Banjos & Such @mayor@banjo.town

I gotta write a new intro/bio and maybe change my screen name, my attention span pendulum has swung away from obscure banjo music at the moment

This may finally enable me to memorize the bass cleff. (Source: uncredited FB post)

With all the #earlybanjo stuff I post here, One thing I haven't really addressed is its problematic legacy. It's interesting to learn, play and record instrumental songs published in banjo tutor books that were published from 1855-1900 or so, but they are interspersed with *virulently* racist popular tunes of the time period, when #banjo was the star instrument of blackface minstrelsy... 1/

(IIRC the plastic tape never stuck to anything worth a damn, but that was also probably because I would put it on inappropriate and non-stationary surfaces)

I know thermal is the way to go for any number of reasons but dang

…looking at modern (thermal, I assume?) options and then getting swept by a dizzying wave of nostalgia for the OG Dymo we had kicking around the house when I was a kid

Thinking about becoming a guy with a label maker

Now, if I could only carve out a few consecutive “brain not used up yet” hours of time to fool around with this stuff 😔

Perpetually mad that pipe organ pizza parlors aren’t still a thing

“I bet I could totally make something out of this,” the dumbass said to himself

I think my first attempted project is going to be a Dallas Rangemaster clone (altered to use an NPN transistor so as to work with center-negative power supplies)

…made a larger-than-intended order from stompboxparts.com, which combined with parts and equipment acquired in dribs and drabs over the last several years finally sets me up with a proper Lego starter bucket for screwing around with this stuff

... I was not going to pay $18 for slightly-too-large aluminum enclosures and I struck out in the footswitch/potentiometer/knob departments, but I should easily be able do a one-stop order of all of *those* online

Hell yeah got me some transistors and diodes

ooh I am going Out And About this afternoon and there’s an honest-to-god hobbyist electronics store right on the way to my primary destination 👀

...in fairness to myself, every time I sit down and try to do the shopping list thing, there's at least one component out of stock, etc. and then an hour later I'm sitting here with 50 tabs open and a headache

... and for the price of a lot of kits now I might as well just buy a premade pedal