What Is The Most Valuable Tool You Own?

[Micky]

Well here it is, many people hinted around it, and got really close:

Your eyes.

Now, nothing against blind people, they gotta be the most versatile people I know, but if I lost my sight, you might as well dump me off the bridge. I would be lost.

Here is an example...

I was given 2 X 27" iMac computers. They would not turn on. Dead. AppleCare could not repair them is what I was told. (It may not have been WORTH it to repair them?) They are i7, 8-core, 8GB absolutely HUGE computers. Everything all-in-one. Except the keyboard and no mouse which were not included. Dead as a turd.

OK, so Apple could not or would not repair them, they must really be bad. So I plug them in. Dead. Nothing. So I take one apart.

It is pristine inside. Just a trace of dust in the fans. I am looking for something obviously broken, but I see (using my eyes) nothing. Everything looks fine upon initial inspection.

So I delve a bit deeper and pull the power supply board. 2 connectors (input and output) and 4 screws. Again, very clean, no dust. Lots of surface mount stuff, a few caps all look good, inductors look fine, transistors and heatsinks all look clean and generally everything looks new. So I have this 8X loupe that I use for inspecting for solder cracks and other small stuff, and I am scouring this board for any defects. Looking for anything, like cold solder joints etc.

Lo and behold, while looking for defects, I spy the fuse. It is a square, 6.3A PC mount fuse, and there is a tiny scorch mark underneath. A carbon spot smaller than a bb, slightly larger than the period at the end of this sentence. Only reason I saw it was because the carbon partially covered the word FUSE printed on the board.

So I figure it is time to get out the meter and start checking things, and sure as $hit, it is blown. Guess what. I replace the fuse, put it all back together and it works fine.

So I figure my eyes were worth at least $2K today. Might be worth another $2K tomorrow if I can fix the other one. And no, I will not become an iTard, I already have several Macs that I use. Just another brick in the wall I suppose...

 

[poeman33]

Philips screw driver

 

[Nudge68]

Plenty of tools posted to this thread

I'd say my 2 bob 3x eye glasses

 

[Mshayne]

I only have basically two tools. A victornox spirit multitool and knives ( LOTS AND LOTS OF KNIVES )

I don't have any room, my current place is even too small for our family lucky thing is maintaince is good .

 

[Gene Ballzz]

While I would ABSOLUTELY HATE losing proper use of my eyes, without my ears, you might as well chuck me onto the barbeque! My ears give me much more widely varied data than the eyes. Spherical spatial reference, speed, communication, etc, etc! Oh yeah, and tonal perception. Next in line is fingers/hands and I would say eyes are third on the list.

BTW, great score on those imac's, but you already know that! Likely victims/recipients of some sort of power surge. I think you already knew that also!
Just Sayin'
Gene

 

[Micky]

BTW, great score on those imac's, but you already know that! Likely victims/recipients of some sort of power surge. I think you already knew that also!
Just Sayin'
Gene

This gen of iMac had overheating problems, and I believe someone may have plugged in a power-hungry device like a USB drive or something and that may have popped the fuse.

I believe these went for about $2800 new, so yeah, it was a nice score.

The point of this thread was to never overlook (literally) the obvious. Use your eyes, as they are the best first indicator of what may be wrong...

 

[ibmorjamn]

Well here it is, many people hinted around it, and got really close:

Your eyes.

Now, nothing against blind people, they gotta be the most versatile people I know, but if I lost my sight, you might as well dump me off the bridge. I would be lost.

Here is an example...

I was given 2 X 27" iMac computers. They would not turn on. Dead. AppleCare could not repair them is what I was told. (It may not have been WORTH it to repair them?) They are i7, 8-core, 8GB absolutely HUGE computers. Everything all-in-one. Except the keyboard and no mouse which were not included. Dead as a turd.

OK, so Apple could not or would not repair them, they must really be bad. So I plug them in. Dead. Nothing. So I take one apart.

It is pristine inside. Just a trace of dust in the fans. I am looking for something obviously broken, but I see (using my eyes) nothing. Everything looks fine upon initial inspection.

So I delve a bit deeper and pull the power supply board. 2 connectors (input and output) and 4 screws. Again, very clean, no dust. Lots of surface mount stuff, a few caps all look good, inductors look fine, transistors and heatsinks all look clean and generally everything looks new. So I have this 8X loupe that I use for inspecting for solder cracks and other small stuff, and I am scouring this board for any defects. Looking for anything, like cold solder joints etc.

Lo and behold, while looking for defects, I spy the fuse. It is a square, 6.3A PC mount fuse, and there is a tiny scorch mark underneath. A carbon spot smaller than a bb, slightly larger than the period at the end of this sentence. Only reason I saw it was because the carbon partially covered the word FUSE printed on the board.

So I figure it is time to get out the meter and start checking things, and sure as $hit, it is blown. Guess what. I replace the fuse, put it all back together and it works fine.

So I figure my eyes were worth at least $2K today. Might be worth another $2K tomorrow if I can fix the other one. And no, I will not become an iTard, I already have several Macs that I use. Just another brick in the wall I suppose...

On a un -related question , why is that Mac can do music recording with ultra low latency but Android can not ?

 

[ampmadscientist]

The one tool you could not live without?
The one that does most of the work for you?
The one thing at your disposal that you always end up using?

Tell me yours, then I will tell you mine...

My Ears.
My Ears tell me more, than any test equipment I have ever owned.

 

[Ken]

The one tool you could not live without?
The one that does most of the work for you?
The one thing at your disposal that you always end up using?

Tell me yours, then I will tell you mine...

Outside of the metaphysical answers, my multi-tool I keep in my gig bag. I use it for lots of minor repairs, as well as changing strings.

As for the metaphysical, to be honest, the one in my pants is still #1.

Ken

 

[GIBSON67]

My toothbrush!

 

[Micky]

On a in related question , why is that Mac can do music recording with ultra low latency but Android can not ?

Overhead.

 

[tresmarshallz]

I love changing guitar pickups, so the tool I appreciate most often is the little wire strippers that strip down to 22gauge wiring. If you don't have those strippers then changing pickups on modern 4 wire jobbers is ridiculously time consuming and futile

 

[Gene Ballzz]

Outside of the metaphysical answers, my multi-tool I keep in my gig bag. I use it for lots of minor repairs, as well as changing strings.

As for the metaphysical, to be honest, the one in my pants is still #1.

Ken

As for the "metaphysical" in your pants, there are actually two! If you are still a younger man, you've likely not yet noticed the shift in priority from front to rear! :Ohno:
My #2 & Likely Worth Even Less,
Gene

 

[Gene Ballzz]

Overhead.

How could anyone ever get "Over Head?" There's no such thing as too much pleasure!

Oh, wait, you're referring to electronics "overhead" in similarity to "headroom." That's another term that used to confuse me, until I figured out that it didn't mean the amout of space between my lap and the mixing console!

Great thread!

Boy, I'm On A Roll Today, Ain't I?
Gene

 

[Dmann]

Mine is the tool we all use all day everyday.

The Internet.

 

[Micky]

You are confusing 'overhead' with 'too much head'.

Unless your head is very large, and in that case just buy bigger hats...

But I have always said that you can get by with a mediocre processor if you surround it with fast components...

Obviously, there are some things better left to other tools. For example, I built a video processing computer that would blow away any Mac, for less money than it cost to buy a Mac. How did I do it? By optimizing the hardware needs for video processing.

When you make a computer try to be good at EVERYTHING, then something needs to suffer. Usually what suffers is the bottom line. Cost. But when you try to make a computer good at EVERYTHING as well as keep the cost down, then EVERYTHING suffers.

 

[Gene Ballzz]

Mine is the tool we all use all day everyday.

The Internet.

Hey, I resemble that remark! We all know that the most often used function of the internet is to avoid doing any ACTUAL work!

Micky, we need to get together, as I am contemplating building a windows machine dedicated for only 1 to 3 purposes. Likely music recording and opening a few things (like tone stack calculator) that can only be done with a PC. No surfing, word processing, etc.
Thanks,
Gene

 

[Micky]

Sure Gene, just send me your ideas and I can comment on them easily.

I have found, especially as of late, that drive access is critical in music production, and the easiest way to get an extremely FAST drive is to create one in RAM. In all actuality, RAMdrives have been around since the 70's, it is just that people never had enough RAM to use them effectively.

These days, with 16GB systems it is easy to dedicate 4GB to a fast drive, and in doing so, you run the risk of overpowering the other components. Here is where new technology such as USB3 can help... but even older tech like FireWire is generally good enough. You don't necessarily need bandwidth, but lower latency as you have mentioned. And as soon as you eliminate all the extra crap a processor needs to do, suddenly there is plenty of time to record what you want.

Ask Blues for the lo-down on this stuff. Certainly good hardware will help, but things like Focusrite, Ableton, and Pro Tools all contribute as well.

 

[StratoMarshall]

I agree with Micky, eyes are at the top of the list along with the brain to recognize what the eyes see, along with the hands to do something about what you see and recognize, and of course, the ears to listen to Marshall Goodness!

 

[Gene Ballzz]

Well Sir,
I have a newer iMac with 16GB of RAM and "unfortunately" a 5400 RPM hard drive, as I did not realize when ordering that I should have spent the extra $$$ for a 7200 RPM! That being said, I can see that music recording is going to very quickly fill up my 1 TB hard drive. I understand that I could add another drive, but worry about the access speed, even with USB-3 and am horrified by the prices of Thunderbolt hard drives and not sure that Thunderbolt would be all that much better anyway!

My ADA converters/Interfaces are 2 Presonus FireStudio Projects for a total of 16 analog XLR gozintas and my current DAW is Presonus StudioOne.

One caveat of StudioOne is the file storage hierarchy and how difficult it is to find all bits and pieces of a project for transferring from one place to another or sharing with a friend for mixing and/or editing ideas. If you miss one piece the whole project becomes disjointed. Now, this isn't too much of an issue when everything is disjointed on the same drive, but if different pieces are in different locations some files suffer from disassociation issues! I can only imagine that using multiple hard drives would only compound this problem.

Please understand that I am not very well versed in the technology of how computers work and even more illiterate in the Windows realm than Mac.

Also when you referred to "Blues" can I assume you meant blues_n_cues?

Thanks,
Gene