Phantom Powered Guitar Preamp

The idea of putting a preamplifier in a guitar is hardly new. There are many advantages, but a big disadvantage is the requirement for power, which usually means that a battery has to go into the guitar. That means that a space must be found for the battery, it must be replaced when it expires, and has the potential to leak corrosive liquids inside the guitar if left for too long.This circuit avoids those problems by using a common idea from microphone technology, phantom powering. Many microphones obtain power for internal circuits from an ingenious circuit that allows power to be transmitted over audio cables. This system has become a standard, and is provided by most microphone preamplifiers and mixing consoles.

Originally, the power was used to bias condenser microphones, and so the voltage is quite high, 48 volts. Originally, a transformer was used to separate the audio from the supply voltage, but in recent years transistors became available that could do that, and so the “Schoeps circuit” was developed by the engineers at Schoeps Mikrofone to replace it.

The Schoeps circuit has been adapted and modified endlessly since its introduction, and does a fine job of supplying the power provided on a phantom cable, to on board preamplifiers of various kinds. It is a differential amplifier that provides a very low impedance output to drive the output cable, combined with a balanced power extraction circuit. It works well in different configurations, some having Zener diodes for regulation and some not. The driver stage can be configured as an additional regulation stage (which I have done), however this is optional and some designers omit it. It is the kind of circuit that will almost always work, but needs some thought and understanding to achieve the best results.

In my case, I adapted a JFET input stage from some microphones to work as a guitar preamp. The JFET is configured in differential output mode, in order to easily drive the output transistors and audio cable, which are also differential. It has an extremely high input impedance which means that it presents almost no load on the guitar circuit. Thus the guitar tone and volume controls are the only electrical load that the pickup “sees”. This avoids tonal variances that normally happen when a cable is plugged into a guitar. The lower impedance and differential (balanced) signals in the XLR cable are more immune to hum and interference, and can run up to 100 meters (several hundred feet) with absolutely no loss of tone.

The wiring in my guitar is completely conventional, with a three way switch and tone and volume control. The output goes to the preamp, which is connected to an XLR connector that replaces the usual output jack. In fact, it is possible to keep the original jack and have both powered and unpowered outputs from the guitar, but I didn’t want to drill a new hole. In future, I would because the XLR is not a perfect fit in the existing hole (to be honest, a bit of an understatement!).

Here is the installation. The prototype board fits nicely inside with a safety wrapping of insulating Kapton tape.

I wrestled with the design for a long time. There are a lot of variations on it online but no complete explanations that would allow me to optimize the components.

I thought about Zener regulation. The entire circuit is differential except for the JFET current. So I reasoned that I could omit it and depend on a pair of filter capacitors to do the job. What is strange about the Schoeps circuit, is that the pair of driver transistors function as a first stage voltage regulator as well as signal amplifiers. The collectors are common, and go to the first stage filter capacitor. Then a dropping resistor feeds the second stage supply, which depends on the second stage filter capacitor for audio frequency suppression. In my Spice simulations and also in testing, I found that this was more than adequate. There is no noise or instability from omitting the Zener, in fact it is probably quieter because Zeners are notorious noise sources. The only disadvantage that I can find in this arrangement is that all the component values are interdependent, and so you can’t really change one value or component without changing them all. The voltages have to be checked after construction to verify that they are sane. You should measure approximately 10 volts on C6. However, this circuit has a good chance of working the first time if it is built exactly as shown.

Note: R1 in the schematic above is just a simplification for the sake of Spice testing. It really represents the entire usual volume and tone control circuit of the guitar.

I’ve been playing my Godin Redline 2 with the circuit installed and I like it. I have it plugged into an Art Accessories Phantom II Pro, which then goes into my guitar amp. I can just as easily plug it directly into any phantom powered microphone preamp or mixing board, as I mentioned before.

Undercover Pickups

guitar pickup

Prototype Humbucker Cover

Here is the full story: pickup_cover_geometry

Homebrew Digital Clock

Fig 1. Finished Clock Prototype

Fig 1. Finished Clock Prototype

I started playing with Arduino boards a while ago, and soon discovered an interesting IC, the Maxim DS3231. It is a chip that provides extremely accurate time, backed up with a small battery. Why is this important? Well, for quite a long time, consumer watches and clocks have been timed with a quartz crystal. This provides fairly good accuracy, but production processes have become very slack due to cost cutting, and very few of these will keep very accurate time. Sure, my cell phone has the time, but it’s usually laying around somewhere, or in my pocket. I like to just turn my head and check the time sometimes. So I like to keep a digital clock around, as well.

With an Arduino, I found that I could build a digital clock that is accurate to an amazing degree, only several seconds difference per month. As a bonus, I found that I could program it to handle time zones, and the dreaded change to and from Daylight Savings Time, automatically. So I began to build a long series of prototype clocks, based on many different kinds of displays. One of the most current versions used four 8×8 red LED matrix displays, and looked pretty cool. It became part of a system that also read and displayed weather information from Environment Canada’s data server.

Fig. 2 - The JY-MCU PRO 3208 display module

Fig. 2 – The JY-MCU PRO 3208 display module

Always scouring Ebay for new display ideas, I came across the JY-MCU PRO 3208 display, very new on the market. It has some advantages over the other matrix displays, including larger LEDs, an onboard AVR processor and provision for an RTC (not installed), and was better integrated as a display board, having proper mounting holes that the others lacked. So I ordered one up. When it arrived, I powered it up and it dutifully lit up with a digital clock face (provided by the internal firmware). But my goal was to customize it.

Expecting to find a plethora of software on the internet for it, I was horrified to discover that it was all supporting the previous version, the JY-MCU 3208 (no PRO). So after some aggressive back and forth with the Ebay seller, they finally provided me with a link to download the information package (all in Chinese!). Armed with a schematic and a library that they had copied from Sparkfun, I proceeded to fire it up. The first obstacle was that the processor is a tiny AVR, pin compatible with the well known 328p, but driven with a watch crystal instead of a resonator. This would make a direct upload from the Arduino IDE impossible without modifications.

However, it slowly dawned on me that the onboard processor and the HT1632 display driver IC both share the same programming port pins on the display. Furthermore, I could disable the processor with a single jumper wire. So it would be possible to attach the display to an Arduino and run much more interesting software on it. So off I went to the table saw in the basement, and cobbled up a box that would hold the display, and two Arduinos – a Mega 2560, and an Uno clone. The Mega was equipped with a protoboard piggybacked with a socket for a NEO-6M GPS receiver, and a JY-MCU DS3231 based RTC (real time clock) module. The reason for this giant overkill, was that I was heading for China, and would not have access to all my components and tools. So I provided everything with header pins, and took along a generous supply of DuPont female to female jumper wires. This way I could easily experiment and change things without much effort.

inside the clock

Fig. 3 – Inside the clock – top view

The box consists of four thin plywood sides, held together by two pine side supports. These supports also provide a backing to mount the display with four screws. A thin slot was cut with the table saw, just inside the front edge, to form an escutcheon to hold the display filters. I used high quality Lee photographic studio filters, both a gray and a red colour, to filter out internal reflections and increase contrast. I tested a lot of different filter combinations using the Lee filter sample book, to find the most effective combination. I have also added glass in some other prototypes, but didn’t want it breaking in my suitcase, so I just used the filter material, which is a little too floppy for such a big panel. I will fix that later. The display has more than ample brightness to overcome the light loss of the filter, and still appears “too bright” to my eyes at full brightness. It can be set to any of 15 brightness levels in software. I’m sure that running it at lower levels will also increase the LED life span.

Fig. 4 – JY-MCU PRO 3208 External Control Connections

I’m going to tell you everything you need to know to build one of your own. The onboard AVR on the display is disabled by connecting a jumper from the pin on the display ICSP connector to an adjacent ground (on the display power connector), as mentioned above. This enables a connection to the HT1632 display driver on the same connector, which you can see in Figure 4, to the left. In this configuration, the module receives all its power and control signals from the Arduino. There are only 5 wires to connect, not including the jumper wire (blue in the diagram). There are more details about the hardware connections on the repository page that I link to further on. Before you get too excited about the GPS, we’re not using it for this project. I have developed software that can set the RTC automatically from it. Although it is currently running on the Mega, it will run perfectly well on the Uno. There is no good reason why it wouldn’t run on almost any flavour of Arduino. The circuit requires one DS3231 based RTC on the I2C lines, it doesn’t matter which brand.

Fig 5. Mounting and CPU connections

Fig 5. Mounting and CPU connections

I had a real task cut out for me when I tried to write code for the board. The library that was linked to by the seller (by the way, I have no idea who wrote it or where it came from, but it appears to include the source code for the onboard clock, so I’m merely assuming that it is the manufacturer), displayed the characters in a cockeyed fashion, which I eventually determined is because the LED matrices are rotated clockwise. Thus rendered quite useless. So I inhaled deeply and began to modify the library. It turned into a four week task, working a few hours a day.

I began by writing set and clear pixel routines which are useful in their own right, and then created character and number display methods based on those. I discovered a good font for characters, the ANSI CP437 character set, which has its origin in the original IBM PC! For the clock, I improved the number 0-9 fonts and replaced some seldom used graphics characters with those. They look a lot more legible since they are taller and thicker. I only used them for the clock, if you print something with numbers they will match the letter set more.

Here is a link to my software repository, where you can download all the code – HT1632 Arduino Library for JY-MCU PRO 3208. The repository includes three application programs – A display test program, the clock program, and an implementation of James Conway’s incredible “Game of Life” which is a famous “cellular automaton” or mathematical creature simulator, if you like. There is also a small wiki documenting the class methods so you can use it to write your own programs.

Here, at the time of writing, is the link to the onboard firmware and schematic diagrams of the JY-MCU module – module documentation – click on “??(349KB)” (where the ?? are 2 chinese characters). To unpack the .rar file, you may have to install 7-zip.

The clock program is fairly sophisticated. It polls the RTC 10 times a second, hence can be accurate to 100 milliseconds when freshly set. It has a serial configuration program that allows the user to set the time and configure 12/24 hour time, time zone, a blink mode, and display some other internal registers that are sometimes of interest. The RTC must first be set to UTC or Greenwich time. Once set to a local time zone, the time rules for that zone are selected. This means that Daylight Savings Time is handled automatically and correctly. Basically, this clock is really a “set and forget” appliance, because, although specified to lose no more than about a minute a year, reports from the field indicate that it will usually outperform that, and deviate only by a few seconds. Compare that with most digital watches and clocks, which typically gain or lose many seconds a day.

I’ve been busy adding features. It now responds to button presses on an IR handheld remote. You can select different clock information, or the Game of Life. Another feature is auto brightness. It calculates the sun’s position in the sky and use that to set brightness according to the actual sunrise and sunset times at the clock’s location. There is an optical sensor in the back, as an alternative. The location is set from GPS inputs. That inspired me to also add lunar phases, which it keeps track of, but I’m not sure yet how to display. It also has a DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor, so that information can also be displayed.

I have working prototypes that automatically synchronize my clocks to GPS or atomic clocks on the internet. But those are in development and not yet ready for public release. Another working project I have, is a time server that broadcasts the time from a 433MHz low power transmitter, to all the clocks within a radius of approximately 100 meters that are equipped to receive it.

Another aspect of the overall effort is more artistic – to make clocks that are beautiful and distinctive. I have begun to experiment with finished wood enclosures and different colours and unusual display formats that look cool. The styling on this one came off too much like a shop sign, so I’m eyeing some smaller 8×8 LED modules in different colours like blue and white. They are not available in OEM units with integrated drivers, so I’ll have to build them almost from scratch.

Electric Guitar Pickup Measurements

Electric guitar pickups convert string movements into an electrical signal that can be heard through an amplifier. They come in many different designs, and have different electronic characteristics that give each pickup a different sound. It is possible to make meaningful measurements that will reveal almost everything you need to know about a pickup, using a computer with a good digital sound interface, and a few simple electronic circuits that are easy to home brew.

There are five essential components to my system:

  1. Laptop with Scarlett Focusrite 2i2 digital sound recording unit

  2. Rightmark Audio Analyzer software (freeware)

  3. magnetic exciter probe.

  4. Resistive/capacitive load networks

  5. Input integrator circuit

Fig. 1: Some features of these pickups can be seen here – series vs. parallel, the effects of different loading

The Rightmark software is an audio generator/analyzer. It sends test audio to the sound output of the computer, in this case, the output of the Focusrite box (I use the headphone jack on it). When the software is running tests, it monitors and records audio from the input, analyzes it and has the capability of generating graphs of the results.

electronic probe

Fig. 2: The probe can be positioned between strings on the guitar if necessary.

The exciter probe consists of a small coil of wire. It was salvaged from a dead flourescent lamp ballast. The coil is wound on a plastic form that was part of an inductor. The ferrite E cores that surrounded it were easily removed. Its DC resistance is about 5 ohms and it measures about 1cm cubed. It is fed through a 100 ohm resistor, in order to provide a current feed, instead of a voltage feed. The ratio of resistance to inductance is high enough that the frequency response is essentially flat from 20Hz to 20KHz. The reason for not using a voltage driven coil of large inductance, is mainly that such a coil, in practice, must have a permeable core which will interact with the device under test and skew the measurements by increasing the inductance slightly. This probe contains no magnetic materials and so should have little effect on the readings. The coil and parts are tie wrapped to a popsicle stick for convenient positioning during tests.

Different resistive/capacitive load networks are used, depending on which tests are being performed. The most basic is a 10:1 resistive divider that functions both as a

Fig. 3: Basic Measurement Circuit

normal resistive load for the pickup, and as an isolator to prevent the test cable and sound interface input from loading the pickup. For the inductive measurements, a capacitor is placed directly in parallel with the pickup. For the purpose of recording performance curves, it is better to use the integrator circuit because it shows the frequency response more faithfully.

By running a few sweep tests in Rightmark, nearly all of the important information about a pickup can be measured – the resonant frequency, inductance, capacitance, and also the frequency response. I use a spreadsheet to perform the mathematical calculations.

In operation, Rightmark first generates a 1kHz calibration tone at the audio output. At the same time, it measures and displays the input level. The output level is adjustable via the headphone volume control, and the input level can also be adjusted with the input gain control – all on the Focusrite. With some pickups it can be tricky to get adequate signal without distortion (also displayed by Rightmark). After some sweeps, I got warning messages about clipping, but I didn’t see anything crazy in the curves to suggest a major problem. When calibration is complete, you can run a sweep test.

Fig. 4: Results of a raw signal measurement – no integration. The lower curves are with a test capacitor in parallel, used to measure inductance.

Using only the raw signal from the voltage divider with most pickups, the result is a peak with a 6dB per octave slopes on either side. This fits theory perfectly, but requires some explanation about why it is not flat in the pass band. In fact, other researchers data does show a nominally flat signal in the pass band. It is because the probe they are using has a built in 6dB/octave loss due to being a voltage driven inductance. The pickup coil responds according to Faraday’s law of induction, where the output voltage is proportional to the rate of change of the magnetic field. A current driven probe produces a constant amplitude varying magnetic field, since the intensity of the field is proportional to the current. Then the induced voltage in the pickup coil is the derivative of the current, which rises at a 6dB/octave rate (since higher frequency waves have steeper slopes, for the non calculus aware reader).

Parameter Measurement Procedure

Measurement of the pickups two most important parameters, inductance and resonant frequency, are made easily with the Basic Measurement Circuit. First, the pickup is connected to the test circuit, and the exciter coil is positioned next to area of the pickup that is of most interest (in practice it makes little difference). The first step is to measure the inductance. For this, S1 should be closed to insert C1 in parallel with the pickup coil.

Run a sweep with Rightmark. This should generate a peak in the lower part of the audio spectrum, such as the ones in purple and green in Fig. 4. Record the frequency of the peak. Rightmark can be adjusted to narrow down the frequency range so that it is easier to read the exact value, if desired.

The inductance can now be calculated from the equation:

L = 1 / (2*pi*fc)2 / C  , where fc is the capacitively loaded peak frequency

The value of C1 is much higher than the intrinsic capacitance of the pickup itself, and so it “swamps it out” and it can be ignored. Now open S1 to remove C1 from the circuit and run another sweep. This will generate another, much higher peak like the white and blue ones in Fig. 4. The frequency of the peak is just the unloaded resonant frequency of the pickup. Record this parameter.

Now the intrinsic capacitance can be calculated from:

C = 1 / (2*pi*fc)2 / L ,  where fc is the unloaded peak frequency

Equalized Response Curve Graphs

Fig. 5: Original prototype Integrator circuit to equalize for current driven exciter probe

Since there is an overall +6db/octave bias, the flat region in the pass band has a positive slope, and the stop region above the resonant frequency has a -6db/octave slope (since +6-12 = -6). In other words, in the case of a voltage driven probe, the rising slope and the falling slope cancel each other out. Therefore, I built an integrator to place in line between the pickup and the sound card, to eliminate the bias. This has two benefits – it makes the results read more intuitively, and it reduces the dynamic range of the sweep. The non-integrated signal is at the limit when measuring to 12kHz, because the signal gets quite big above that due to the rising slope.

Update 2016/09: I completed the design of a much better integrator circuit. cin_0321It has already been built and tested by myself and Andrew Flanders, who has been conducting similar research for a few years. It uses a Linear Technologies LT1058 or a Texas Instruments TL084 JFET op amp to achieve a very accurate integration function. It produces much better results than the plot shown in Fig. 6. The input has a built in high impedance preamplifier, which has very low intrinsic capacitance, hence does not interfere with the characteristics of the measured pickup very much. I used Eagle to design the PCB and had it manufactured by PcbWay. You can download the manual here: pickup_measurement_procedure

The electrical model of a pickup coil is well documented, and consists of a large inductance “L” with a distributed internal capacitance “C” and resistance “R”. The internal R determines the Q or “sharpness of resonance” of the tuned circuit of the L and C. However, the internal resistance is not the same as the load resistance, which in practice is the volume potentiometer in the guitar. Powered pickups like the EMG’s use an internal fixed resistor for this purpose.

Fig. 6: Here the effect of resistive load is very clear. Notice that this parallel wired pickup has an extremely good high end, but requires a low resistance load to be very flat. The scale is expanded to make small dB differences clear.

The complete circuit includes the pickup and load resistance, and any capacitance that is deliberately or inherently placed in parallel with the load. This circuit has the form of a second order RLC low pass filter, which has a loss above the cutoff frequency of 12 dB/octave. Conveniently, the degree of resonance or “damping” is a well understood phenomenon for this filter, and easy to calculate. This means that the value for the pickup resistive load (usually the volume control) can be tailored to achieve a desired degree of peaking or flatness, without any trial and error. For tests, it is desirable to use a very high resistance because the peaks allow a more accurate measurement of the resonant frequency.

It is tempting, and interesting, to run the tests on pickups while they are installed in the instrument. Although it is not possible to measure inductance and other pickup parameters this way, it can directly reveal a lot of information about the frequency response of the guitar electronics as a whole, including the operation of the tone controls.

circuit layout

Fig. 7: This is the whole test circuit, looking ugly now because it is built in air! At the top is the battery powered integrator. Magnetic probe is placed on the pickup. It’s a mess because I had no electronic bench in China

The (original) integrator is a standard circuit built around an LM4558 op amp. It allows essentially flat measurements from 100 Hz to 20 kHz. Since it has a -3dB cutoff around 32Hz, the response will show a -6db/octave roll off below that. From over 20 measurements of different pickups in different configurations, I discovered that all of them are flat within a fraction of a dB, below about 200Hz. Therefore, I concluded that it is not worth measuring, and that the 100 Hz value can be taken as a very accurate indication of what it it at, say, 20Hz. It is possible to lower the cutoff frequency of the integrator to include lower frequencies, by changing some resistor values.

This is a prototype and lacks conveniences, however I believe it shows that it is not very difficult to obtain measurements that are useful for installing, evaluating, or designing electric guitar pickups. Next I will explain how to interpret the readings and perform the necessary calculations to derive electrical specifications.

The main effect of a resistive load on a pickup, is to control the peaking at the maximum frequency that the pickup can reproduce. There are two ways to describe the amount of peaking.

One is called “damping factor”, which is sometimes labelled “k”. Values of k greater than one result in a minimum peak, and if much too large, result in a gradual, excessive signal loss at the maximum frequency. Values of k less than one result in a signal peak at the maximum frequency. It produces a strong resonance if k is very small. A typical guitar volume control provides a value of k = 0.5 or less, but I prefer to aim for a more flat response from k = 0.707.

The much more common way to describe peaking, is the Q factor. Q and k are related by the formula:

Q = 1/(2 * k)

Designing a Resistive Load for a Magnetic Pickup

An actual pickup was measured for this procedure. It is a Strat type single coil with steel pole pieces and a ceramic magnet. Instead of using a stock potentiometer and calculating the Q, we can choose a Q that we like, and find the replacement potentiometer value that will produce it.

1. Measure the inductance

The measured DC resistance is 6.2k.

With a 0.1uf cap in parallel with the coil, the measured resonant frequency is 400 Hz. Calculate the inductance:

fc = 1/(2*pi*(LC)0.5)
L = (1/(2*pi* fc))2 / C
L = 1.58 H

2. Now knowing L, we can calculate the coil’s intrinsic capacitance.

The measured self resonance frequency is 8500Hz.

C = (1/(2*pi*fc))2 / L
C = 222 pF

3. Calculate the load resistance to provide a Q of 1.8:

Q = R*(C/L)0.5

R = Q/(C/L)0.5 = 1.8/(222*10-12/1.58)0.5

= 152K ohms

  1. The stock volume potentiometer that was used with this pickup had a resistance of 200K ohms, so the actual value of Q can be computed:

Q = R*(C/L)0.5 = 200,000*(222*10-12/1.58)0.5 = 2.37

Note that these calculations assume that there is no load capacitance, such as a tone control or amplifier cable adds. If the volume control is at the maximum position, the cable capacitance is in parallel with the pickup capacitance and can be added to the calculations. When the volume control is at lower settings, the capacitance is decoupled from the pickup to some extent, and has less influence. The same can be said for the standard tone control, except that we accustomed to call the maximum the “lower” as it is lower in frequency (it has the maximum effect when it is turned down all the way). Changing either the cable or tone capacitance alters both the Q and the resonant frequency.

When the capacitance increases, the Q will increase, and the resonant frequency will decrease. So it is easy to see how a tone control will influence the sound. But if we are interested in the base conditions, it is best to estimate the situation when the tone control is at a maximum (thus mainly out of the circuit), and calculate values including the cable capacitance.

A typical cable capacitance is about 80pF/meter or 25pF/foot. Thus a 3 meter or 10 foot cable will have about 250pF of capacitance. The Strat pickup that we measured above had an intrinsic capacitance of 222 pF. Parallel capacitances add, so the total capacitance is 250pF + 222pF = 472 pF. Since we have almost doubled the capacitance, it will obviously affect the output audibly. Recalculating the Q with cable capacitance:

Q = R*(C/L)0.5 = 200,000*(472*10-12/1.58)0.5 = 3.46

This Q is quite high, but produces the tonal flavour that Strat pickups are well know for. It is not the focus of this section, but worth noting that the resonant frequency has dropped from 8,500 Hz to 5,830 Hz. It is obvious that in order to achieve the desired results, we have to include the cable capacitance in all the load resistor calculations. So, for example, with the Strat pickup, we wanted to achieve a Q of 1.8. Including the cable capacitance:

R = Q/((C+Cc)/L)0.5 = 1.8/((222*10-12+250*10-12)/1.58)0.5

= 105K ohms

An interesting outcome of this analysis is that once the Q for a given resistance, or the resistance for a given Q, are known, different values of Q or resistance are extremely easy to calculate because they are linearly related. A doubling of resistance will produce an exact doubling of Q. So if you are changing your volume potentiometer from 250K ohms to 500K ohms, you can expect an exact doubling of the Q, no matter what it is. In general:

Qnew = Qold * (Rnew / Rold)

RG Kit Guitar

In the quest for the perfect guitar, I thought that exploring some kits would be a cheap way to go. At this point, I’ve already been to many guitar shops and tried out all the most well known guitar models. As I’ve stated before, Telecaster is my favourite. Yet I wondered if there was something I’m missing. So when I saw the “Jason Derulo” kits on the Chinese site, I could not resist. I can only confirm by close examination of the photos, but it appears that they are marketed in the west as “Alston” guitars on

red_guitarI did extensive research online, to try to determine more about the quality, as the merchant description isn’t very detailed. The Amazon product didn’t get good reviews. But I thought I could iron out minor flaws if I got some good wood from it. Unlike some of the other kits, this one has no laminated top or bindings, which some customers complained about the quality of. So, there would be a lesser possibility of flaws. After a few weeks of struggle, I have finally finished the kit. It’s patterned after the Ibanez RG series.

DSCN1769_006I ordered the kit and waited a few days for the EMS shipment to arrive. Everything was carefully packed in a medium sized cardboard box, and a quick inventory revealed that all the parts were included and there was no damage.DSCN1773_005 As I looked it over and began planning, I was optimistic. The two piece neck was straight and the frets were true. It looks like maple, my only complaint is that the wood was not chosen or oriented for the best grain, which should be perpendicular (especially when it is not a multiple lamination). The body consists of three laminated pieces of good quality mahogany. I was extremely grateful for this, as I wanted to use some kind of natural wood finish instead of painting over it. The hardware looked good enough, keeping in mind the price. All the electronics are pre-installed on the pickguard. There are two humbuckers and one single coil pickup, with a 5 way selector switch. More about these later. The pickguard was a botch job. It did not follow the contours of the body well, and the mounting holes for the pickups were off center, enough to be visible from across the room. Also, the pickup openings were oversized. My guess is that they don’t drill each panel individually, they probably take a stack of them and drill through all of them at once. Just a guess. Either that, or they have a broken or no template. So I went back online and ordered a new pickguard from another vendor. Also, I don’t like single coils. So I ordered an Artec strat-sized blade humbucker to replace the middle pickup.

DSCN1782_007I looked around town for wood dye. There is no such thing as a yellow pages here in China. You have to set out on foot and search, or perhaps ask around to find things. Soon I found a friendly store on the main street that sells paint supplies. Although they lacked wood dye in the offbeat colours I had in mind, they had spray cans of automotive lacquer. Well, that’s all they had in spray cans. So I settled for some clear lacquer instead of polyurethane. This would turn out to be a mistake. I went to an art store and couldn’t find anything like a dye there, but I spotted a jar of red ink and realized that it was perfect! I sanded the body and applied a wash of ink after wetting it lightly. After the first coat of lacquer, it looked great.

Next, I considered the electronics. The pickups looked cheap. Well, what do you expect when only one “big name brand” pickup would cost more than the entire guitar? The plastic bobbins are crudely cast, so don’t line up with the base screws accurately. The base legs were bent slightly and the screw holes threaded that way, nonetheless. There was a tiny hint of wax around the outside of the coils and on some of the screws, as if someone had heard about wax potting but didn’t understand what it is for. However, the coils, magnets and pole pieces were adequate to do the job they were designed for.

So I began to hunt for replacements. I narrowed down the search to some EMG-HZ’s that were not too expensive. I also began to research pickups and learned more than I needed to know! After that, I decided I should overhaul the existing pickups to try to improve them, and use the opportunity to test some ideas. I disassembled one with the idea of wax potting it, but the internal connections were made in a way that would make that extremely difficult and risky. Instead, I changed the wiring from series to parallel, and reassembled them, without any potting.

As I lacquered the body, I had a lot of problems. Everything from an outbreak of sea foam like bubbles, to crinkles that appeared in the final finish after an entire week of drying. I did some wet and dry sanding between coats. I think I could make it work next time, with two weeks drying time between coats. I’m not that patient. I never had such problems with polyurethane so I will go back to it for sure.

Examining the neck/body fit, I found two problems. One, the nut was offset, low on one side. I fixed that easily with a shim of sandpaper. Two, the holes for the tremolo bridge posts were 74mm apart. A Floyd Rose or Schaller bridge is almost a millimeter wider, so it will only accomodate a cheaper brand of bridge (many clones on the market are also 74mm). However, the galling fact is that the bridge that they supplied is narrower by yet another millimeter. It doesn’t sound like much, but it means that the tremolo doesn’t pivot properly on the knife edge part of the slot, instead it’s a little off center where it is more rounded. I may gamble on ordering a new bridge, and hope that the new one has the correct 74mm spacing. I used a pencil to apply graphite in the area for lubrication when the guitar was finished. However, I can see now that it does affect the ability of the tremolo arm to swing back into rest position properly. This small detail makes a huge difference in the end! At least I don’t have to modify the body.

A strange thing, no doubt, is the “2-4” arrangement of tuners on the headstock. I did that to shorten the neck so it would fit in my suitcase when I return from China! I chopped off 6.5cm. and drilled two extra holes for the E and B tuners.

guitarThe Artec pickup and replacement pickguard arrived on the weekend, so it was time for final assembly and test. There was a lot of time spent in setting up the tremolo springs, the string height and the intonation. Many long hours, but it came together at last. What are my feelings about it as a player? I like the thin neck and wide fingerboard, but I don’t really care for the jumbo frets. One plus, the frets were already aligned well enough that they didn’t need to be dressed and crowned. Of course it is a good idea, but it’s optional in this case. I was able to adjust the action down very low without any buzzing. I don’t like the “tummy tuck” cutout in the upper body. It makes the upper body press into my chest as I play sitting down. The volume control is too close to the strings, my fingers keep hitting it. It might be true for any tremolo system, but tuning is a huge hassle. I broke a string right away, and it’s amazing I didn’t break more. You see, when you tune any string down, all the others go up! Also if you use the lock screws on the nut and forget about it and turn the machines, you will surely break a string there.

The sound is great. The parallel wiring does seem to give a clearer sound. As an experiment, to compensate for the lower impedance, I put a 100k ohm fixed resistor in parallel with the volume control. It should help damp the pickups natural self resonance, which might otherwise sound a bit edgy. An interesting phenomenon, is that playing with the middle pickup alone sounds really good. I didn’t expect that. I swapped the neck and middle pickup connections on the selector switch. This allows me to select bridge and neck pickups together, while sacrificing the ability to select bridge and middle together.

Here is the cost breakdown, in Chinese yuan:

  • guitar kit – 480
  • pickguard – 16
  • Artec pickup – 60
  • Spray lacquer – 30
  • Red Ink – 8
  • Shipping – 65

So, the total cost was 659 yuan, or approximately US $105. If I replace the bridge, It will come to  US $120.

Bacchus Telecaster gets new pickups

I brought GFS pickups to China to install in the Bacchus Tele, TC70 True-Coil noise cancelling Stratocaster type neck pickup, and the H102 Lil Puncher XL Modern Vintage Tele bridge replacement. I had already installed a Seymour Duncan JB humbucking pickup in the middle position.
At the same time, I replaced all the tuners and chrome screws. Since there were three pickups, I also brought a 5-way selector switch to replace the original 3-way. I already implemented a custom selection scheme on my American Standard Tele. I liked it so much, I decided to use it again. Basically, it allows you to use some extra selections that aren’t normally available with a 5-way switch. You can hard wire it, as I did, or make it selectable with an additional SPST switch. Here is the schematic:
3_way_pickup_wiring PDF drawing

The selector works as a 5-way normally does, with two exceptions. Normally, position 1,3, and 5 select bridge, middle and neck pickup individually, and the “in between” positions 2 and 4 select bridge/middle and middle/neck respectively. With my modification, position 4 gives you all three pickups, and position 5 gives you neck and bridge.

I have several reasons for doing this. For one, I happen to like the sound of the neck+bridge combination, and I refuse to give it up. The only time I play with the neck pickup only, is on my homemade Tele with a mini-humbucking in that position. Not on this guitar. When I installed and tested everything this time, I didn’t get as much tonal difference as I expected. So I reversed the phase of the middle pickup. It give me phase reversal in two positions, while preserving normal phase in the other three. So, I don’t have to have a raft of switches cluttering the front of my guitar (I don’t have the tools to mess with it now, anyway).

Here is the rundown on this dandy arrangement:

Position 1 – Bridge pickup, classic chicken picken country twang.

Position 2 – Bridge/Middle out of phase. Weird spacey hollow sound.

Position 3 – Middle pickup. Brassy, straightforward sound. Usually a little sharp sounding.

Position 4 – All pickups, Middle out of phase. This one is complicated. The neck/bridge combination is in phase, so it predominates. The middle out of phase tends to just knock out the lows a lot.

Position 5 – Neck and Bridge, together and in phase.

I’m quite happy with the result. I had a custom pickguard made to accommodate the Strat neck pickup, which is much larger than a Tele neck pickup. Alas, the Bacchus body has randomly different dimensions (probably to avoid Fender copyright infringement) and it didn’t fit. I pondered my dilemma and eventually realized that the Strat pickup would just barely squeeze into position on the original pickguard, if I removed the white plastic cover. So that is what I did. Time will tell whether the bobbin is strong enough to be exposed like this, I am not too worried about it because it sits quite low and is securely mounted.

Differential Distortion Revisited

Differential Distortion PCBI designed a guitar distortion device in 1995. It was published in Popular Electronics magazine, August 1995 issue. I dubbed it “Differential Distortion”. With the advent of the web, the circuit was copied and added to many online compendiums of guitar circuits. I was very happy to see that, because I thought some people might benefit from some important features of the unit. Mainly, the extremely low battery drain, which might make it more practical to build into a guitar if desired. It’s also quite small, with a low component count.

Sometime around 2005, I had access to a full SMD workstation, and drawers of SMD resistors and capacitors. So the bug bit me again, and I decided to build the circuit using SMD parts. I ordered the transistors online, and had the boards made by a small run OEM manufacturer. The parts were insanely small – 0402 resistors look like grains of pepper in a jar. But I had a stereo microscope to help. I built a few of them, tested them. Then a big house move hit me, and the project languished in boxes for a few years.

In 2013, I went to an electronics mall called Chenghuangmiao in Chengdu, in the province of Sichuan in China. I have never seen so much electronics in all my life. It struck me that, not only there, but everywhere now, SMD parts have taken over from the old through-hole components. The new stuff is smaller, cheaper, and often has tighter tolerances. As I left the mall, I looked in a doorway and saw someone doing CAD layout. Looking around the store, I realized that they could build prototype boards. So it was back to the drawing board again.

I consulted my old plans, and went back to shop. But the low noise 2N5088 transistors were nowhere to be found. I realized that I would have to substitute another part. The sellers there are basically merchants, only a few have any deep engineering knowledge. So my attempts to explain my need for a “low noise” transistor were futile. One store assured me that, “all our transistors are low noise”, I think they believed I was impugning the quality of their wares. So I simply copied their lists of available parts, and went home to use the internet to look at data sheets. This led me to choose the excellent and common MMBT9014/MMBT9015 NPN/PNP types.

At the same time, I started reading opinions and experiences with the circuit that were posted on various forums. I realized that I had a few improvements of my own in mind. So a complete redesign was undertaken, with an eye to retaining all the worthy features. It has to be said, that the role for an analog device like this has been sidelined by digital audio and DSP emulation in the commercial market. Also, that as a consequence, nostalgia has led DIY builders in the direction of re-creating older designs, rather than looking in new directions. Still, some people had built it, and even reported the results of some modifications that they had dreamed up. Some implementations I didn’t agree with, but there were some good ideas to work with.

First, I made some important engineering changes. The single resistor emitter bias in the input transistor circuit of the original, was too unstable and sensitive to component and battery voltage changes. So I fixed that with an extra capacitor and resistor in the emitter circuit to lower the DC gain. The audio output level was too low, so I increased it. The input impedance was too small, so I increased it as much as I could. The 0402 parts were too small, so I used 1206’s. There is an advantage that the resistor values are readable. Next generation, I think I can step down to 0804’s and still be able to hand assemble with only soldering iron and tweezers.

Next I accomodated the mods. I added an inverting output to the differential pair. This allowed a kind of “distortion depth” control to be added. Or call it “fuzziness”, “bite”, “grunge” if you like. I also added a bias control circuit that allows the differential offset to be varied to change the harmonic tone and sustain. Some people thought the sound was too harsh, so I added an optional low pass filter on the output. The classic Fuzz Face that is a classic fuzz design, had an extremely low input impedance (stupidly low!). When guitar pickups are loaded this way, it cuts out the highs. However, the sources I was using claimed that it cut out the lows, so I added an adjustable high pass filter on the input to emulate that. It was implemented after the board design, so it is the only off board component option. That means that the area of input filtering needs a lot more experimentation.

At every step, I wrestled with the design goal of simplicity, with a lot of bang for every buck. So I didn’t allow myself to get too fancy. Most of all, I didn’t want to use any more battery current. Since I was mass producing one board, I tried to make it possible to change options just by changing the external wiring. For example, it can have the variable controls, or fixed settings, using only some jumper wires.

The board was laid out from a schematic and some sketches in about an hour, by a diffident but efficient young man, who was terribly late and had to be coaxed in by phone by the management. He did a good job, but didn’t fully understand my request to lay out thermal breaks on all the pads. With wave or oven soldering, the entire board is heated, so small components can have leads soldered to large areas of conductor. If you are hand soldering or doing repairs, this creates a nightmare as the conductor sucks up all the heat from the iron and refuses to get hot enough to make a proper joint. Or sometimes, the extra heat damages things. He did follow the instructions on ground connections, but didn’t realize that I wanted it on every connection. So a few of the components on the board were really pesky to place. I will be really demanding on this issue next time.

My order of 200 boards was completed in about a week. I found one mistake, my fault because I left the schematic at home and had to draw them the circuit from memory. I figured out that I could fix it with one 1/16 watt resistor, you can see it placed as a jumper on the top left of the board. Some boards had defects, but they had done a full inspection and marked them out. They even placed parts on two of them for me! The price was very reasonable, of course. It’s China. I remarked to my Chinese friend, that in my country a PCB company would look down their noses at me for even daring to ask to have such a job done. There are some mail order houses, but they are very pricey for a full build – mask, screen and assembly. There was no extra charge for the layout work!

I built about 80 boards. I don’t have them where I am now, but I plan to make some available as DIY kits. Originally, I thought I would supply the board and components separately, but as I mentioned, the SMD assembly is too difficult. I could do it next time with the board improvements. The circuit is simple enough that it can actually be built up on perfboard or whatever you like, as you like. I want to build a version that has the potentiometers and switches all on board, so it is a complete module that requires only battery and audio connections. The idea is to drill holes in the pickguard so it can sit in the control cavity of a guitar.

The first schematic I have posted is a shop drawing, so there are some things I need to tell you. The board is about 2.0 x 2.5 centimeters. The input is on the left, output on the right. The two potentiometers VR1 and VR2 are 10k linears. Switch S3 chooses clean or fuzz, S4 is the output low pass, S2 is the input high pass. You can substitute a 250k potentiometer for S2 if you want it variable. To eliminate the bias control, jumper T10 to T11. To eliminate the fuzz control, jumper T8 to either T6 or T7, whichever sound you prefer. To eliminate S3, just use T4 as the final output (T4-T5 jumper is not required). The dot marks on the potentiometers indicate the fully clockwise position – all the way to eleven as Spinal Tap says! 🙂

The second schematic shows the circuit design better. If you are interested in how the circuit works, or want to build your own, this is the one to study.

As a stomp box, it is possible to have the battery switched on from the jack, so it is automatically on whenever it’s in use. I didn’t show that, because it’s not how I do it. But it is possible. The people that copied my circuit included it in their version. Go have a look.

Here is the shop drawing, showing the off board wiring:
Here is the general schematic:
Here is the original 1995 schematic:

Rendering Again!

nine_lives_1 These are historical batteries that I have subjected to a cylindrical scan and then rebuilt, using computer rendering techniques. The floor is the actual floor outside my apartment in Hubei, photographed and used as an surface colouring. There are few of these batteries in existence now, because they leak and corrode with age.

A Short Journey by Rail in Hubei

Suburban scene

Woman on path

Woman jogs on country lane

River overpass under construction

GFS Telecaster Kit is my first Home Brew Guitar

electric guitar

Home Brew Telecaster with Mini Humbucking Pickups


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Jan. 18th, 2016

How is it that I have been working on this manuscript since last July, and I just now realized that two characters are fully primed to have deeper roles than I ever planned for them to have? And that by finally realizing this, that I have the overall plot arc thing I was thinking didn't exist for the third book?

Why now, C? Why now, brain?  It was there ALL ALONG.  ALL. ALONG. BRAIN!

How this came about was I have misplaced my purple Moleskin that has all my early plotty and character notes in it.  It HAS to be in the house somewhere - but I don't know where.  So, frustrated, I decided okay fine, can't find it, and I need to hammer out these last chapters in idea form, so I will just sit here and go back through all the stuff I did at the first and rewrite it down, because that helps my brain remember things, and so that's what I did last night and at lunch today.  And that is when it all exploded in my brain, at lunch.  Wow. WOW.   My confidence in this story continues to rise, expand, and grow. My focus continues to improve, too.  I wonder if it is the MCT oil...   I believe. I BELIEVE.

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Monday, 23 March 2015

What's the solution?

Dear the me of 2012,

Please stop tearing your hair out for a second and take the time to read this letter.  It might just help you out.

I can't imagine how you must be feeling right now.  Frustration and worry, like pain, is a shadowy memory.  And, I can look back in humour at some of the things you are suffering now.  I can laugh when I think about the time Caesar destroyed the kitchen and ate a whole pack of Nutrigrain bars.  What I do remember is desperation and this is what has prompted me to write to you.

Time and time again I read on forums and groups about anxious dogs.  You may not realise it just yet, but this is what you have.  I know you don't want to sit back and let time pass by where you're not trying to 'cure' this but there is something you need to know; you can't.

Let me tell you that in three years time, you will come home from work one night to find a Tupperware container exploded into sharp shards of plastic all over your bed.  You will spend a week of your life picking these shards from your feet and body and searching for them on the bedroom floor.  These are symptoms of anxiety, prompted by a change in environment or routine.

You musn't blame yourself.  You have not made the dog any worse.  Nor have you caused him to relive any kind of mental trauma.  What you need is time.  Time is the most important thing.

Therefore, when you see quick fixes, try to turn a blind eye.  Try to remember how you feel when you are afraid and remember that one tablet, or coat or spray is not going to miraculously cure him of his fears.  The same with you; anxiety plays a big part in your own life so you should know that nothing will instantly take that away.

More importantly still, is that you don't get angry with him for his fear.  If someone shouted at you every time you were irrationally afraid of something you'd be stuck in your house shaking!  Try to remember his behaviour is not against you or even a reflection on you; it is he who has come to you with these troubles.

My advice is not to ignore your issues; persist in positive training, reward the good and ignore the bad as much as possible.  Keep things as consistent as possible; he will always know when tea time will be, when bed time will be and what time you will leave and arrive home.  He will always be in the same room/s.  If someone comes, they will always come at the same time.  Attend training sessions regularly and allow him to get used to his setting and the other animals and people there and don't expect miracles straight away.

Most of all; love and enjoy him as much as he does you because you're going to have to get through this together.  And that will be as hard as you make it...


Glossary Terms:

The Economics of Income: Which 'Wood' You Choose?

Glossary terms from:

Comparative Advantage

The ability to produce a good or service at a lower opportunity cost than some other producer. This is the economic basis for specialization and trade.

The money in circulation in any country.

Economic Development

The process of improving the quality of human lives through raising living standards. Economic development is broader than economic growth, which is concerned with year-to-year increases in production. Economic development deals with the economic, social and political institutions that govern the way the economy and society function.

Economic Growth

Tangible objects that satisfy economic wants.

Human Resources

Goods and services bought from sellers in another nation.

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

An international organization established to supervise exchange-rate arrangements and to lend money to member countries having difficulties meeting their financial obligations to other countries.

Natural Resources

The state of being poor, variously defined. Sometimes defined relatively--by reference, for example, to the average household income in a nation or region. Sometimes defined absolutely--by reference, for example, to the income needed to provide for adequate food, housing and clothing in a nation or region.

People and firms that use resources to make goods and services.

Property Rights

Legal protection for the boundaries and possession of property. Assigning of property rights to individuals, collectives or governments depends on the economic system.

Standard of Living

People employed to do work, producing goods and services.


logo en

In 1978, ‘Oger Hydraulics’ started as a small workshop employing three workers. The workshop's space was less than 200 square meters, and offered simple hydraulic repairs.

In 1984, the company increased dramatically, trebling the space and now employing seven workers. At this time, the concept of a hydraulic industrial plant with the ability to deal with all types of hydraulic production and repair, started to take shape. The growth in space enabled for the first time to repair on site large industrial machinery such as: tractors, excavators and bulldozers

In 1990, the company began to establish itself as a hydraulic plant, operating a large repair space, employing 10 workers, and starting a massive process of purchasing machining tools such as lathes and milling machines.

At this point, oger hydraulics began to acquire a vehicle fleet with the purpose of enabling repair services in the field where possible.

In these years, the company began to invest in human capital, acknowledging that for Oger Hydraulics, there is nothing more important than a learned, skilled worker. To achieve that goal began a process of sending the employees on hydraulics qualification courses abroad to acquire deeper knowledge in their respective specialized fields. Those courses included: crane repair and installation, engineering for different types of pumps and motors, engineering for specific machines by leading manufacturers and general hydraulics courses.

By 2000, Oger Hydraulics could already be recognised as the hydraulics plant we see today. That year oger hydraulics expanded to a repair space of 2500 square meters and employed 25 workers.

In addition to purchasing technology including lathes, milling machines, iron-cutting machinery and hydraulic testing tools, the company developed unique testing machines, such as a pump testing machine and a test bench designed for testing motors, steering units, pistons and other hydraulic components.

The company’s development has enabled it to handle with ever increasing project size and complexity, and has also started attracting a clientele of large institutions, both private and public, such as the Israeli Defence Force and the Ministry of Defence, the iron industry, the construction industry and  the petroleum industry, the national ports and many more.

With the years Oger Hydraulics has adopted 5 principles, which guide its way of operating:

·        Honesty above all else

·        Total loyalty to the client

·        A job is done exceedingly professionally or not at all

·        Testing, testing, and testing again. No product, manufactured or repaired, is to leave the factory without a dry run.

·        Professional assistance over time. Oger Hydraulics accompanies the client as long as is necessary, long after the client has exited the factory's gates.


*Scales: Arabian Scales

If you are a composer, then you deserve to learn Arabian scales! Arabian scales differ from the common, too often played, major and minor scales, and can help to surprise your listeners with an exotic Arabian sound.

If someone complains that your musical compositions are all similar in style, then you can create a very different composition by changing the underlying scale. Particularly, if you have been composing western style music, then you can create unique compositions by utilizing a scale from the east. For instance, you could use the Arabian scale.

The Arabian scale is also known by the name of double harmonic scale and has that exotic Eastern sound. An example of the C Arabian scale is below.

arabian scales

(C Arabian scale)

The Arabian scale is popular in the East in places such as India; however, it is rarely used in Western music because it is difficult to harmonize with popular chord progressions. The difficulty arises because there are two minor thirds incorporated into the scale, which is also why the scale is referred to as the double harmonic scale.

When I heard that it was difficult to harmonize the Arabian scale with popular chord progressions, I took this as a challenge, and decided to create a composition with a popular chord progression utilizing a mixture of the Arabian scales and the minor scales. I titled it Almost Arabian. Be sure to give it a listen and try to pick out the eastern sounds. I also included some Hungarian minor scales in the song.

An easy way to arrive at the Arabian scale is to simply lower the second and sixth tone of a major scale. This works for any major scale.

Arabian scales are another great scale to mix with the common major and minor scales to create interest for the audience. Their ears pick up the difference, the innovation, and they pay attention, which causes your composition to be memorable.


A pickup heads eastbound on Colo. 66 at the intersection of Gay Street in Longmont on Sunday afternoon.
A pickup heads eastbound on Colo. 66 at the intersection of Gay Street in Longmont on Sunday afternoon. (Johnnie St. Vrain / Longmont Times-Call)

Dear Johnnie: I am the mother of two children who attend Sonshine Daycare (located inside Lifebridge church). I was just wanting to know why there is not a stop light, four-way stop or something to let people out of there? During rush hour (5:15 to 5:30 p.m.) when I get my kids, it is an absolute nightmare trying to turn east onto Colo. 66. Sometime I sit there for 10, 15, even 20 minutes just trying to get out, and it's ridiculous.

Please tell me why they wouldn't put something there to help cars get out if there. — Catrina

Dear Catrina: I checked with Jared Fiel, Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman for this region of the state, and he provided an answer I had expected to receive.

"This location does not meet conditions for signalization," he replied via email.

Such conditions, Catrina, are factors such as traffic volumes and crash history. While that intersection is very busy at certain times of day — especially early to midday Sundays, it's not as consistently busy as intersections such as Main Street and Ken Pratt Boulevard.

And adding a traffic signal can create more problems than it solves, since the thousands of motorists who travel along Colo. 66 would need to get used to a new routine. In fact, I have heard from traffic planners that adding a signal can increase the number of accidents at an intersection.

That doesn't mean there never will be a traffic signal there, just not now.

"If the location did meet any of the signal warrants listed in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices published by FHWA, the (Lifebridge) church would be responsible for the design and installation of this signal. Currently new signals cost $500,000," Fiel said.

Fiel had the same recommendation I would give you, especially if you are waiting at least 10 minutes to turn left. Turn west onto Colo. 66, south on Francis Street, then east on 23rd toward Main.

Based on my experience driving in the area, and on Google maps, taking that roundabout rout to Main Street and 66 would take about five extra minutes. So, if you are waiting a minimum of 10 minutes to take a left turn onto eastbound 66, then you would save time by first heading west to Francis.

Thanks for the question, and drive safely.

Send questions to johnnie@times-call.com


Animal Custody

BCFIRB hears appeals about certain animal custody and related cost decisions of the BC Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BCSPCA) under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (PCAA).

BCFIRB’s primary objective under this new role is to ensure the well-being of the animals involved.

In the interests of timeliness in addressing animal welfare issues, the PCAA establishes tight, strict deadlines for the filing of appeals. Similarly, there is a short timeline for submitting an appeal filing fee and an expedited appeal hearing process. Appeals must be made in writing AND be received by BCFIRB within those deadlines or you will lose your right to appeal.


Blogging Borgmann: TCCL Chapter 9, “The Device Paradigm”

With chapter 9 we come to one of the most important chapters of TCCL. In it Borgmann elucidates the Device Paradigm, which is his way of explaining technology by reference to paradigmatic examples of it. The idea is that through a careful analysis of several obvious examples of technological devices, discussed in contrast to the pretechnological situation, we will begin to see the pattern which heretofore was invisible, hidden as it was behind the veil of being taken for granted.

As we have seen, Borgmann claims technology seeks to provide liberation and enrichment, i.e., to make these qualities available. Availability is therefore a big part of technology. Technological availability has four essential qualities (which Borgmann explores via the contrast between a central heating system and a wood-burning stove). For something to be technologically available, according to Borgmann, it must be:

  1. Instantaneous: The fire in a stove is not instantaneous because wood is not instantly available in burnable form. It comes in the form of trees which must be chopped down, cut up, etc… On the other hand, a central heating system procures heat instantaneously, with the sliding of a switch or dial.
  2. Ubiquitous: A wood fire is not ubiquitous because it does not heat a given area evenly; a stove typically only heated one room of the house. A modern heating system, however, pumps heat wherever it is needed without any extra effort.
  3. Safe: Wood fires are not safe, since one might be injured while cutting wood, or burned by flames, or the house itself might burn down. Central heating systems are much more safe and reliable.
  4. Easy: All the work required to produce and maintain a stove fire clearly rules out its being easy. The central heating system, on the other hand, requires no work at all on the part of beneficiary of the heat.

These contrasts help to sharpen the outline of an important distinction: the distinction between things and devices. Let’s first understand the concept of ‘thing’. A ‘thing’ is inseparable from its context. Its world is therefore inseparable from our engagement with it, and this engagement is always a bodily and social one. Because of this inherent embeddedness, things always provide more than one commodity. Take the example of the wood-burning stove—it furnishes much more than mere warmth. It is first of all a focus for people, a center for activity. Its status reflects the stage of the day (from embers to flames and back again). It assigns to different family members different tasks (gathering sticks, chopping wood, stoking the fire, etc…). It provides bodily engagement through forcing one to go outside, to interact physically with trees and wood, and so on. It requires exertion and the learning and passing on of skills. Larger social contexts are sustained by and focused in things (meals, celebrations of major life events, etc…). As Borgmann says:

Physical engagement is not simply physical contact but the experience of the world through the manifold sensibility of the body. That sensibility is sharpened and strengthened in skill. Skill is intensive and refined world-engagement. Skill, in turn, is bound up with social engagement—it molds the person and gives the person character (42).

A ‘device’, by contrast, procures a good without the world of relationships we just saw exists with ‘things’. “A device such as a central heating plant procures mere warmth and disburdens us of all other elements. These are taken over by the machinery of the device. The machinery makes no demands on our skill, strength, or attention…” (42). Devices therefore have a tendency to shrink or background themselves to the point of becoming invisible, since all that matters is the commodity they are procuring, and the less a device burdens us, even visually, with the machinery that does the procuring, the better. The only physical properties which are important are therefore those which relate to the specific function of the device. (Borgmann defines a ‘commodity’ informally as “what the device is there for”, i.e., warmth in the case of a heating system, music in the case of a stereo, a meal in the case of a microwave dinner, etc…)

It follows from all this that any device can have many functional equivalents, since a device is defined functionally in relation to the commodity it procures. Take the example of a TV: old, bulky sets were eventually reduced to picture-only flat-screens. The commodity (i.e., the moving picture) was maximized and the machinery minimized. There have also been vast improvements in availability (in terms of time, place, and variety of content): first video cassettes, then cable, then DVR technology, and finally Netflix-style programming, available instantly from any connected device. The point is that this radical division between means and ends is one of the hallmarks of a device. In practice, the ends (e.g., warmth, or a moving picture) are stable, whereas the means are free to vary in any way that improves delivery of the commodity. Borgmann points out that this encourages a concealment (or backgrounding) of the means (which to the consumer are irrelevant and burdensome) and a prominence (or foregrounding) of the ends. “A commodity is truly available when it can be enjoyed as a mere end, unencumbered by means” (44).

Much of Chapter 9 is devoted to a case study, from the turn of the 20th century. The data comes from English wheelwright George Sturt, who wrote with surprising clarity of the changes underfoot as a result of industrialization. One of his most captivating passages is on the changing relationship of the craftsperson to nature. His was a philosophy of cultivating, adapting to land, in contrast to the more destructive industrial methodology. Wheelwrights, Sturt says, had a “relationship not of domination but of mastery” (44), echoing Borgmann’s statements about skill and engagement, and presaging an all-too real future where domination became the norm. Unfortunately, it would be too much for this entry to dive into those interesting passages more fully!

Back to Borgmann’s claim: it is that, given the clear distinctions we have been able to draw between things and devices, devices “dissolve the coherent and engaging character of the pre-technological world of things” (47). In other words, in the pre-technological world, commodities were never procured without some kind of engagement. Devices blast through this bond and deliver commodities with fewer and fewer modes of engagement with anything other than the ends (commodities) themselves. Borgmann considers two objections to this claim.

The first objection is that the ‘concealment of machinery’ we see with devices is really due to ignorance on the part of the consumer, or maybe technological illiteracy, and not to the character of the device itself. In fact, Borgmann says, many technological devices are made specifically so that they cannot be engaged with by their consumers, either in the case of discardable products (made to be thrown away), carefree products (such as plastic or stainless steel, made so that no harm can come to them), or in the case of highly complicated devices like computers, where their precise realizations are too complicated and/or in flux to be known by very many people.

The second objection is that, wait a second, people are actually engaged with the machinery of devices, and not just their ends, aren’t they?. Don’t people drive cars? Don’t they use computers to install software? Don’t they program remote controllers? Borgmann’s response is that these are not examples of engagement in a skillful, bodily, or social way. Programming a remote control is an entirely cerebral excercise: it admits of no skill, care, or bodily engagement.* It is furthermore anonymous, in that it does not disclose anything about its creator (or manufacturer) or reveal an orientation in nature, the way that a hand-carved chair reveals something both about the craftsperson who made it and about nature, through the specific qualities of the wood and its form.

Borgmann claims that, while everyone in a technological society understands that the means are important, they can and do spend their time enjoying the ends quite independently of them. And here Borgmann sees a tight connection with a modern understanding of labor and leisure, where labor is equated with the machinery or means of the good life, and leisure is seen as the ends which are to be enjoyed and which define that good life. But for a discussion of society, labor, and the good life, we will have to wait for the second half of Part Two!

*My own personal view is that some technological pursuits, like certain kinds of computer programming, do allow skillful engagement in a deep way, even though they are entirely cerebral (being perhaps analogous to writing stories).

Blogging Borgmann: TCCL Chapter 8, “The Promise of Technology”

This chapter begins Part 2 (The Character of Technology), the first half of which (chs 8-12) aims to describe and articulate the paradigm of technology, and the second half of which (chs 13-16) aims to ask how we have come to terms with technology politically and socially. The thesis which Borgmann will be following throughout is that technology, as the characteristic way we engage with the world, is guided by a basic pattern. This pattern, however, like many deeply ingrained patterns, can be impossible to see. This is essentially the observation that the features of our worldviews which are fundamental (in the “background”, so to speak) are themselves not open to our introspection without some serious effort.

That effort for Borgmann is put to use in returning to the first articulations of technology. They go back to the founding event of modernity: the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was the original modern liberation movement, and thus technology (as a liberating force) is usually seen as a corollary of it; Borgmann claims, to the contrary, that technology is a primary current in that stream. Descartes, for example, calls out technology as an obvious tool of intellectual liberation, describing its potential for self-determination (making us “masters and possessors of nature”), for freedom from labor, and for freedom to enjoy one’s faculties.

The proper grounding of this vision was not seen until the middle of the 19th century, however. Before that, machines and efficiency multiplied, but with a corresponding degree of toil and misery. Eventually, industrialized nations saw the fruits of the new technological order, and strong arguments indeed can be made for the disburdening character of technology (disburdening us from disease, hard manual labor, etc…).

This promise of technology (of self-determination and freedom) is reiterated constantly in all kinds of social and political rhetoric. The implication is that the mature technology of an advanced industrial society is continuous with the liberating technology which, for example, helped more and more people survive and do business in North American winters. Borgmann doesn’t take this for granted, and offers modern advertising as an example of the macabre and seemingly trivial ends to which technology is now put. Marketers selling us “world-class cuisine” without leaving home (through the use of the microwave) seems somehow hollow when put next to vaccinations of serious diseases.

So, we can ask several questions about the promise of technology. Can technology be successful in delivering this promise, even on its own terms? Will it impose new burdens to replace the old (a pernicious irony which can be seen quite clearly in the traffic jam, for example). Can it fulfill its promise in a just way, without merely sweeping toil under the rug of the developing nations? And finally, is the promise well-conceived and worth keeping to begin with?

The promise presents the character of technology in broad outline. It is essentially “the general procurement of liberty and propserity in the principled and effective manner that is derived from modern science” (39). But is this outline too broad? Does it allow for technology to descend into meaningless “improvements”? As Borgmann says, “Initial genuine feats of liberation appear to be continuous with the procurement of frivolous comfort” (39). If this is the case, it is perhaps worrying.

At any rate, Borgmann agrees that we could spend much fruitful time looking at the history of the promise of technology (through e.g. Heidegger), but in this book we’ll be moving on to the contemporary analysis. This will begin in earnest with the next chapter, “The Device Paradigm”, which is one of the central chapters of the book. Until then…

Blogging Borgmann: TCCL Chapter 7, “Science and Technology”

At this point in our exploration of the relationship between modern science and technology, what can we say with confidence? First, that modern science shows us that the world exists in a large matrix of possible states of affairs. The space of these possibilities is defined by the world’s initial conditions: given some physical state of affairs in the past, our world is one of its possible subsequent states. Technology can then be seen to “[reflect] a determination to act transformatively on these possibilities” (27). In other words, science tells us what’s physically possible and through technology we decide to act on them in order to change the world. In these roles, both science and technology share a problem: there is no principled way, using only their own resources, to decide what to explain or what to transform.

To illustrate this, we can return to our example of winemaking. Modern science makes the process of fermentation more and more perspicuous, more clear to our understanding. With that clarity we can see which parts of winemaking are laborious, which chemicals lead to bad taste, and even how harmful byproducts might be introduced. This knowledge opens the door to a technological intervention—we might, for example, choose to use tools which speed up the fermentation process or which reduce harmful byproducts. But where should we draw the line in modifying the traditional process? At what point does technologically optimized wine stop becoming wine?

Borgmann says that the general public, though it has limited understanding of science and of the details of technological transformation, intuitively grasps at least what we have been saying so far: science illuminates possibilities of dealing with the world, and through technology we make them actual. But some people go further and argue that modern science in its explanatory slide has actually ushered in a new worldview. Those who agree with this claim differ in whether it’s a good or bad thing, but Borgmann wants to call the premise into question. There are three arguments he sees for this thesis that science itself has ushered in a new worldview:

  1. Science was in historical fact a liberating event (from superstition to true understanding, etc…), therefore it has delivered a new and concrete way of engaging with the world.
  2. Scientists are held to unparalleled standards of correctness and achievement, therefore what is active is a new worldview.
  3. The chaos in our world comes from a failure to follow scientific ideals through completely, therefore science must embody a distinct worldview.

Of the three arguments, he only considers the first (which he considers to be the strongest) in detail. It is true that as scientific theories advance, real and well-documented clashes occur. When these clashes are against the powers of the day, the clash is seen as a revolution and science is typically on the side of liberation. But, as Borgmann points out, science in this role is always a liberation from, not a liberation for. What he means is that by casting sufficient doubt on established ideas, science can provide incentive to revolt, but it can never produce a substantive framework of its own, out of its own resources.

Here Borgmann draws upon the idea of deictic resources (world-articulation, rather than world-explanation): “Withdrawal of scientific endorsement forces a worldview back to its deictic resources” (29). If that worldview has no deictic resources, it may very well perish (as we have seen with alchemy). But strongly deictic disciplines such as poetry and art do not, predictably, disappear with the advance of science, since they are not in the business of world-explanation. For this reason Borgmann declares the scuffle between science and theology to be pointless—science is not satisfyingly deictic enough to warrant the discarding of theology, which can provide concrete orientation for our lives.

The main point is that science as a sociological phenomenon cannot guide us from within its own center (i.e., its laws and theories), but must lean upon external resources for leadership. That doesn’t mean, however, that science cannot rise in power without those guiding resources. And this approach, like a car with the driver asleep at the wheel, can have disastrous consequences. We might engage technology as the inevitable outgrowth of a science that sees reality as an infinite manifold of pure, moldable substance, begging us to transform it. Borgmann is not quite so pessimistic, however, and reminds us that it is possible to distinguish the scientific method (i.e., the heart of science’s laws and theories) from the worldview just expressed. This enables us to separate science from technology and find a place for science without viewing technology as necessarily having the same privileged status (a status which flows from true explanation). Science is a necessary precursor to a technological age, but it is not a sufficient condition for it.

How then can we explicate technology if not as a necessary consequence of science? Borgmann believes we need to begin by looking at the fundamental pattern of technology. We will do that when we transition to Part 2, which begins with the next chapter, “The Promise of Technology”.

Relay: Interesting Stuff From the Last Month

Last month has been busy, and I haven’t figured out how to blog anything original. But that’s ok, because I have a bunch of links for you! These are things I found interesting, provocative, inspiring, or funny in the last month. I’m even going to categorize them for you:

  • Honeybees are found to interact with quantum fields – a researcher noticed that bee dances trace a 2-dimensional projection of formulas of some kind of quantum math. Bee dances seemed pretty arbitrary before, and now this researcher claims that bees may be ‘in touch’ with quantum fields. If true, this would be interesting and awesome.
  • Scientists find evidence that many universes exist – I’ve always thought that “many universes” is a contradiction in terms, but hey. It turns out that our particular ‘universe’ may be just one of many ‘cosmic bubbles’ colliding around in some vast ‘multiverse’. I don’t believe this yet, and won’t until people define their terms better.
  • Thunderstorms generate anti-matter – powerful thunderstorms can generate crazy gamma ray bursts scientists think may be accompanied by anti-matter. That would be anti-awesome.

  • Albert Einstein writes on science and religion – some good stuff in here, especially about the awe and surprise of finding that nature has rational foundations. Also other general philosophy of science points. I still disagree with his overall statement, which is that the historically-bound bits of religion should be discarded, since he appears to take for granted their fundamental falsity.
  • Minimalism works – apparently, someone on the Internet made fun of minimalism. The article I linked is a rebuttal which I found concise and useful. Yay minimalism!

  • Suburban sprawl sucks – and it’s bad for you too. I confess this was too long for me to read completely, but I did get that the author is an advocate of getting rid of zoning laws. I, too, advocate thus.
  • The dangers of externalizing knowledge – this is a favorite topic of mine. What happens when we stop learning everything except how to Google? It’s possible that that is indeed the one skill which leads to success in life, and therefore will encourage social evolution to continue in the current trend. I’m just afraid that learning is a holistic process of shaping the entire person, body and soul. What happens when we postpone this shaping until we load Wikipedia? What will our unshaped minds do with that information, anyway? I could go on. Nice to see this on TechCrunch.
  • Caring for your introvert – this guy makes some rather grand statements concerning introversion. Given that I’m an introvert, I’m inclined to agree with the whole ‘introverts are superior’ thing, except I know it’s false. Good article anyway, despite being overblown. I also think the Enneagram could account for a lot of what he is describing, without as much polarization (or arrogance, for that matter).

  • Agnostic Christianity – doubt isn’t bad. In fact, it’s an unavoidable part of faith. Embrace and respect it!
  • The Seven: not exactly deacons – what happens when the Apostles decide they’re too important to wait tables? God uses the waiters instead. Or something like that… some good potential pastor-skewering in these passages.

  • A coder’s guide to coffee – I am a coder and I love coffee. Therefore, I love this article. I just need to find a way to roast my own beans in Oxford…
  • L-Theanine in tea and not coffee – apparently this amino acid enables our bodies to use caffeine in a much more zenly awesome way. Where is it naturally found? Not coffee (damn!) but tea. If I used coffee as a mind hack, maybe I’d switch to tea. Unfortunately, I drink coffee because (a) it tastes really good, and (b) I’m physically and psychologically addicted to it. Oh well.
  • A hacker’s guide to tea – If I were to switch this is the guide that I’d use! One thing I particularly liked: camomille is not real tea! Ha, I always knew camomille sucked.

  • Trimensional – a 3d scanner for the iphone. I haven’t tried it, but… really cool idea! I’m also not sure what I’d do with a 3d model of my face. I’m also not sure why they used the guy they did for the screenshots. Yikes!
  • How to draw an owl – Click through and see the picture. Hilarious. And also a good prompt for discussion. So often, what is left out of how-to guides is: “now, practice x for thousands of hours”.

Relay: Dead Downwind Faster Than The Wind

A few weeks ago, I came across the description of an extremely inspiring engineering project at Kimball Livingston’s blog (pictures and videos taken from there). Basically, conventional wisdom in wind propulsion is that, whatever the wind is propelling, that object can’t actually go faster than the wind unless it uses up some kind of stored energy (fuel, rowing, etc…). Rick Cavallaro thought otherwise, put his ideas out there for how it might work to go dead downwind, faster than the wind, and was roundly ridiculed by pretty much everyone.

Instead of being disheartened, he put together a team to build the strange propellor-shaped sails that he thought would carry a vehicle faster than the wind. They crafted their land-boat to precise yet hand-made specifications (even using a bicycle wheel!), and set out to test Cavallaro’s crazy theory. Here’s an initially slow-paced video of the attempt:

Ultimately, they clocked the craft at 2.8x the speed of the wind! This is what I would call ridiculously awesome, and a reminder that physics, if we needed a reminder, is really interesting. I also admire the story of the iconoclastic scientist whose theories were at first mocked and then, not simply proved theoretically possible in a mathematical equation or a lab, but tested out on the salt flats with a guy in a helmet sitting in it! I guess the point is that there are plenty of good ideas out there that just haven’t been tried—and that’s something I think I often do need a reminder of.

Check out Livingston’s blog post for a detailed story of what happened. There’s also a Discovery Channel video with interviews, etc…

Steggy, my first Spore creationA few years ago, I wrote a post detailing my personal gaming history, wherein I also looked ahead to the future at a computer game that was shaping up to be extremely interesting. That game was Spore (you should really go to their site and watch the introductory video). Under development for half a decade, it was finally released a little over a week ago. Of course, I went out and bought it immediately, and have spent way too much time enjoying it recently.

Basically, Spore delivers. From the purely creative elements involved in putting together your very own creatures, vehicles, buildings, or spaceships, to the very strategic ones involved in maintaining a galactic empire in a quest for the Ultimate Answer, to the delight and wonder that spark the imagination upon seeing a coherent, procedurally-generated universe, replete with stars and supernovae and black holes and UFOs and alien creatures and planets and… the list goes on.

I have to admit that there was some initial disappointment with the depth of gameplay at earlier levels (Spore is divided into Cell, Creature, Tribal, Civilization, and Space stages). The first three stages in particular felt too easy, and went by very quickly without much in the way of challenge. Once I hit the Space stage, however, all that changed. It seemed everything I’d learned about using Spore in the earlier stages was now a set of essential skills I needed to use with strategy and alacrity if I was to stay on the board. It took me probably 6 hours to get from the Cell stage to the Space stage, and I’ve spent at least that long in this last stage, without progressing that much closer to the center of the galaxy (which is the goal of Spore). Part of my challenge at the Space stage may be due to choices I made in earlier stages, though – I chose to be a very warlike civilization, which gave me certain benefits, but also made it much more likely that I would be attacked in the Space stage.

Well, there’s much more to say about a game that has innovated so greatly on technical and conceptual levels, but that’s all for now. You should check out the game yourself! It should run on any computer (Windows or Mac) with a decent graphics card. I’ll leave you with a set of creations from my current Spore game. Clearly, only a very special game could allow me to create such cool and unique models! And, if you’re a Spore player yourself, I believe you can download these images and import them directly into Spore to use them in your own games.

Tyraxin, my creature for this game (from planet Teraxius)

The city hall for the Civilization stage on Teraxius

The ground vehicle for the Tyraxin

The Tyraxin air vehicle

My spaceship!

The iPhone Era: Technological Adaptation and the Future of Human Evolution

… And I could go on.


HwB: ECP Parallel (Tech) Connector

GoTo ConnectorCONNECTORGoTo Main

ECP Parallel (Technical)

This file is designed to give a basic overview of the port found in most newer PC computers called ECP Parallel port.

This file is not intended to be a thorough coverage of the standard. It is for informational purposes only, and is intended to give designers and hobbyists sufficient information to design their own ECP compatible devices.

Signal Descriptions:

This signal is registers data or address into the slave on the assering edge during .

data 0-7

Contains address, data or RLE data. Can be used in both directions.

Valid data driven by the peripheral when asserted. This signal handshakes with nAutoFd in reverse.

This signal deasserts to indicate that the peripheral can accept data. In forward direction this handshakes with nStrobe. In the reverse direction this signal indicates that the data is RLE compressed by being low.

Used to acknowledge a change in the direction of transfer. High=Forward.

Printer is online.

Requests a byte of data from the peripheral when asserted, handshaking with nAck in the reverse direction. In the forward direction this signal indicates whether the data lines contain ECP address or data.

Generates an error interrupt when asserted.

Sets the transfer direction. High=Reverse, Low=Forward.

Low in ECP mode.

Contributor: Joakim Цgren , Rob Gill
Source: Microsoft MSDN Library: Extended Capabilities Port Specs
Info: Microsoft MSDN Library
Please send any comments to Joakim Цgren.


Here's tonight's effort at the end of a long working week. Drove down to the river, should have walked but time was tight with the light.

The view is an old favourite, done slightly different this time. The sun is setting to our right meaning that I can use a polarising filter to make the blues in the sky darker blue. In addition I put a 10 stop neutral density filter which reduces the amount of light reaching the camera sensor 10 times.

The colour image was OK, but with the dark sky because of the polariser I thought this lended itself to a monochrome image.

Annoyingly this probably won't make it into my list of favourite images because there is movement showing in one of boats in the frame. Not really surprising for a 3 minute exposure - but annoying none the less.


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Discover the wonders of the Welsh environment

Our wonderful Welsh environment is home to an incredible variety of plants and animals which is rightly celebrated in Wales Biodiversity Week.

So what has Wales got to offer in terms of biodiversity?

Well, a number of new discoveries have been made and the work of Natural Resources Wales officers has led to a greater understanding of some of Wales’ less well known and exotic species.

Here is the NRW Top Five rundown of the most exciting discoveries and success stories of the last 12 months.

1.      In November 2014, a NRW survey into 200 of the country’s most important bog and fen sites uncovered the Fen Puffball (Bovista paludosa) in Mynydd Epynt in Powys.

This was the first time this extremely rare fungus has been found in Wales and only five examples have ever been recorded in the UK.

Such is its rarity that that the Fen Puffball is named on the Natural Environment and Rural Communities (NERC) list as a UK priority conservation species.

Although there are more than 30 British puffball species, the fen habitat of Bovista paludosa is distinctive and its rarity reflects the lack of fen vegetation in southern Britain.

2.     Deep under the waves near the Skomer Marine Nature Reserve in Pembrokeshire, NRW’s annual survey of the area identified 51 different species of Nudibranchs.

Nudibranchs or sea slugs as they are more commonly known are not your average slug, and come in a variety of different shapes and dazzling colours. Around 68% of the total UK species can be found in the waters off Skomer.

Sea slugs are carnivores and are at the top of the food chain. Each species has its own prey, so those at the top are supported by an equally diverse eco-system.

3.      A project which surveyed an area of woodland equivalent in size to 1,000 football pitches has discovered not one, but three internationally significant species.

Conservation charity Plantlife has spent the last 18 months mapping the Meirionnydd Oakwoods in a project funded by NRW and found a type of barnacle lichen never before recorded in Wales; a species of felt lichen that was last seen in the 1800s and a species of tree flute  thought to be extinct in England and Wales.

The woodland forms part of the Celtic Rainforest of Western Britain and Ireland. This habitat is rarer around the globe than tropical rainforest but what makes it really special are the plants and fungi that grow there.

4.     One of the largest and most distinctive of the dolphin family – Risso’s dolphin makes its home in Welsh waters.

With its distinctive light grey and even white body, a Risso can grow up to 4m long and is easily distinguishable from other dolphins thanks to its round head and no beak but most people are unaware of this unique marine mammal. Is our near neighbour.

NRW has commissioned Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) to survey the dolphins around Bardsey Island, using photo ID to identify individual animals by unique features such as nicks or scratches on their dorsal fins.

During the 2014 survey, the team had several encounters with groups of up to 35 dolphins which appeared to be feeding and socialising in Bardsey sound.

5.     The number of rare black grouse in a part of north Wales is almost back to its 2011 record breaking high when 328 lekking males were counted (lekking is when the males gather to attract females) thanks to work to protect them and improve their habitat.

In north Wales, there were only around 140 displaying black grouse males left in the 1980’s and the extinction of one of Wales’ most enigmatic bird seemed likely.

However, dawn surveys in the summer of 2014 by staff from NRW, RSPB Cymru, Denbighshire County Council and many other organisations, revealed that almost 320 lekking males were counted. So following two years of lower counts (297 in 2012 and 249 in 2013) black grouse numbers seem to be making a comeback.

The bird had been in serious decline and had disappeared from all of south and most of mid-Wales by 2000, matching declines in England and other parts of western Europe, but habitat management, predator control and drier summers are thought to be the reasons for the continuing increase in the population.

Ceri Davies, NRW Director for Knowledge, Strategy and Planning, said:

“We are so lucky in Wales to live in such a rich and diverse environment and managing it correctly for the plants and animals that we share it with delivers many hidden benefits for society.

“We have to ensure we continue to do our best to protect and understand the plants and animals and the habitats they live in for their own sake and recognise that by doing so we can also benefit from their roles in reducing flood risk, storing carbon or boosting the economy.

“But don’t just take our word for it join the thousands of people across Wales who will be celebrating Biodiversity Week and discovering more about our natural environment.”

To find out more about Wales Biodiversity Week and events in your area visit;