I had been out all day looking for those damn diodes. With a hubric confidence that would have made Oedipus balk, I submitted my orders without checking my stores. And sure enough, there I was...the worlds GREATEST OD CIRCUIT laid out on my custom-made-out-of-old-Gibson-Firebird-X's pedal building desk...I open my diode vault to extract two examples of the rarest of rare unobtanium: the Fele-Tunken 1nA2B3C...only made for 3 hours, on February 17, 1972. Alas!...my horror, as I found my vault empty. I jumped into my 1950's Cadillac Herse (like Neil Young), painted by The Fool, and hit the road. After driving all day, I had found nothing. Sure, I found 10,000 AC128's measuring from 75hfe to 175hfe, and a metric ton of LM308's, but no 1nA2B3C's. Along a dark deserted road, the car died. "Drats," I said. "I should have never replaced the engine with that Boneyard Edition V8 MOSFET engine/analog delay." Now walking (like a peasant) I stumbled upon a cottage. The sign outside read "Gingerbread Bill's Discount Electronics and Poppler's Emporium." "I'll be damned" I signed in ASL, and walked inside...
Inside there was an old man. Tall and short at the same time...he both disappeared into nothingness and and overwhelmed the senses at the same time. He wore a lime green beret, and a white t-shirt with "I am Bill" printed on it. Was he made of smoke?...or was it anti-matter? The sparkle from his tantalum-capped tooth both blinded my vision and gave me a glimpse of the very fabric of time simultaneously. "You Bill?" I asked.
When the man spoke, all noises stopped. I could barely hear him. "You seek what others find...what others think they find...yet it eludes you." "You've been reading my mail," I responded, feeling, perhaps for the first time, like someone finally understood the real me. He put down my mail and continued: "I will let you in on a secret...but at a price." Intrigued, I inquired as to the price. "HA!" he screamed, while doing a back flip, very slowly. "I wouldn't tell you for a billion dollars!" he said. "That's ok," I replied, "I don't have a billion dollars. How about half a pack of old-timey Violet flavored candies?" With that the man transformed into a very similar form to his original form, only this form was slightly transformed. "You are truly the greatest pedal builder...even greater than the tall Monk that lives on Fuzz Face Mountain. I accept your price!" And with that, the old man laid two diodes on the table before me...
"Those are 4148's, dude," I said annoyed, while trying to hide my disappointment. "Uh...no, these arent those...these are better than what you wanted," the man said. I exhaled bitterly; "If I wanted 4148's I would have bought 1n34a's from Ebay." The man chuckled, nervously. "No no, " he said, "these are very good. I promise." When the old man said this, his eyes glimmered, and I felt the collective joy of existence cascading through my central nervous system. "I'll throw in this pre-drilled Gorva 16-knob 1590B," he quickly added. "Deal," I said, and I paid and left.
When I returned to the lah-bore-ah-tory, I gently inserted the new diodes into the pedal. I downed a couple of beers, smoked a pile of weed, I drank some tasty wine, and then I LSD'd. Then I grabbed my vintage 1965 Robot Les Paul Deluxe, and I plugged into to my 1955 Fender Deluxe-imitation IR pedal. I hooked up the pedal and played an A chord, 1st position, lazy...with only two fingers. Now, I've heard angels singing on high before, and compared to the sound this pedal made, those Angels sounded like shit. And the diodes! They were glowing! Shades of colors no human had ever even imagined danced across the diodes. Soon they transformed into strobe-like glowing jelly beans. In fact, the sound was so smooth, so pure, that I blackout...dreaming that I was a cloud, held aloft by the essence of pure tone.
When I came to it was raining. Not where I was, but I'm sure it was raining somewhere. I got up, made coffee, got the paper, let out the cat, told the dog to get a job, had breakfast, did yoga, defeated a brief ninja invasion of the pantry, and put a load of laundry in. Only then, 2 days later, did I remember the tone. I rushed upstairs, threw open the door. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!," a woman screamed. "Sorry!!!...wrong room!" I yelled and went across the hall. The lab was just as I had left it. I looked at the circuit....and saw those two little orange diodes. "What the hell!" I yelled. "What happened to the glowing jelly bean diodes?!...these look like....4148's again!" I collapsed to the floor like a pile of wet laundry. Slowly, I grabbed the guitar, and strummed a sad Eminor9 chord. My ears instantly jumped off my head, flew around the room, and returned. "THE TONE!" I yelled, so loudly that it reverberated through the building...as if someone had the feedback control maxed. "How can this be?" I asked. "These look like normal, non-special diodes...yet, they sound like the supposedly unobtainable diodes." Sitting back in my chair, I shrugged, and said "these diodes must be haunted...yea...they are haunted by the ghosts of GOOD diodes. That's the only plausible explanation." I laughed, in a way that, since I was alone, it was a bit creepy. "No silicon diode could sound this good..."
Ghoul News Everyone!
......booOoOoo
