) can determine that.

-Subtle, mysterious, unmeasurable distortions affect every component. By some strange coincidence, the more expensive a part, the less distortion it causes (i.e. gold plating will ward off the evil spirits that cause Bad Sound).

-Negative feedback should be avoided. It seems too good to be true, so it must be bad.


And from electric guitar:

-Microcapacitance in circuit boards will rob you of your precious high frequencies; hand wired is always better (there’s so much wrong with that statement, I don’t even know where to begin).

-They just don’t make parts (resistors, capacitors, etc.) like they used to (said as a complaint, not an expression of gratitude).


Fortunately, some people are trying to fight this nonsense. See, for example, Douglas Self’s Science and Subjectivism in Audio (http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/pseudo/subjectv.htm) or Rod Elliott’s The Truth About Cables, Interconnects, and Audio in General (http://sound.westhost.com/cables.htm).

[farmerjumperdon]

Could you please elaborate on that statement...I've been interested in getting my aquarium back up in running order

Pete

Basically, you need a good bacteria population (residing either in the filtering media of a box type filter powered by air or a motor, or in the bed of gravel for a tank with undergravel filters).

The advice you'd usually get from a shop is to buy some cheap (and dispensable) fish to get the cycle started. A few guppies or something like that. Once testing indicates a mature bacteria colony (don't ask, it's been years since I raised fish), you can start adding permanent residents.

At no time should you change "everything" as in all the water and the filter media. You do not want to wipe out all the good bacteria.

Most tank problems are caused by overfeeding, overcrowding, or failure to do regular partial water changes (or some combination thereof). An inch of fish per gallon is a good guide, 2 inches per gallon if the tank has mondo filtration. A large surface area per gallon ratio also helps.

[farmerjumperdon]

I checked out that Freefall site in detail. It is entertaining, but contains quite a few minor errors and inaccuracies, and a few big ones. I was wondering how that could be so until I came across the admission in the Questions section that the author (Hamilton) is not a skydiver.

He really should have an experienced skydiver editing, proofreading, assisting with research, etc.

BTW, it has a version of the water-is-just-like-concrete line.

Try this at home:

1 - Jump from 10 feet into a pool of water (at least as deep as you are tall).

2 - Jump from 10 feet onto concrete.

3 - Notice the difference?

[Bignose]

That is great stuff there George. With virtually no knowledge about audio cable and the like, I really learned something there.

[turbo-1]

One of my hobbies is building audio equipment, especially vacuum tube equipment, for hi-fi and electric guitar.I, too, have built and repaired tube amps (mostly for guitar) over the years, and there is a lot of nonsense in the field. If someone brought an amp to me to repair and started giving me all kinds of demands about not replacing certain parts (because someone told them the tone would be ruined) I would ask them to take the amp elsewhere. That's the kind of guy that will complain no matter what, and I didn't need the business. I am a guitarist and I have a good idea how the classic amps should sound, and after I get them healthy, I burn 'em in and tweak the idle level of the output tubes a little on the warm side - most people are quite satisfied. A few years ago I built a really sweet Fender 5E3 clone out of all modern parts - no carbon-comp resistors, no vintage tubes, no vintage transformers or (gasp) caps. After one show, a fellow guitarist asked me how much I had to pay for the amp because he thought it was either antique or from a boutique maker and loved the tone. I told him it was all pretty much off-the-shelf stuff, including a Weber speaker, a premade cabinet that I shellacked and antiqued a bit, and modern electronic components like you can buy from Mojo and Mouser. He badly wanted to believe that there was some magic in there to get that tone, and there was none. I guess I could lied and told him that I used all pure silver wire - that would have made him happy. :liar:

[turbo-1]

Another hobby is fly-fishing. I built my rods and I tie all my flies. There is so much opinion from "experts" being spouted as facts that it's amazing. One local "expert" took a look at my favorite rod and denounced it immediately because I had used single-foot guides with ceramic wear surfaces. He said that I should have used double-footed (snake) guides to accomodate modern fly line designs with large diameters. I told him that I purposefully chose the single-foot guides because they do not inhibit the flex of the blank as much as double-foot guides. I also fish with traditional-design fly lines because their smaller (average) diameters are more wind-resistant, and the rivers here are often windy. If you've got a prevailing wind coming at you from the side of your casting hand, it's easier to drive a smaller line of the same weight through that wind and not get a hook stuck in your ear. This guy reads magazine articles and buys the "newest and best" gear, so of course he "knew" immediately that I was badly misinformed. I should point out that despite my "failures" at rod-building and fly-tying, I have caught an awful lot of fish over the past 50+ years. By the way, when you present a fly to a fish, he doesn't care if you know the Latin name of the insect that you copied when you tied the fly. Some of these stream-side blowhards can't be content to refer to the bugs with their common names - you know, the easy descriptive ones like "red quill dun", but have to casually toss in the Latin name at every opportunity. Entymology is a useful science for fly-fishermen to pursue, but the value is in knowing the life-cycles and behaviors of the insects, not memorizing and spouting the Latin names.

[zebo-the-fat]

The Hi-Fi myths range from the odd to the stupid, I saw someone selling screened optical cable (to cut out magnetic interference!) How do you interfere with a light wave with a magnet??
Another one is gold plated mains connectors to reduce the resistance ... ok it may be a tiny fraction of an ohm less, but what about all the other plain copper connections in the circuit back to the power station?

[mugaliens]

As with scuba, in skydiving the buying into incorrect beliefs about the sport can have dire consequences; so the sport is pretty much self-correcting of poor thinking skills. Thankfully, most experience a non-fatal mistake and correct the behavior, or sell their gear and take up golf. After a certain point on the experience curve, there aren't too many incorrect beliefs left in play.

The whuffo crowd however is another story. (A term we use, similar to woo-woo used here). Funny thing is, the beliefs go to both extremes. There are folks who think (and will argue with you about it) that a skydiver can land on the ground without a parachute if they tuck and roll juuuuuuuust right.* I've met others who insist that hitting water at terminal velocity (on average about 120 MPH) is automatic death; even after referring to the stats of attempted suicides where jumpers off of very tall bridges "accidentally" survive.**

*These usually come in the form of an urban myth about a friend who has a cousin who met a person who knew a guy who's uncle survived a skydive without deploying a parachute. Usually if you give them an out during the explanation of why that can not happen, they take it. But some will argue to the point of hilarity just to avoid admitting they might be wrong.

**So yes, there is a strategy for survival if you happen to be in an airplane that breaks up and puts you in freefall unexpectedly. If you're still in your seat, unbuckle and get away from it. Find water, any body of water, fly to it, slow the descent as much as possible, and cannonball at the last moment, impacting the water seat first. Course you have to have good body pilot skills to make it work. If you laugh at this possibility, that's OK - I laughed keying it in.

p.s. - On another tangent, the facts that a skydiver at terminal velocity absolutely can not survive hitting the ground, and that a suicide jumper at terminal velocity can survive hitting water also destroys the buzzline that "At that speed, hitting water is just like hitting concrete." I'm sure that at some speed, hitting water is as unforgiving as hitting concrete; but there is a huge difference in impacting the two at the speeds attained by a human body in freefall.

Interesting. I know of several skydivers who survived parachut malfunctions, but most were streamers, probably slowing the skydiver to significantly less than the normal terminal velocity. Of them, one was a malfunction during an airshow, and the guy had more than 20 broken bones. Another landed in mud. But I also know of one guy who landed on fine sand, but with no streamer, and he died.

I used to do cliff-diving at a lake near where I went to college, from more than 70 feet, hitting the water near 50 mph. That hurts! At 120 mph I'd hit with something 5 times the energy.

What's the best/slowest free-fall body position to set you up just prior to landing in the water?

[mugaliens]

The Hi-Fi myths range from the odd to the stupid, I saw someone selling screened optical cable (to cut out magnetic interference!) How do you interfere with a light wave with a magnet??
Another one is gold plated mains connectors to reduce the resistance ... ok it may be a tiny fraction of an ohm less, but what about all the other plain copper connections in the circuit back to the power station?

It's like the monster cable fad. Double-blind tests have proven time and again no one can hear the difference.

[turbo-1]

The Hi-Fi myths range from the odd to the stupid, I saw someone selling screened optical cable (to cut out magnetic interference!) How do you interfere with a light wave with a magnet??
Another one is gold plated mains connectors to reduce the resistance ... ok it may be a tiny fraction of an ohm less, but what about all the other plain copper connections in the circuit back to the power station?The vintage guitar amp market is rife with misconceptions, but the HiFi guys are just plain NUTS! I cannot read an audiophile magazine without experiencing revulsion. Every article in them seems designed to boost advertising dollars and science is totally ignored. I'm not a total HiFi newbie, owning a dedicated SS preamp, and a massive Denon power amp to drive my Koss speakers (yes, they manufactured incredible speakers for a few years and then dropped back to offering headphones), but the hyperbole they heap on every new megabucks product is embarrasing. About 15 years ago, the sound of my system started to suffer, and I did not know why (having begun studying electronics repair only after that), and I suspected my speakers. I took them to a high-end HiFi shop and A-B'd them against the best Klipsch, JBL and other $$$$ speakers and was blown away by the accuracy and quality of the Koss speakers. The salesperson tried to talk me into selling him the Kosses. I politely declined, took them back home, and sent my Sansui power amp out for repairs (some new capacitors put it right). Nowadays, I could easily have predicted the source of the problem and diagnosed and repaired the amp, but that's hindsight. By the way, the audition disk was KD Lang's "Absolute Torch and Twang". If you want to see if your speakers and amp have what it takes, crank the last track - I think it's called "The Rights of the Children have Nowhere to Stand". The extreme dynamic range of her voice and the complexity of the fiddle make this a tough one for inferior systems.

[mugaliens]

I have a pair of Boston Acoustics (CR75). Not very efficient, but they're small, with excellent sound, and can definately handle the wattage.

Sadly, 90% of my entertainment audio is delivered through a pair of Sony headphones.

[korjik]

I play D&D. I get to make the pseudoscience up and make it real.

Actually, I play with 2 other physicists, and everyone else at least knows some science, so every now and then someone comes up with a plan that uses some science, and I get to say, 'you know, that law of physics may not actually apply here.' That is kinda fun

[turbo-1]

I have a pair of Boston Acoustics (CR75). Not very efficient, but they're small, with excellent sound, and can definately handle the wattage.

Sadly, 90% of my entertainment audio is delivered through a pair of Sony headphones.BA's can definitely handle the wattage. They are relatively inefficient, but nice compact speakers for dorms, apartments and small homes. I've got a pair of little wall-mount Bose speakers for the kitchen, but the Koss speakers play the main role. A friend of mine in high school had an audiophile father who in the early 1960's had installed a set of Klipsch corner horns into the living room. IIR, they were capable of 110db with 10 watts input. When the Crosby, Stills and Nash album came out, we about shook the house down. My Kosses are far more accurate thaan the K-horns, but of course, you need a more powerful amp to drive them. In the 70's I had a pair of single-ended 30-watt Macs that I sold because I needed the money and because my wife and I were moving a lot following construction jobs. I wish I had those back.

[Dragon Star]

I used to be an avid MTG player, but since the move I have had no time to find a card shop.:(

[farmerjumperdon]

The Hi-Fi myths range from the odd to the stupid, I saw someone selling screened optical cable (to cut out magnetic interference!) How do you interfere with a light wave with a magnet??
Another one is gold plated mains connectors to reduce the resistance ... ok it may be a tiny fraction of an ohm less, but what about all the other plain copper connections in the circuit back to the power station?

So the one about only the old tube amps producing the best sound is a myth.

A friend of mine insists that is true, and only because someone he thinks should know told him so.

I disagreed just on a gut level hunch that modern electronics can be made to do darn near anything.

[farmerjumperdon]

Interesting. I know of several skydivers who survived parachut malfunctions, but most were streamers, probably slowing the skydiver to significantly less than the normal terminal velocity. Of them, one was a malfunction during an airshow, and the guy had more than 20 broken bones. Another landed in mud. But I also know of one guy who landed on fine sand, but with no streamer, and he died.

I used to do cliff-diving at a lake near where I went to college, from more than 70 feet, hitting the water near 50 mph. That hurts! At 120 mph I'd hit with something 5 times the energy.

What's the best/slowest free-fall body position to set you up just prior to landing in the water?

Yeah, it looks like all the survivors on that site were partial malfunctions (streamers, line-overs, broken lines, etc). If it's truly a streamer, just a ball of junk flopping about with no cells inflated, it's still really cooking, with the added disadvantage of keeping you upright.

I'm definitely a floater, lots of body area for my weight. If I get into a belly to earth box and cup real hard, I can get down to about 80 MPH, maybe less. (I should have a guy with a good recorder match me and see how slow we can get). Basically turning into a human umbrella as much as possible. With my baggy suit I could probably get down another few MPH.

The guys pushing the envelope with the wingsuits can get down to about half that, but they have tremendous forward speed and of course no way to bleed it off without increasing downward speed.

I hit the water once from that height too. (You didn't go to SCSU did you?)Landed in a sitting position. The back of my legs felt like they were on fire for a couple hours. Very big sting. The friend I did it with DOVE from about 15 to 20 feet higher. He dislocated his shoulder.

[turbo-1]

So the one about only the old tube amps producing the best sound is a myth.

A friend of mine insists that is true, and only because someone he thinks should know told him so.

I disagreed just on a gut level hunch that modern electronics can be made to do darn near anything.It's NOT a myth that some old hand-wired tube-based can produce some great sounds. It IS a myth that SS amps built on printed circuit boards cannot produce great sounds. The mantra of "high-conductivity paths in all areas of the amp are conducive to 'perfect' tone" are silly. I have rehabilitated old guitar amps in which the primary problem was the failure of self-shorting input jacks to reliably short when they were not in use. Duh!

[ktesibios]

Audio electronics isn't my hobby anymore. It's been my living for the last 17 years (my hobbies have had a strange tendency to turn into jobs. It's probably a good thing that I never took up riflery.).

One thing I've noticed is that in the milieu I work in (high-end pop music recording studios) the kind of woo-wooism you find among audiopills is in short supply. It seems that people who record and mix music for a living want tools that perform as designed and do so reliably, whether or not they have a platinoid umlaut with a directional cedilla. When these folk want something designed and built, or a piece of gear modified, they usually can define what they want in concrete functional terms, (e.g. "can you change the threshold range on this compressor so I don't have to hit it so hard to make it do something?" or "can you build me something so I can tieline an electric guitar from the control room to an amp out in the live room without losing all the highs?" or "can you make the panpot curve on this console smoother?") even though the typical recording engineer nowadays knows virtually nothing about electronics. They tend to recognize the difference between expertise demonstrated the hard way and smoke-blowing as well.

There's a strong market for "vintage" gear, both tube and solid-state, but it's expected that an item will be properly refurbished and tested to meet its original specifications before being put into service.

I've only ever encountered one genuine woo in my line of work. The guy who replaced me after I left a job as head tech at a studio in Philly had some unshakeable, non-evidence-based beliefs- capacitors are the root of all evil, performance measurements are useless, all I need are my ears...

He lasted about six months, leaving a trail of gear he had either failed to fix or had tried to "improve" and messed up. After another six months without a competent component-level console, signal processing and tape machine guy, my old bosses were begging me to come back part-time and start making things work to spec again.

Needless to say, I done it. I'm such a sucker...

[Captain Kidd]

Depends what you've got it wet with, I imagine. A light splash of your hydrocarbon of choice might well help things get started...Unfortunately it's plain dihydrogen monoxide.

[Musashi]

So the one about only the old tube amps producing the best sound is a myth.

A friend of mine insists that is true, and only because someone he thinks should know told him so.

I disagreed just on a gut level hunch that modern electronics can be made to do darn near anything.

I'm pretty sure BB King uses exclusively SS amps.

[turbo-1]

I'm pretty sure BB King uses exclusively SS amps.I don't know about that. He likes the Lab series Gibson SS amps, but he still sounds like BB through a Fender Twin Reverb. I have heard the same about Robben Ford. His tone through his cherished Dumble tube amps is not that different than what he gets when he tours with cheap red-knob Fender Twins. It's in the hands.

[Musashi]

I was going to ask if you take orders for amps... maybe I should see about getting a new set of hands :)

[BigDon]

Could you please elaborate on that statement...I've been interested in getting my aquarium back up in running order

Pete

Sorry about ignoring you, I seemed to have missed your post and then
farmerjumperdon got to you first. He said most of it. Though I used either goldfish or really tough species like red devils as "pioneer fish" when I was doing fish for a living. This has since fallen out of style in favor of "fishless cycling" which is the use of pure soapless ammonia as a food source of the nitrifing bacteria. Some folks consider cycling a tank with fish cruel.There is an ideal parts per million for that that works out to something like a teaspoon to 55 gal. And you just wait until the ammonia is undetectable as well as the first stage change ammonium nitrite. Once these two chemicals reach undetectable levels your tank is ready for fish. After a big water change of course. Why don't you join us over at Fishindex.com? Tons o' friendly people more than happy to help you with your fish related issues. Plenty of stickys on the subject of tank cycling alone.

(As fishindex is a totally nonprofit site that hosts no advertising I hope this isn't considered spamming)

BD

[zebo-the-fat]

So the one about only the old tube amps producing the best sound is a myth.

A friend of mine insists that is true, and only because someone he thinks should know told him so.

I disagreed just on a gut level hunch that modern electronics can be made to do darn near anything.
I may be wrong (again!), but I thought that solid state amps and vaccuum amps produced different kinds of distortion (one more even harmonics the other more odd) and this caused the difference in sound. Modern mosfet amps are more like vacuum tube amps than bipolar transistor amps.
Or is this just a myth?

[darkhunter]

It's like the monster cable fad. Double-blind tests have proven time and again no one can hear the difference.

I usually use a cheap extension cord with the ends cut off--works out cheaper than speaker wire....

[Donnie B.]

I may be wrong (again!), but I thought that solid state amps and vaccuum amps produced different kinds of distortion (one more even harmonics the other more odd) and this caused the difference in sound. Modern mosfet amps are more like vacuum tube amps than bipolar transistor amps.
Or is this just a myth?It's true, but under normal operation both amp topologies have undetectably low distortion. It's when you drive them into clipping that tubes distort more "gracefully" -- even-order harmonics rather than odd-order. Of course, insanely overdriven output stages will produce essentially square waves (tons of odd harmonics) no matter what. With tube amps (and MOSFET amps that emulate tube designs) you get some help from the transformer coupling, which provides a big ol' low-pass filter.

[GeorgeLeRoyTirebiter]

If someone brought an amp to me to repair and started giving me all kinds of demands about not replacing certain parts (because someone told them the tone would be ruined) I would ask them to take the amp elsewhere.

Those people don't seem to understand that Leo Fender was a radio repairman, his classic amp designs were (slightly) modified PA amps, parts were chosen based on what was cheap and available at the time, and guitarists weren't supposed to turn up the amp to the point of distortion (he was marketing his stuff to country & western musicians – look at the early advertisements). That doesn’t mean those amps don’t sound great, just that nobody deliberately designed them to sound like that.

BTW, a 5E3 clone? Very nice. :D I love the sound of the 6V6...

[GeorgeLeRoyTirebiter]

One thing I've noticed is that in the milieu I work in (high-end pop music recording studios) the kind of woo-wooism you find among audiopills is in short supply. It seems that people who record and mix music for a living want tools that perform as designed and do so reliably, whether or not they have a platinoid umlaut with a directional cedilla.

At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, it seems that people with work to do can't afford the luxury of woo-woo-ism. They need results. Most of that nonsense is being peddled to foolish consumers, the pros (should) know better.

[ktesibios]

It's true, but under normal operation both amp topologies have undetectably low distortion. It's when you drive them into clipping that tubes distort more "gracefully" -- even-order harmonics rather than odd-order.

This is false, a canard, not true, apocryphal, fallacious and hogwash. There is one thing and one thing only that determines the even/odd harmonic balance of an amp's distortion products, whether overdriven or not- the symmetry of the time-domain transfer function about its quiescent point. If this is perfectly symmetrical, no even order harmonics at all will be produced. If you look up the spectra for a square wave and a triangle wave, both of which are symmetrical about the zero axis, you'll see that they each consist of odd-order harmonics only.

In more concrete terms, back in the early 80s, when I was just starting down the slippery slope that would bottom out in the recording industry, I spent a couple of years doing musical equipment repairs and custom design and construction for music stores and individual clients in my home workshop. I had a very well-equipped shop and this gave me lots of opportunity to look into the measurable differences between the tube and solid-state amps that passed through my hands. Doing a spectrum analysis of the output of a Marshall 1986 50W head, I found that the second and third harmonics were pretty much equal in level until the amp was just at the threshold of clipping, at which point the odd harmonics took off while the second harmonic (which was the only even one sufficiently strong to be of interest) stayed fixed in level. For a properly-adjusted hi-fi tube amp, like an early-sixties Fisher, the odd harmonics predominated at all signal levels. I've observed the same thing in the venerated Pultec EQP-1A tube EQ, provided that the output be lightly loaded enough that asymmetry between the two halves of the 12AU7 output stage is not significant. This behavior is characteristic of push-pull amps in general, whether tube or SS. Single-ended outputs (e.g. a Fender Champ) produce even harmonics in greater quantity due to their inherent asymmetry.

I also spent some time experimenting with distortion-generating circuits. One, which was entirely solid-state (four opamps and a monolithic dual JFET), produced nothing but second-order harmonic and intermodulation components. With a selected JFET and proper alignment, if you put a 1 kHz tone into the input, you got 2 kHz at the output, with the fundamental suppressed by >60 dB and all other harmonics, odd and even, down by as much as 70 dB. Given a two-tone signal (the sum of two sine waves at frequencies f1 and f2), you got 2f1, 2f2, f1+f2 and f2-f1, with similar purity.

For me, those observations forever demolished the "tubes produce even harmonics and transistors produce odd harmonics" claim.


Of course, insanely overdriven output stages will produce essentially square waves (tons of odd harmonics) no matter what. With tube amps (and MOSFET amps that emulate tube designs) you get some help from the transformer coupling, which provides a big ol' low-pass filter.

In my experience output transformers in solid-state power amps, bipolar or MOSFET, are pretty darn scarce. In fact, the only times I've encountered them is in amps intended for the contractor market which need the capacity to drive 70V speaker lines. Even in that service you're just as likely to find an outboard autotransformer or a stereo amp operated in bridge mono mode to provide a high enough output voltage swing. The Crown Com-Tech line, which is designed for the contractor market, accomplishes 70V output capability by means of a switch which changes the power transformer secondary taps to provide higher voltage, lower current supply rails than when the amp is in its normal direct-drive mode.

I should also add that even the output transformers found in vintage guitar amps had plenty of HF bandwidth to let the ugly high fizzies through.

Now what does act as a low-pass filter to clean up the nasty discordant higher-order distortion products, at least in a guitar amp, is the speaker. The cone drivers typically used for instrument amps, even on-axis, usually start rolling off no higher than 3 kHz or so. DI boxes which can handle a speaker-level input usually have a selectable low-pass filter (usually a single-pole filter with a corner frequency of 3-5 kHz) to emulate this effect.

My, how I have run on- and I haven't even touched on the highorder/low order harmonic balance of an overdriven amp and the influence of loop gain on it, the effects of damping factor and the influence of loop gain on that or the use of current-derived negative feedback to reduce the damping factor of solid-state guitar amps and what happens when the feedback loop is effectively broken by output or driver stage saturation.

Maybe I need a hobby or something.

[turbo-1]

Those people don't seem to understand that Leo Fender was a radio repairman, his classic amp designs were (slightly) modified PA amps, parts were chosen based on what was cheap and available at the time, and guitarists weren't supposed to turn up the amp to the point of distortion (he was marketing his stuff to country & western musicians – look at the early advertisements). That doesn’t mean those amps don’t sound great, just that nobody deliberately designed them to sound like that.

BTW, a 5E3 clone? Very nice. :D I love the sound of the 6V6...Yes, definitely a sweet amp! Best of all, you can jumper the channels and fatten up the tone by playing with the controls. I was running a weekly blues jam at a local tavern at the time I built that. The regular bass-player was a volume freak, and I had to keep telling him to turn down. When I brought in that little 5E3 clone, he threw a tantrum, saying that we would have to play really quiet (compared to my blackface Deluxe Reverb). I did keep him a bit quieter than average, but when we took ouir first break, people were raving about the tone and the barmaid thanked us (with a free round) for keeping the volume reasonable. The 5E3 is definitely a blues machine for small to medium venues.

[turbo-1]

I'm pretty sure BB King uses exclusively SS amps.I have learned that when BB flies and does not bring a Lab series SS amp, he specifies that the venue will provide him with a Fender Twin Reverb for the night. Of course, at the volumes he plays at, the Twin is a pretty clean tube amp.

[Musashi]

It was just something I had read somewhere. What do you think of Crate amps? Specifically the palomino series.

[Luckmeister]

I've found that room acoustics is a highly important variable, and spent a lot of time tweaking speaker positions and optimum listening position in my living room, and I've heard some conflicting semi-woowoo theories involving that. I just experimented until I got it as good as my ears could judge.

Also, I still prefer the thump-in-the-chest air movement of large forward-facing woofers to modern subwoofers, although I'm using the latter in my current home system.

I also got better sound on Dolby 5.1 with the front center-channel disabled. That was a tip I read somewhere on a net audio site. I tried it and did prefer it.

BTW, the DTS sound on the Eagles Farewell Tour I album is spectacular!!

Luckmeister

[turbo-1]

It was just something I had read somewhere. What do you think of Crate amps? Specifically the palomino series.I haven't tried them. I'm kinda stuck in an early-Fender time-warp and don't audition modern amps at all. One exception - I have a 2x10 2-EL34 amp hand-made by Mark Norwine. It's a Carlson Turbo-Pup - one of the richest-sounding amps ever, even at low volumes. Since I don't play out anymore, I really don't need 35 Watts, but I'm torn about selling it because it is serial number 2 and he has serial number 1. My best outdoor tone ever (biker party) was this amp and a Yamaha SA800 (ES335 clone) - no pedals, just the guitar and the amp.

[sarongsong]

...A few months ago, I had to preach skepticism when a fish forum member wanted to put grapefruit seed extract in her tank. Today, it is someone wanting to use colloidal silver...Because CS kills bacteria, adding it to the tank would definitely disrupt its biologic filtration system. Isolating the 'patient' in a nursery tank would be called for in treating with CS.

[Gillianren]

Because, you know, it could also kill the fish.

[sarongsong]

From toxins released by dead bacteria in the main tank (were CS added there)---not from CS in the nursery tank.

[HenrikOlsen]

Because CS kills bacteria, adding it to the tank would definitely disrupt its biologic filtration system. Isolating the 'patient' in a nursery tank would be called for in treating with CS.
Isolating the guy suggesting colloidal silver in the first place would make more sense.

[snarkophilus]

I used to build guitar effects a fair bit, but I haven't made one in over a year. Maybe it doesn't count as a hobby any more, but I've read some strange things on various forums. Like, if you are building effect X, you MUST use capacitor brand Y and potentiometer Z. Or else. Of course, people often don't believe it when one says that actually, a 0.05 uF cap will work as well as a 0.10 uF cap in some place, or that it doesn't actually need to be film or ceramic or whatever.

And after years of building them, I'll take a PCB effect/amp over a hand-wired one any day. Not for sound quality, because there's really no difference. I'll do it because there's little to no chance that the wiring is screwed up. :)

My brother's building a guitar right now. I built the pickups from scratch and built two effects which will be installed right into the body. (I built those over a year ago... I wish he'd finish the stupid thing so I can hear it play). It's a beautiful instrument, and the pickups sound way better than anything commercial I've ever owned. Maybe it's the hours spent winding them playing with my mind, convincing me that yes, they sound good, because if they don't then I have wasted a lot of time. But I think they really are nice.

Another hobby of mine is hockey (well, many sports, but that's my favourite). I do something very unscientific there. There was recently (last year some time) a study that showed that stretching before a sporting event actually decreases performance. I know it, but I do it anyway. It's just that I've been doing it for so long, it feels strange to skip it.

[GeorgeLeRoyTirebiter]

And after years of building them, I'll take a PCB effect/amp over a hand-wired one any day. Not for sound quality, because there's really no difference. I'll do it because there's little to no chance that the wiring is screwed up. :)

One reason I build tube equipment is because it is better suited to hand wired terminal strip/turret board construction, which I find more fun than building PCBs. I’ve messed up plenty of wiring, but that’s part of the fun. :D

[ktesibios]

One reason I build tube equipment is because it is better suited to hand wired terminal strip/turret board construction, which I find more fun than building PCBs. I’ve messed up plenty of wiring, but that’s part of the fun. :D

S'funny- I find laying out PCBs for stuff I design and build to be an interesting and enjoyable mental exercise.

De gustibus, I guess... ;)

[turbo-1]

One reason I build tube equipment is because it is better suited to hand wired terminal strip/turret board construction, which I find more fun than building PCBs. I’ve messed up plenty of wiring, but that’s part of the fun. :DThat's the reason I like tubes with turret board and terminal strip construction too, plus the fact that it's easy to heat-sink the components and get a nice shiny solder joint without overheating the components AND if you want to change the configuration of the circuit or throw in some switchable options (like a gang of different resistors in the NFB circuit or different caps in the tremolo circuit for REALLY slow to really zippy trem), it's a snap. I always put Leo's stuff back to spec, or as close as I can get, but my own creations are fair game for mods.