Critical thinking... Or lack there of

[Diablo]

I read soo many posts where a novice is having problems with their amp so they, for example, replace all the resistors on the board. Then they post something like "My amps power was fading in and out so I replaced all the resistors but it still doesn't work", or worse yet "and now it doesn't work at all".

I'm Just trying to understand this mentality.

Chuck

You could have been describing my first amp repair. It was critical thinking, but with a lack of adequate knowledge. My V4 had a problem with its reverb for many years. It had been looked at by three different shops. All failed to fix the problem permanently - a weak or intermittent reverb. They replaced tubes, cleaned pots, pronounced it fixed and charged money. So I decided that I would try to fix it myself and did some googling. Turns out that the tube driver for the reverb tends to burn up the cathode bias resistor and e-cap. Not knowing how to test for bad caps or resistors, I replaced every cap and resistor in the reverb circuit - maybe 8 total. Lo and behold, the reverb worked fine ever since. I convinced myself at the time that I must be a "tube amp genius"...q;} Only after further study of the art did I realize what I didn't know, and who the real experts are on this forum.

[überfuzz]

Stop the presses! I like to add something! It's music-electronics-forum's OT that's broken, replace it and the forum will be as good as new...

I visit different forums, different subject, and I feel that this is one of the last sanctuary out there, on the vicious net. Off course I take on different roles. From nervous noob to self-appointed expert, depending on which forum it is. This is the only forum where I ever felt welcomed as a novice. (I might mention that this forum holds posts by me that make me blush. The answer however, was polite and spot on!)

When it comes to thank you etc. Personally I don't really care if someone reply with a [problem solved] or a dude you're the greatest out there, I followed your advice and now everything is hunky dory. To contradict that, I like the tone it gives the forum when someone writes Thank you. And it is nice to know if a thread should be consider closed, or not. This help searching a lot, when I'm in forums where I consider myself a novice.

[J M Fahey]

I loved that PTS10 thermal stripper.
So much, that I'm kludging one together as soon as I have a whole 1 hour free.
The thinnest Constantan wire I stock is .25mm diameter, about 10 ohms per meter, which will probably do. Now I need to wind a 1V AC transformer (or just add a few turns to an existing one, window space permitting).
Keep tuned.

[Chuck H]

In all fairness to you some circuits are more trouble to diagnose than the trouble it takes to "shotgun" fix them. Some reverb and trem circuits fall into this category. What you didn't do is replace the reverb pot figuring that 'since it's the volume control that must be where the problem is'. The pot is easily removed and tested but one of the shops you took it to did try to clean it anyway as if it may have been the problem.

Chuck

[Chuck H]

Damn!!! The fuel that takes. Wow.

I want one anyway.

[Merlinb]

I loved that PTS10 thermal stripper.

How does it work? I mean, what triggers it to start heating when you put the wire in? (It's not always hot, right?)

[R.G.]

How does it work? I mean, what triggers it to start heating when you put the wire in? (It's not always hot, right?)

It's always hot - but low mass. You can touch it with your finger (I have!) and it feels warm, but will not leave a burn. The stripping blade is thin enough that it has just enough thermal mass to melt through a few thousandths of PVC. I understand that it takes about 3W from the wall. There are battery powered ones.

I've used the old pincers/tweezer style thermal strippers. They used a microswitch on the handle that got squeezed when you closed the tweezers. The PTS10 is far superior. One handed - stick the wire in the "V", slide it to the bottom, twist, and pull. Done.

[Enzo]

AH crap, I thought I had all the tools I needed in life. Now I gotta go get a new thing...

[imaradiostar]

I work for a place that builds some one off hardware that gets the old "shake and bake" before being approved for aircraft use. My college electronics repair prof Kevin Nimmo first told me about thermal wire strippers in college and the story matches what RG said about thermal strippers. I didn't see them in practical use till I started working for my current company. The ones we have at work are a little tricky to use. This PTS-10 thing looks simpler.

RG, how does it do on PTFE mil wire? Is there any kind of temp adjustment?

Jamie

[R.G.]

RG, how does it do on PTFE mil wire? Is there any kind of temp adjustment?

It doesn't do teflon. The PTS-30 does, though. Patco PTS10: Patco Thermal Wire Stripper, PVC
I have only tried the -10. Works for my PVC wires.

[tedmich]

A bit late to the game, but many of these observations may have something to do with a troubling trend in the US in general.

Technology is seen as a miraculous phenomenon which just "appears" out of the ether. Some guy somewhere "knows" this stuff about design and troubleshooting etc. but its likely through some mind meld or mRNA transfer or something similarly inscrutable. You just use and enjoy the technology until it breaks or something that's proclaimed to be "better" makes an appearance (or your budget gets bigger). Look at "Wired" magazine (briefly!) and you'll see it; technology is EVERYTHING to these guys and they know next to nothing about how it actually works.

For externally oriented adolescents this means you ask for divine insight from a perceived authority figure, sadly everyone looks alike online and the Enzo:jerkoff ratio is vanishingly small.

What they lack is an experience with an empirical / scientific method. Hypothesis/test/conclusion? WTF? Just tell me what (usually someone) else should do to return me to my mindless enjoyment of this mysterious technology. And many techs (GW...cough...cough) love this high priest status: "change R23 to 220k carbon comp and all your dreams will be answered"

The empirical method involves wild ass guesses (WAGs) educated guesses and testing, which you continue to do as long as you are wrong. People today don't like trying, but they HATE wrong, even brief educational wrong.

Wrong is the only emphasized negative in school, but an essential component of education and science.

[JHow]

I have an Einstein quote on my wall at work that says: "If we knew what we were doing, they wouldn't call it 'research' ".

[Chuck H]

Thomas Edison: "I have not failed. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that won't work."

And +++ on tedmich's synopsis. I think he's right. Thankfully there are still young, analytical types out there and this will probably always be the case. But as a culture I think the observation is spot on.

Chuck

[octal]

Technology is seen as a miraculous phenomenon which just "appears" out of the ether. Some guy somewhere "knows" this stuff about design and troubleshooting etc. but its likely through some mind meld or mRNA transfer or something similarly inscrutable. You just use and enjoy the technology until it breaks or something that's proclaimed to be "better" makes an appearance (or your budget gets bigger).

For externally oriented adolescents this means you ask for divine insight from a perceived authority figure, sadly everyone looks alike online and the Enzo:jerkoff ratio is vanishingly small.

What they lack is an experience with an empirical / scientific method. Hypothesis/test/conclusion? WTF? Just tell me what (usually someone) else should do to return me to my mindless enjoyment of this mysterious technology.

The empirical method involves wild ass guesses (WAGs) educated guesses and testing, which you continue to do as long as you are wrong. People today don't like trying, but they HATE wrong, even brief educational wrong.
.

There's a lot of truth in what you've written, but the thing you're leaving out is that most "technology" is far less accessible than it once was. The intellectual hurdle for understanding how a tube amp works isn't that high. It's possible for a person to have a reasonable working knowledge of what every part in an amp does, be able to make suppositions about what changing the value of a particular component might do and test the result experimentally, probably with no severe negative consequences if a bit of common sense and caution is used.

I'd say that there are very, very few people if any who could explain the functioning of every hardware single component in PC and ALL the code needed to make it run. You'd have to understand everything from a SMPS to machine language coding. Every part of a PC requires specialist knowledge, and people who can design SMPSs probably don't know how to write the internal code embedded in the microprocessor. The folks who write code for microprocessors probably wouldn't be able to design an operating system etc. If you attempt to learn by 'guess and test' you may end up with a paperweight on your hands. If most of the technology you're exposed to is inaccessible (i.e. computers, Ipods, video games) and the consequences of making an error are potentially expensive, you aren't going to develop the skills needed to explore more technologically accessible items- you're going to seek a guru.

I do also sometimes get a bit irked by folks asking obvious questions and people who expect too much hand-holding, but answering questions is an exchange that's freely entered into. Don't like a question? Don't answer it, or direct the asker to a resource where they can find out for themselves.

Nathan

[Chuck H]

but the thing you're leaving out is that most "technology" is far less accessible than it once was...

Every part of a PC requires specialist knowledge, and people who can design SMPSs probably don't know how to write the internal code embedded in the microprocessor. The folks who write code for microprocessors probably wouldn't be able to design an operating system etc. If you attempt to learn by 'guess and test' you may end up with a paperweight on your hands. If most of the technology you're exposed to is inaccessible (i.e. computers, Ipods, video games) and the consequences of making an error are potentially expensive, you aren't going to develop the skills needed to explore more technologically accessible items- you're going to seek a guru.

+++ But this is part of the circumstances that create the cultural trend. It's a Jetsons kind of thing. Just press a button and food jumps straight into the toilet as a $h!t and flushes itself. If the button doesn't work, well... How impersonal that we all must specialize to such a degree that we no longer have anything to share except time in an online video game. I try not to hold it against myself that I don't know everything, which is tough because I came up basically poor and the only way to get by was to learn enough about my environment to control it to some degree. In these times that sort of life management is right out the window. Once upon a time a smart man could manage his job, do upgrades on his home, fix his own car AND build a few amplifiers. Technology and regulations have made it much harder to be effective at that sort of lifestyle now. It's become harder than ever to take control of your own destiny. So when the $h!t doesn't jump right into the toilet we become confused. We try to chew because we read somewhere that that's how it's done. But having never developed the skill, we choke.
"Get back in your box boy, and write some code. What made you think you could be more than a small part of something bigger than you?"