About

 About the blog

In this blog, I'll be rambling about mostly two things: music and software development. This is my fourth attempt at blogging so far, but this time, I think I can write more than 4 articles in two years.

The main kind of post I'm writing to this blog are "average Joe" gear reviews.

About the author

My name is J.P. and I live on the south shore of Montréal. I am a software developer currently working in the healthcare IT industry. I have a few tattoos. Former pet parent, I love most animals. I've been playing guitar for a long time, and bass since 2018 (talent may or may not have been acquired for both instruments). I am fascinated by sound and what one can do to modify it. I own, according to some, too many effect pedals. Electronics enthusiast, I also make my own effect pedals, either from pre-designed PCBs or from scratch if the circuit is simple enough.

Attributions

Popular posts from this blog

JP's Gear Review v2.0 - Ep. 3 - Little Bear G3: A tube-based overdrive for 65$! Is it any good?

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  Shortly after my latest purchases (that I still have to review), I fell into a Google Search rabbit hole of pedals that use a vacuum tube. The Blackbird, the AMT SS-20, the Ashdown Engineering Original Valve Pre-DI, and the Behringer VT999 were commonly discussed and I considered getting one of these, but quickly changed my mind. The first 3 are outrageously expensive (760$ for the Original Valve Pre-DI...) and the Behringer is difficult to find. The used ones go for roughly the same price as a new one, and it's not really worth it. However, another model showed up in the form of an eBay listing: Nobsound Little Bear G3 . It looks completely unassuming and very different than your typical pedal. It sells for about 65$CAD on eBay and has generally positive reviews. For the price, why not? I ordered it on the 23rd of August, and received it in my mailbox this afternoon. Unboxing Unboxing was uneventful. It was well packaged it lots of foam, and the tube was already installed. A 12V
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STM32 Development: Configuring Arduino IDE/Visual Studio to build and deploy to STM32-based boards

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As a follow-up to my previous post, where I talked about using Visual Studio for Arduino development, this post will be providing an abridge guide to set it up correctly with Visual Micro's Arduino IDE for Visual Studio extension. There will also be a configuration guide to enable STM32 build and deployment. Prerequisites steps You NEED to have Arduino IDE (from arduino.cc) installed on your computer for full compatibility. The Windows Store App version is not supported by Visual Micro. Visual studio configuration Download Visual Studio Community Edition from Microsoft's website. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/ Download Visual Micro's Arduino IDE for Visual Studio extension from either Visual Micro's website or Visual Studio Marketplace https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualMicro.ArduinoIDEforVisualStudio https://www.visualmicro.com/page/Arduino-Visual-Studio-Downloads.aspx Launch the installer and follow the prompts. When asked which c
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Overdrive, distortion, fuzz, hard clipping, soft clipping... What gives?

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 When talking about distortion, I often hear questions about what difference there is between an overdrive, a fuzz, and a distortion, and what's different between soft and hard clipping. I'll attempt to briefly answer those questions in the post.  What's clipping? "Clipping" is what happens to a signal when it is too powerful (or too hot) for a device. The type of clipping that is done depends on the circuit. In a effect pedal where an oversaturated signal is the intended end-result, makers will place certain diodes to clip the negative and positive parts of the waveform. The diodes don't have to be identical; you can use different diodes on both paths and-or combine many different diodes in series to shape the clipping to what you need. Designs using identical diodes are called symmetrical clipping circuits, and designs using different diodes are called (wait for it) asymmetrical clipping circuits. Reference signal The following graphs all use the following r
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