Day 2 Lesson 2 - Posted on 2013-09-25 by Diego Pacheco

On September 5 I went over lesson 2 about basic electronics. I went in at 12 to about 4pm. Donny let me know more in depth about electricity and what we use when it comes to current. Ac means alternating current and dc means direct current. We use ac power that is ac which travels 60 cycles per second which equals 120volts. He did mention that sometimes with certain amplifiers the voltage is too high so a guitar might have a low frequency hum or tone. It can easily be fixed with a socket adapter without a ground on it. He let me know that his console a Control 24 is analog and it uses converters from analog to digital. Analog circuits transmit voltage to digital components. His console is analog so it uses ADC DAC converters, if something were to ever go wrong as far as components go then he would have to have a specialist look at it. His knowledge only goes so far when it comes to repair of actual circuit boards. There is resistance issues with cables sometimes and could create heat or a short circuit which could potentially damage more equipment, so it behooves the engineer to make sure all components work properly. Amps as well as pre amps also must be handled with care, making sure wattage and voltage are cohesive to what its being used with. For example some microphones do not require phantom power and if applied it burns the circuitry. From my understanding instruments produce signals that pass to amps pre amps or compressors and are processed as voltage. The Voltage is then turned into digital signals processed by ADC. So in essence we have Volts Current and Resistance that comes to play and we also have analog circuits and digital circuits.