Wall boxes for variacs...

[Chipal]

Howdy-ho,

I'm along-time lurker and beneficiary of all the web wisdom here and over at John Sayers' site. I'm finally building my own studio in my home.

I've acquired various variacs for my pending electric install but am having problems sourcing the 6x6x4 plastic boxes Ethan refers to in one of his articles. After much searching the closest thing I've found are these -

Find Junction Box, 6" x 6" x 4" and other Electrical Boxes at Aubuchon Hardware

Are these what you folks use? Any alternatives? My electricians act mystified. Guess I'm going to have to figure it out for them.

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Chipal

After much searching the closest thing I've found are these

That looks like the right type.

--Ethan

[avare]

Not disagreeing with what you have found, but why not ask Variac directly? They have a contact page on their website.

Invariably,
Andre

[Chipal]

Thanks for the confirmation, Ethan. I'm variably grateful - more grateful, less grateful, now more grateful...

I also sent a query to the manufacturer just to see what they say. If I hear anything interesting back I'll post it here.

Happy New Year!

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Chipal

I'm variably grateful - more grateful, less grateful, now more grateful...

[jamsmith]

Originally Posted by Chipal

Howdy-ho,

I'm along-time lurker and beneficiary of all the web wisdom here and over at John Sayers' site. I'm finally building my own studio in my home.

I've acquired various variacs for my pending electric install but am having problems sourcing the 6x6x4 plastic boxes Ethan refers to in one of his articles. After much searching the closest thing I've found are these -

Find Junction Box, 6" x 6" x 4" and other Electrical Boxes at Aubuchon Hardware

Are these what you folks use? Any alternatives? My electricians act mystified. Guess I'm going to have to figure it out for them.

Just curious. What are you using Variacs for? If you are trying to maintain a certain line voltage, wouldn't you want a solid state power conditioner that will maintain the voltages despited fluctuations? Or maybe I am old fashion. To me Variac is autotransformer used for manually regulating voltages during trouble shooting (or for getting the "brown-sound" out of your Marshalls)

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by jamsmith

JWhat are you using Variacs for?

Lighting dimmers probably, which is the focus of my article he mentioned:

Kill Studio Hum and Buzz at the Source

--Ethan

[jamsmith]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

Lighting dimmers probably, which is the focus of my article he mentioned:

Kill Studio Hum and Buzz at the Source

--Ethan

Wow, yeah expensive dimmers! I have used them as expenisive soldering iron temperature controls in the past!

How about DC lighting? Simple pots no hum.

I have been told I am crazy, but I thought about running my whole studio off of lead-acid batteries. Keep one charging and the other online. When they get low, kill the charger and use make-before-break switching.


Ethan, what kind of programming do you do?

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by jamsmith

Wow, yeah expensive dimmers!

Yeah, I spent $550 in the early 90s to outfit my whole house. Probably cost closer to a grand today.

Ethan, what kind of programming do you do?

Mostly DOS programming years ago, but I wrote two acoustics Windows programs last year for my company's site. My favorites are assembly language and compiled BASIC.

--Ethan

[jamsmith]

Originally Posted by Ethan Winer

Mostly DOS programming years ago, but I wrote two acoustics Windows programs last year for my company's site. My favorites are assembly language and compiled BASIC.

--Ethan

Wow, thats like brain surgery vs. clipping a toe-nail! My hat is off to anyone who gets down to the assembly level. Have done very little down their - to tedious for me - I am an impatient man. I love C as a language academically - 98% of the power of assembler with int86 function and can get you the whole way their with asm. My bread and butter is application development. My all time favorite RAD tool is Visual Basic 6 for a console app and Active Server Pages for the web. For more serious stuff its C# for both. I do alot of ColdFusion and PHP. Pretty much whatever come through the door we will learn and to for a client.

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by jamsmith

My hat is off to anyone who gets down to the assembly level. Have done very little down their - to tedious for me - I am an impatient man.

Me too, but I find it exhilarating to go mano a mano with the CPU.

I always like the combination of compiled BAS and ASM because BASIC does so much for you (avoids the tedious stuff), and a few selected ASM routines can give a program the speed when it's really needed.

--Ethan

[moracspace]

I can pick up these boxes all day at United Electric Supply

Hit me up if you can find them,

[Chipal]

Just for passing interest:

Here's an official reply from the above-mentioned manufacturer contact link.

"While variable transformers are widely used for dimming in recording studios there is no standard mounting arrangement/hardware for same. Usually custom boxes and face plates are required. It is left to the ingenuity of the electrician."

Or the ingenuity of their customer...

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by Chipal

Or the ingenuity of their customer...

LOL. Which is exactly why I posted my article.

--Ethan

[avare]

Originally Posted by Chipal

Just for passing interest:

Here's an official reply from the above-mentioned manufacturer contact link.

"While variable transformers are widely used for dimming in recording studios there is no standard mounting arrangement/hardware for same. Usually custom boxes and face plates are required. It is left to the ingenuity of the electrician."

Or the ingenuity of their customer...

This is support? I don't how it has gone on your side of the border, but on this side more and the inspection authorities are requiring approved/listed products in any electrical system. Purely as a gut feeling, try and get design approval/input from the electrical inspector before building it.

The current trends in insurance claims here is that if a major claim is laid and anything not in compliance with codes is grounds for refusing the claim.

Ethan: There was never any question of the validity of your response. I never expected to read such a lame brain response from a manufacturer. Perhaps you should send them links to your last couple of hundred posts helping people.

Andre

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by avare

Perhaps you should send them links to your last couple of hundred posts helping people.