The Schiit has hit the fan…

My husband decided he wanted to get back into the Audio biz. Back in the day, he designed some quality amplifiers for a company called Sumo. I guess you can take the boy out of engineering, but you can’t take the engineering out of the boy.

Meet Asgard… a limited-production, hand-made headphone amplifier that was designed to make even iPod earbuds sound amazing–and to drive high-dollar headphones to audio nirvana. To see all the specs and even place an order, click here.

In one of my early college years, I started to take a basic electronics class. I had already taken a year of electrical shop where I learned about residential wiring as well as fundamentals that helped me do complete rewires of theatrical lighting fixtures. At that time, theatrical lighting was moving further and further toward electronic light boards, so I figured an electronics class or two would be a good investment of my time.

But I got sick right as we were getting into practical applications. I’d learned how to read schematics, but got sick right as we were starting to do lab work. I fell behind and never quite caught up. My teacher took pity on me and didn’t flunk me, he gave me an incomplete. During that semester, I was taking Auto Shop and various Stagecraft classes–none of which had the kind of homework and tests that Electronics had, so falling ill didn’t really change my grade or participation.

I never did go back and complete the coursework.

I suppose I’m getting the real world equivalent, though!

My husband designed the whole thing inside and out. I designed the production line. I knew my limitations with such basics as remembering what the colored stripes on resistors mean and the fact that I’d never actually soldered more than a connection or two on a circuit board. (I’ve done tonnage of cables including 19-pin Socapex and various XLR type audio cables, but my experience with circuit boards was fairly limited.) So, working within those boundaries, knowing I’d become more proficient at everything with each unit I put together, I developed a flexible system so that as I figured out better ways or a better sequence, all I had to do was rearrange, not restructure.

I went from about an hour and a half per board to under an hour within my first 20-25. After that, it’s just a matter of nuts and bolts aside from testing and packaging.

We’ve only barely launched, but sales are already picking up. The Asgard even made it into the Top 20 on TrendHunter!

Yeah, I really feel like we’re on to something here. To me, one of the funniest things is that when I do the listening test, I use music I know very well and love to hear and I sometimes forget that I’m actually working and I’ll spend twice as long just listening because it sounds. SO. AWESOME! through Asgard.

Our follow up, Valhalla, is nearing full production and I’m excited to take what I learned designing the production system for Asgard and apply it to Valhalla. It’ll be my first time with tubes as Asgard was my first with MOSFETs. Life loves me and I love life. It sure is sounding great these days.

How to make a ribbon choker necklace

I’ve done a bigger, better tutorial at ribbonchoker.com about how to make a ribbon choker necklace or ribbon bracelet.

I’d like to thank  my wonderful husband for taking all the photographs without too much grumpiness. That was very sweet of him. I suppose it helps that he’d just gotten a new camera and was excited to use it. I know that while he loves me, shooting me building ribbon chokers isn’t likely his favorite pastime, so that new camera came in handy.

Although, he ended up using my camera for much of it. Anyway, this was a project that took me about a year to complete, but I only recently got the domain name. I dunno why I didn’t think of it sooner. I nearly fell outta my chair when I saw that it was available. The tutorial here on this site is okay, but ribbonchoker.com is far more comprehensive, with better pictures that open up into larger ones so you can see what I’m talking about.

I’ve got a lot of other things going on in my world right now. One I can’t talk about yet, a few I’ll be able to talk about soon and one that I can more fully announce any day now.

If you’ve followed my twitter feed or have friended me on facebook, you might occasionally read that I’m soldering circuit boards. It’s no secret that I’m a multitalented chick-a-dee, but for instance, the day we photographed the tutorial, we also moved a few more units through production. My husband has designed a solid state headphone amplifier and we are just about ready to start shipping units.

Once upon a time, he was a high end audio engineer and I guess he sorta missed those days when a friend of his gave him a headphone amp. After listening only once, I started hearing him say that he could do a better one…with mosfets. (New to electronics? So am I. In fact, don’t tell him, but I don’t exactly know what a mosfet is, but I know where the go on the circuit board and how to solder them in place and attach them to the heat sink.)

Anyway, while he was chugging away at the design, I was putting together my ribbon choker tutorial. Occasionally, we’d meet somewhere in between and help each other out. He’s terrible at making ribbon chokers, but I’m really good at soldering circuit boards. We make a great team.

When we’re really ready to make this officially official, I’ll announce our company name and website. These amplifiers make my favorite music sound awesome. I listen while I solder.

I’m also still selling vintage sewing patterns, ribbon chokers and Twilight’s Fancy necklaces in my ArtFire shop.