Robert wasn’t ashamed when he looked into my eyes while holding his solder sucker. Flux had burned with the excess heat my soldering station was set. I was nervous and my tip was dripping hot Kester lead free solder. Robert smiled at me and asked if he could offer some help. I felt the vibrations of the transformer insulations on my old Weller and said yes.
This all started on PedalPCB forum couple months ago. Robert started to PM me after I made a build report about TB MK I. First the messages he sent were about different fuzzes, but after a while they started to get more intimate. He crossed the line asking if I liked PAF sound and had ever consired being lead free. I really hadn’t, but on my response I gave he the truth about it by stating I was bit curious of it. But I didn’t get respond to my message and our conversations went to pause. I felt awful and feared if I had hurt Roberts feelings with too bold answer about my willingness on trying new things. But then the tide turned and my doorbell rang. It was Robert. As a joke I had asked him once if he could guide and superwise me building this special YATS circuit with submarine parts. Then against all odds he appeared into my front porch wearing his special soldering gloves. He assured those gloves were latex free and squirrels were not harrassed in manufacturing process. Gloves were beautiful and shined under 2000K fluorecent light. I wanted to touch the gloves and uncaringly asked if he had spare gloves to share, but Robert looked right through me doing absently-minded mumbling anf asking a question about if I had ever floored. I didn’t have time to respong ot say anything back when he quickly continued whispering ”I’m gonna make sure it’s RoHS this time”.