Creating a Signature Wood JointWe really love when makers make their construction techniques evident in an aesthetically-pleasing way, and [Laura Kampf] has created a clever joint that reveals how a piece is made.
[Kampf] is a big fan of using her domino joiner, which is similar to biscuits or dowel joinery, but she didn’t love how it hid the construction of the joint. She first figured out an “off label” use of the joiner by running it from the outside of the joint to show the exposed domino from one end.
Building on the concept to show an interesting contrast on both sides of the joint, she drilled a hole perpendicular the domino and placed a dowel through it, creating a locking joint. The choice looks great once a finish is applied to really accentuate the contrast, and another bonus is that if glue is only applied to the dowel and domino, it becomes trivial to separate the joint if needed by drilling out the dowel.
If you’d like to see some other interesting ways to join wood, how about this laser-cut wedge tenon, soda bottle heat shrink, or this collection of CNC joints.

Black Friday ain’t over: get $200 off the Universal Audio Apollo Twin X DUO interface – AND get $2,289 worth of UAD plugins absolutely freeBlack Friday might be over, but we’re well and truly in the thick of Cyber Weekend, and that means there’s still hundreds of discounts to be taken advantage of across all the biggest online music retailers.
Sure, if you’re in the market for a new audio interface, there are plenty of affordable options available, like Focusrite’s Scarlett range, for example (psst: you can still get a 4th Gen Scarlett 2i2 for just £144 in this post Black Friday deal).
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But if you’re after a little more firepower – something a little more high-end – you won’t go wrong with the Universal Audio Apollo Twin X DUO. And it’s discounted by $200 at Sweetwater for a limited time for Cyber Weekend.

READ MORE: Black Friday music deals 2024: These deals on synths, DJ controllers and plugins are still live – don’t wait to grab a bargain

Boasting next-generation elite-class AD/DA, the 2nd generation of the Apollo Twin X DUO offers the lowest distortion and widest dynamic range of any Apollo Twin available to date. It also gives powerful onboard plugin processing, providing you with award-winning emulations of studio classics that you can track in real time.
Elsewhere, the Apollo Twin X DUO features Monitor Correction, so you can adjust playback sound to suit any room or recording environment, Bass Management for optimising your subwoofer for maximum low-frequency detail, and so much more.
And the icing on the cake? If you grab this interface right now with a discount of $200, you’ll get $2,289 worth of UAD plugins absolutely free.
For more information, head to Sweetwater.
The post Black Friday ain’t over: get $200 off the Universal Audio Apollo Twin X DUO interface – AND get $2,289 worth of UAD plugins absolutely free appeared first on MusicTech.

Tailwheel Trainer Go-Cart To Avoid Wrecked PlanesTaildraggers remain a popular configuration for small aircraft, but they come with a significant risk during ground handling: ground loops. If the tail gets too far off course, it can swing around completely, often damaging or destroying aircraft if a wing hits the ground. Avoiding ground loops requires good rudder and brake control, and there currently isn’t a good way to learn it without getting into an actual aircraft. [Trent Palmer] is a pilot and who has been thinking about this problem for a few years, so he built a 3-wheeled electric go-cart to help pilots train their ground handling.
The cart is controlled exactly like a taildragger, with a pair of rudder pedals connected to the single steerable via cables, and springs to add some response delay. Independent hydraulic brakes on each main wheel, operated by toe pedals, further simulate the control on many aircraft. The main wheel are controlled with a throttle lever, with a differential to allow them to rotate at different speeds. The cart is unforgiving, and requires constant corrections with the pedals to keep it going straight.[Trent] had few pilot and non-pilot friends try out the cart, and even the experienced tailwheel pilots got into ground loop. It might be bit too sensitive, but everyone agreed that mastering this cart would significantly improve ground handling skills in actual aircraft.
Repairing a damaged aircraft can cost several thousand dollar, so a cheap training tool like this could prove invaluable flight schools and even individual pilots. [Trent] doesn’t have big plans for commercialization, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it goes that way.
Taildraggers are especially popular as bush planes, with many tracing their heritage from the humble Piper J-3 Cub. We’ve seen some extreme extreme modern bush planes, like [Mike Patey]’s Scrappy and Draco builds.

LAST DAY to Update Artist Profiles for Bandsintown High NotesSunday December 1 is the last day for musician to update their Bandsintown For Artist profiles to make the most of Bandsintown High Notes 2024. This popular live music year in review for both artists and fans will be released early in December.
The post LAST DAY to Update Artist Profiles for Bandsintown High Notes appeared first on Hypebot.

Last Week in DIY and Independent Musician NewsLast week, DIY and independent musician news ranged from Bandsintown High Notes to a Superfan debate, botted playlists and more…
The post Last Week in DIY and Independent Musician News appeared first on Hypebot.

Air Music Tech’s New $99 Multiband Filterbank is FREE Until December 2nd
Air Music Tech launched its new Multiband Filterbank plugin on Friday and is offering it for free from now until December 2, 2024, saving you $99.  Multiband Filterbank is a release for Windows (VST2, VST3, AAX), macOS (VST2, VST3, AAX, AU, desktop standalone), and MPC (standalone).  Air Music Tech describes the plugin as offering the [...]
View post: Air Music Tech’s New $99 Multiband Filterbank is FREE Until December 2nd

The Crow Hill Company releases Wavering Choir for the FREE Vaults series
The Crow Hill Company’s Vaults series is a treasure trove of free sounds with a twist, and their latest addition is the Wavering Choir. The twist is that the contents of the vault are ever-changing. Each new release remains in the vault for six months, and a previous release is removed with each new addition. [...]
View post: The Crow Hill Company releases Wavering Choir for the FREE Vaults series

Icon Drums Classic Rock from Spectre Digital Spectre Digital have announced the release of what they say is the ultimate drum library for producers who demand the best-sounding drums for their classic and modern rock productions

Bluesky promises more verification and an ‘aggressive’ approach to impersonationAs more celebrities and popular influencers join Bluesky, the fast-growing social media service has been facing more concerns around impersonation and verified identity. The Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that the company has updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed.” The company said it should […]
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It’s Like LightScribe, But For Floppies!Back when CD-Rs were the thing, there were CD burner drives which would etch images in the unoccupied areas of a CD-R. These so-called LightScribe drives were a novelty of which most users soon tired, but they’re what’s brought to our mind by [dbalsom]’s project. It’s called PNG2disk, and it does the same job as LightScribe, but for floppies. There’s one snag though; the images are encoded in magnetic flux and thus invisible to the naked eye. Instead, they can be enjoyed through a disk copying program that shows a sector map.
The linked GitHub repository has an example, and goes in depth through the various options it supports, and how to view images in several disk analysis programs. This program creates fully readable disks, and can even leave space for a filesystem. We have to admit to being curious as to whether such an image could be made physically visible using for example ferrofluid, but we’d be the first t admit to not being magnetic flux experts.
PNG2disk is part of the Fluxfox project, a library for working with floppy disk images. Meanwhile LightScribe my have gone the way of the dodo, but if you have one you could try making your own supercaps.

Saving a Samsung TV From the Dreaded Boot Loop[eigma] had a difficult problem. After pulling a TV out of the trash and bringing it home, it turned out it was suffering from a troubling boot loop issue that basically made it useless. As so many of us do, they decided to fix it…which ended up being a far bigger task than initially expected.
The TV in question was a Samsung UN40H5003AF. Powering it up would net a red standby light which would stay on for about eight seconds. Then it would flicker off, come back on, and repeat the cycle. So far, so bad. Investigation began with the usual—checking the power supplies and investigating the basics. No easy wins were found. A debug UART provided precious little information, and schematics proved hard to come by.
Eventually, though, investigation dialed in on a 4 MB SPI flash chip on the board. Dumping the chip revealed the firmware onboard was damaged and corrupt. Upon further tinkering, [eigma] figured that most of the dump looked valid. On a hunch, suspecting that maybe just a single bit was wrong, they came up with a crazy plan: use a script to brute-force flipping every single bit until the firmware’s CRC check came back valid. It took eighteen hours, but the script found a valid solution. Lo and behold, burning the fixed firmware to the TV brought it back to life.
It feels weird for a single bit flip to kill an entire TV, but this kind of failure isn’t unheard of. We’ve seen other dedicated hackers perform similar restorations previously. If you’re out there valiantly rescuing e-waste with these techniques, do tell us your story, won’t you?

This Apple laptop is perfect for music production – and you can save $100 during Cyber WeekendWhether you’re a hobbyist bedroom producer or a professional pumping out tracks to millions, you need a fast-performing and reliable computer as the heart of your production rig.
There’s a reason so many producers use Apple laptops for their music production; they feature an intuitive user interface which doesn’t get in the way of your creative workflow, and have top-quality processing power so you don’t need to worry about bottlenecking. And right now at Sweetwater, you can grab a 15-inch MacBook Air M3 in a Midnight finish at a $100 discount.
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So let’s dive into some of the specs that will make this your best choice of machine for music production. First up, it’s got a “blazing-fast” M3 chip – meaning it can handle whatever mix you throw at it – a super-portable, lightweight design and up to 18 hours of battery life so you can take it on the move no problem, a 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display driven by a 10-core GPU, and two thunderbolt ports for plugging in your audio interface and any other external gear.

READ MORE: Black Friday music deals 2024: These deals on synths, DJ controllers and plugins are still live – don’t wait to grab a bargain

We don’t expect this deal to last long, so don’t wait around if you want to get your 15-inch MacBook Air M3 for only $1,199 down from $1,299.
For more information, head to Sweetwater.
The post This Apple laptop is perfect for music production – and you can save $100 during Cyber Weekend appeared first on MusicTech.

Music Industry News Last WeekIt was another busy week in music industry news with StubHub pushing states to pass onerous ticketing laws, a new MIDiA streaming report, presales from Bandsintown and more.
The post Music Industry News Last Week appeared first on Hypebot.

Last Week in DIY and Independent Musician NewsLast week, DIY and independent musician news ranged from Bandsintown High Notes to a Superfan debate, botted playlists and more…
The post Last Week in DIY and Independent Musician News appeared first on Hypebot.

You can now save $61,227 on this Yamaha CS-80 this Cyber WeekendYamaha’s CS-80 is among the most sought-after synthesizers in the world. Released in 1977 and used most famously by Vangelis on the original soundtrack for Blade Runner (1982), it’s revered for its expressive playability and incredible sound. Any synth nerd looking to pick one up should check out this listing on Reverb, which slashes the price of a second-hand CS-80 by a whopping $61,227. Does it make it any more affordable?…Eh.
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The savings bring the price down by exactly 50 per cent to $61,227. It’s definitely a luxury purchase, but you’ll be getting a bona fide piece of vintage synth history. Polyphonic aftertouch, a rich, warm and beefy analogue sound engine with a dual-layer voice architecture, and deep patch editing parameters all make this legend the king of pads and cinematic sounds.
Speaking to Electronics & Music Maker magazine in 1984, the late Vangelis said that the CS-80 was “the most important synthesizer” in his career.
“And for me the best analogue synthesizer design there has ever been,” he added. “It was a brilliant instrument, though unfortunately not a very successful one. It needs a lot of practice if you want to be able to play it properly, but that’s because it’s the only synthesizer I could describe as being a real instrument, mainly because of the keyboard — the way it’s built and what you can do with it.”
And speaking to us in 2022, Imagine Dragons’ Wayne Sermon said: “I had the chance to buy a CS-80 a while back for a great price. And I didn’t pull the trigger, and I regret it so much. Now, they’ve doubled in price. It’s just the coolest, most expressive, most impractically designed instrument ever conceived.”
Maybe we should drop him a message.
CS-80 alternative?
If you’re looking to keep the budget a little lower, we can recommend the Cherry Audio GX-80 plugin, which is currently discounted by 16 per cent on Plugin Boutique for Cyber Weekend. It emulates not only the CS-80, but also the Yamaha GX-1.
In our review of the GX-80, we said: “It’s an incredibly powerful instrument, not least because it’s actually two huge synths in one, and that means a lot of controls to contend with. This isn’t a criticism – you wouldn’t expect to buy a massively powerful piece of kit and breeze through it in an hour – and indeed you are quite free to just change the odd thing here and there and still get amazing results.”
Looking for more Cyber Weekend deals on music gear? Check out our guide to the best deals we’ve found so far. 
The post You can now save $61,227 on this Yamaha CS-80 this Cyber Weekend appeared first on MusicTech.