2009 update....
I am just working
to make hi-fi a better experience for people I meet
on their journey through life.
I lived in Sydney until I was 26 when I emigrated to Canberra.
I much preferred to live in a much smaller city than Sydney.
I like the open spaces, closeness to rural life, and the ease of getting around.
In about 1993 my career as a licensed building construction contractor was coming to a close because my knees began to fail to keep up with the creativity with bricks, concrete, lumber, and climbing up ladders.
At that time I had become very interested in my hobby of electronics while trying to improve my own sound system. It consisted of a cheap solid state receiver and speakers I'd built in 1977 and all designed mainly by guesswork.
I about 1993 during some particularly arduous work on a roof my knees went on strike for 9 months; I could not work hard at all. So I sought to train myself in some alternative method of earning a living so for a couple of years I learnt all I could about vacuum tube amps and speakers, so I could try to earn a living from what was a hobby.
By about 1995 I was competent enough to easily repair many tubed guitar amps and radios and I also learnt how to repair more difficult and complex solid state equipment. Since my expenses of life are mild, I have been able to earn a living without driving taxis to augment the initially low income.
The present.....
I am still here to review how I survived the
experience of changing trades.
The pay rate for audio work is terrible. While people are happy paying
someone $90 per hour fixing a new kitchen or having a mechanics
apprentice change the oil in their car they don't
like paying those rates to fix an old radio which might take 10 hours
to make sure it will be usable for the next 50 years after surviving
the last 60 years.
I have become rather frugal in my lifestyle and very focused on what I am doing, and I found I much enjoyed the intellectual challenge with the end result that people are happy with what I build them or what I repair for them.
If nobody is pleased by what you do, your life has little value.
Since I spent many months full time re-building my website in 2006
and first writing about my life my fortunes have not greatly altered
but I continue to make a small number of high quality new tube amps and
repair and re-engineer much equipment. Many of my customers are
difficult to please audiophiles who acquire a collection of amplifiers
even after they have bought something from me but few ever sell
anything I made. Nothing I have ever made has had a failed
transformer or other major trouble.
The philosophy?
One might ask, why have a philosophy? We are finite beings and
the universe is infinite so we cannot know everything and can only
share what we know and what we don't know.
There is a fair amount of
both to stop us getting bored.
I think I'm lucky not to get anxious
about it all. I am engaged in the flow of the universe
in a very small way. I may leave some slight legacy even if only
temporary. I worry not that others leave a greater legacy, because no
matter who you are there are those who are better. But I still have a
few sustaining simple dreams and a plan for the future.
Philosophy and even logic are not things which lead us always to the
truth because either can be plain wrong and nonsensical. I refuse to be
completely serious about what I believe to be true. I like to leave
room to learn more if someone teaches me well. But so far I have
yet to be convinced of too many errors about my audio methods. I could
always say I exist to be proven wrong, and I don't mind anyone trying
to prove I am wrong, but they better be very convincing with their
attempts.
I am not alone in being unable to say everything possible about
every idea used to make music at home enjoyable. But this age of the
Internet allows you to realize most of my ideas if you read the website
keenly. I hope so.
But a philosophy could be simple, and could be like to a motto, "do it
right for thyself, and no other way."
But as we learn, many "other ways" present themselves in our minds, and
one should allow for the mind to consider all the ideas that arise.
I have found that steady incremental improvements are possible while
comparing the status quo of one's achievements against trials of
techniques with likely betterment. If something new is better, then it
is adopted, and usually it means that the equipment's measurements are
better, *and* the sound is better.
Adopting some cheaper or lazier technique for marketing reasons has
never had any meaning for me.
My business and about
myself....
At the moment I mainly work alone to build
new amplifiers and repair old ones. Since 2006 I have continued to find
considerable demand for repairs of mainly solid state equipment and I
continue to
I employ a highly skilled colleague who is happy to do nearly all the
repairs to solid state equipment. This allows me to focus on the the
tube amp repairs and hand crafting of new tube amplifiers.
Sadly I have not sold too many new speaker systems because people feel
a need to buy speakers through shops where they can compare the sound
quality with other brands. Little do people realize that 50% of what
they pay is the shop mark up, and 25% is other costs and taxes.
When did a hi-fi shop ever add anything good to the sound quality?
I refuse to build speakers or amplifiers with lowest common
denominator quality like the rest, then tell lies during marketing
exercises to persuade people to buy them. I don't like to suffer a
financial loss while dealing with the cut-throat hi-fi shop owners. I
cannot afford to produce outstanding real quality and have my product
in a hi-fi shop on display with similar prices to mass produced product
imported mainly from China where the labour costs are 1/50 of the
Australian wages.
I'm not kidding. Even in 2008 with an "economic downturn" average
weekly earnings in Australia is $1,000 per week.
The workers in China are lucky to get $15 per week, and they have
appalling workplace conditions.
In an ideal world, every Chinese or Indian worker will be paid the
same as anyone in Australia, US, or Europe and it won't matter where
someone sets up a factory to make something, the costs will be the
same. The bosses in the western developed nations would only ever try
to force their country's labour costs lower while paying themselves
more and they'd hate to see a rise in the pittance that is a wage of
workers exploited in nations such as China or India. When you buy a
product made in China or India, you are supporting this extreme gross
social injustice. The Chinese and Indians *need* the bigger pay packet
so they can afford to adopt anti greenhouse measures and clean up
their environments. The technology exists now for changing from coal
and oil to sustainable solar, wind, geothermal, wave, biomass fuels and
we should aim for all wage earners to contribute 10% of their earnings
for the next 10 years to make the change over. And everyone knows what
a spade is. Pick one up and start planting trees. Having said that, I
don't think enough people will do enough towards making the world ideal
and when
things really get hotter people will react by merely buying a higher
powered air conditioner.
While the average wage in Oz may be aud $50,000 per year, mine is much
lower. Most artisans like myself cannot compete with the mass produced
article prices.
And with all this talk about the Greenhouse Effect, I do have to
come to grips with making vacuum tube class A amps. OK, but the world
as a whole is turning to using extremely efficient "digital amplifiers"
and if tube operated gear equals 0.01% of worldwide amplifier power
then I think the world can afford the luxury.
Its my feeble excuse of course. I see no reason why 0.01% of the
world's rail locomotives should not be steam driven. *Some* retro
technology is enriching to our lives. I also didn't get around to
having any
children, so your children won't have to share the Earth with mine, and
if you
earn 50 grand a year and I earn 10 grand, then who is using more
resources and sending more C02 skywards, you or me?
Meanwhile, gigantic data centers hungry for power are springing up like
mushrooms for storing digital information, and my guess is that in 10
years and despite numerous governments signing the Kyoto agreements and
introducing stern carbon trading taxes, CO2 emissions will still be
rising atrociously. Along with this pollution will be rising problems
everywhere with de-forestation, food shortages, species extinctions,
just to name a few of the problems facing all of us.
So don't blame me without blaming yourself.
I have made things all my life, so making tube amps was easy and
natural, and I was good enough at maths to work out all the design
figures involved, and I have good enough hearing to co-relate the
calculations to make systems that sound second to none.
Despite the doom and gloom that await the next generations, I still
think that its not a bad idea to pass the sound of Mozart or Beethoven
to speakers via a few vacuum tubes. Compared to so many other spare
time human pursuits, listening to music would have to be one of the
least harmful.
And now a word for those who wonder what the heck I do when I am not working in my "lab" as some call it, aka "a shed", where I cook up my audiological treats.
As I said above, the Lord Of The Universe, LOTU, saddled my knees with some problems after considerable time spent doing hard labour as a building contractor. I'd also ridden about 100,000 km during a 6 year stint as a competing veteran road cyclist between age 37 and 43, from 1986 to 1992.
I decided to stop cycling and concentrate on work after that time, but the knees gave way. Could I blame the cycling? I didn't really know, but trying to work as a builder and ride a bike competively may have been too much. Time progressed and in about 2002 the doctors said I needed two titanium knee replacements. But first they'd do an autheroscopic knee joint clean up. I had the minor operation a few years later and they must have found lots of old injuries which were enough to trigger my body's response towards being a painful arthritis ridden man. Before the planned date of the minor operation I'd been taking drugs like Celebrex and then VIOX for 2 years. I had to stop taking them before the operation. My heart went into fibrillation and I then needed to spend time in a hospital while they stabilized my heart. I happily recovered and could drive home after a day or two. Three months later I had the op to clean up my knees. The pain eased almost immediately, and I've never need to take a painkiller since. I was lucky because VIOX killed lots of people and was banned from sale! Big court cases against the makers followed.
I had renewed vigor for 18 mths after the op but I still felt some pain and I thought I might return to cycling because maybe it would either do some good or maybe I really would have to accept the titanium solution. After not riding a bike or doing much manual labour my weight had gone from 82Kg to 102Kg. I didn't like myself.
So after finishing the last big re-write of this website in about June 2006, I jumped back onto the bicycle and began to pedal off the fat and gain muscle.
Because I was 102Kg, I broke quite a few spokes in the old bike. One day a pair of front forks broke in traffic, down I went like a sack of potatoes. People and parts scattered, but I survived.
But pedalling off the weight was just one part of the solution. I changed diet to lots of salads, not much carbohydrate, and just enough protein. This created a calorie deficit, but my nutrition was excellent. My body knew it was carrying too much fat, and knew its muscles would have to push it around the town, and so while I lost fat I didn't feel hungry while I lost weight while eating well. I soon used 20Kg of fat to travel a few thousand Km over 6 months. I was able to dump up to 1Kg a week. Within 6 months my weight fell from 102Kg to 84Kg which was my best "racing weight" 20 years ago and OK for me because I am 184 cms tall.I think I have gained 3 Kg of muscle and at present I am still 84Kg.
Being so frugal and with a low income, buying a new road bike with a carbon frame bike was out of the question. Luckily I had not disposed of the 3 steel frame bikes I used 20 years ago. I rebuilt the wheels and replaced many parts and fitted modern Shimano index gearing.
My speed and distance ability has almost fully returned to the days of 1988, age 41, and when I worried so many other competitors.
My knees improved and I now do 200km a week regularly. My cyclometer showed just over 10,000km for 2008. I also actually use the pool I built at my house in 1983 and swim about 1.5km a week. Its not far, but I believe it does wonders to fix the body after the unnatural body position of riding a bike.
I have found a local group of cyclists affiliated with Pedal Power, ACT, and along with rides alone during weekdays of 100Km+ I ride 100km every Sunday with the group. Often about 50 people turn up on a fine Sunday morning and they divide themselves into a fast, medium and slow group.
I'm in the fast group for 2 sundays in a month when they start out on my side of town and they are not doing a dirt road ride. On the other two sundays i ride with slower intermediate riders who only start on my side of town and stick to the sealed roads. Most of the "fast group" are 10 years younger and some race as veterans, and this means I get reminded each Sunday that there is always someone faster no matter who you are. So I struggle to keep up in this group.
I do not ever wish to race with a club again because it is very difficult, and it takes up too much precious time. Its quite enough to try to keep up with a few faster guys on a Sunday and enjoy the stop at the cafe. Sometimes I hang out in the rear of the bunch with the slower guys just to enjoy the brilliant Sunday mornings and the wonderful country scenery. Its mainly all blokes of course. Very occasionally there are a couple of nice shielas who join our group but most shielas are very slow riders and they just stay with the slower and older blokes who do a shorter easier distance.
When enduring the arthritis of former times I spent time in movie theatres and trying to be social but once I started back on two wheels I have had no reason to pursue cultural activities except listen to live classical music every now and them to re-calibrate my ears to how a good hi-fi system should sound.
I watch little TV. And why watch other people doing their lives when i could be doing my own???
Very few share my attitude to frugality. Nearly everyone seems hooked on complex uneccessary ideas and needing to spend huge sums of money to avoid feeling anxious. In fact much is spent on keeping up with the latest agony and style, and that life isn't passing them by. But try as hard as they might, nothing peaceful is felt while putting on the agony and style, and spending money. And life still does slip past your grip and you are gonna die one day without having experienced a whole lot of things. If someone is honest, they don't need every possible experience. This simple attitude has kept me light years away from any really long term relationship with a female. All the ones I've spent time with seemed insatiable for everything.
Most females I've known were indifferent to good sound gear, and some hated it because they saw the expense and time on audio reduced what might have been vaporised by spending on travel and kitchen renovations. A man is really lucky if his wife thinks a good audio system is important. But then some females have far better hearing abilities than men, and good musical taste and good audio is not wasted upon them.
Anyway, briefly, no man ever gains a Doctorate in Women's Studies during his lifelong study at the University Of Life; plainly females are difficult to understand, and its plain impossible to make them fully happy for longer than 5 minutes at a time. Some of my customers tell me never to divulge the prices they pay for audio gear to their wives. OK.
I myself might find Miss Right when I turn 80. But if I live that long Miss Right is likely to be a Miss Robot. Meanwhile, I am happy to have so many friends, and happy in my work. I am not dreaming of escape by retiring to a seaside suburb full of ancient old people. I don't have many dreams, but there are many plans to complete. On Saturday nights I either play chess with a few mates or visit one older guy whose sound system is so superb I can listen for a few hours.
And when a rainy day comes I might sleep in an hour and dream of the strangest party at my house with such delightful creatures and unlikely conviviality. I recall one lady arrived on a bicycle and that awakened me for sure.
I am very lucky to live in Canberra which would have to be the safest place in Australia where you can cycle on over 400km of dedicated sealed cycle tracks.
The surrounding country roads are very safe. You get time to contemplate.