#429 – An Interview with Charles Alexanian

Charles Alexanian: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release February 10th, 2019. Episode 429. An interview with Charles Alexanian.

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. And I'm Charles Alexanian of Alextronics Controls. Hey Charles, how you doing? Doing pretty good. Wonderful Saturday morning.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah, nice and bright and sunny out here at least. You know, freezing cold, but sunny.

Chris Gammell: Well, I'm looking at a multi-hour sojourn into the snow a little later on today to go check out some things.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah, you guys are getting pounded out on the West Coast. So you're near Fresno, is that right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, Fresno. We actually very rarely get snow here, but not an hour away up in the mountains. It's a full-fledged winter storm going on up there.

Charles Alexanian: Oh, wow. That's crazy. That's crazy. So let's hear some of your history. I mean, you and I met because of podcasting stuff. You started kind of helping me with some suggestions. And we got to know each other just through correspondence and stuff. But over time, I've followed your work. And you write for Hackaday as well. And people may have seen some of your talks and stuff. So maybe we could start kind of back where you got started in electronics and then work our way forwards.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, I've kind of drunk and stumbled my way through an interesting path in electronics career. I started out a product of a family business. My father was a QC engineer in the 70s. Originally started that actually with the military. He did the initial field evaluation of the first headset night scope out at Hunter Liggett Reservation in the late 60s, early 70s.

Charles Alexanian: Oh, wow. So is that like something that instead of having it like on a gun, it's actually like you're wearing like a night vision goggle kind of thing or what?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Before that, they'd mount them on tanks and helicopters and things like that. And that was the first one that they actually, you know, we would recognize today as a night scope. During Desert Storm, he'd point at the TV and say, look at that. I was doing that 25 years ago. Oh, wow.

Charles Alexanian: That's crazy.

Chris Gammell: So anyways, he threw, of course, all things in life. Getting married and physical location determine a lot of what you do. Moved from the Bay Area down here to Fresno. And all the engineering work here was irrigation related. So he worked for a company at that time, Buckner, who made sprinklers and things like that, valves. And they also had a control department. And this was during the very, very first years of digital controls. You can't exactly remember, but it may have been 8008 era stuff.

Charles Alexanian: That would have been really expensive too to add that to an irrigation controller, right?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. But they were – back in those days, that was a big business, the golf courses and resorts and things like that. So lots of money was being put into that sort of thing. And the company wound up getting bought by Johns Manville, who makes, you know, at that time, asbestos and insulation and things like that.

Charles Alexanian: That's a good business.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The controller was so difficult to program, they sent you a prize if you successfully navigated how to program the thing. Oh, wow. Wow. So anyways, that was kind of doomed to failure, I guess you could say. And he started developing a simple mechatronic controller, which versions of it still actually exist in production. But the company went through some changes. They got bought out, this and that. And at one point, they came along and had to do a, well, every department has to cut back and we are the only one in your department, so see you later. So, yeah, they cut off their own quality control. So he left and started his own business doing a similar product. And actually, for many years, we sold that product back to them. And that was quite successful. And then I came along. And, you know, a real business of it had to be made.

Charles Alexanian: I was born with a saturn in my hand because, well, that was the work to be done.

Chris Gammell: Yes, that was exactly it. I remember being a young, young child, pre-kindergarten, assembling our clock dials, which were plastic dials that had the days of the week and the hours of the day on them. And we would push in little plastic pins, which you would push in and turn, like on one of those old-style lamp timers. Yeah, that was my first job, was assembling those things and very quickly moved to soldering and all that sort of stuff.

Charles Alexanian: So, actually, before we keep going with the history, too, can you mention – so, like, Alextronics is an irrigation kind of based company. But can you explain, like, what the general idea of the company is as well?

Chris Gammell: Well, our primary focus has been OEM manufacturing of timers and controls for other companies because we realized a lot of the companies out there had experience making sprinklers, valves, filters, et cetera. But not a lot of them wanted to go set up their own electronics department to make custom controls. And remember, the late 70s, early 80s and all that, that was a big, hairy deal. You know, not like today where anybody can go, you know, in their garage, start a bootstrap product and off they go. Sure, sure, sure.

Charles Alexanian: Right. If you're making, like, custom PCBs, you're ordering parts from randomness distribution channels, stuff like that. Parts are really expensive, like you mentioned.

Chris Gammell: Oh, back then especially, yeah. I see some of the prices on things back then and my eyes fall out of my head. Yeah. But anyways, we eventually focused on a few specific markets. We used to do a lot of load sharing, energy sharing things for large pumps. That's kind of gone away now in the modern digital age where they just have industrial PLCs out in the field doing that. But filtration of water is the number one use for us in agriculture at this time. We did sprinkler timers and controls and things like that, but we divested that part of our company to, well, I could say it's public, to Hunter Industries. And they're doing quite well with it. They've got a good line of products. They've got good people down there. So we got out of that retail end of it. It just didn't fit our future growth plans.

Charles Alexanian: Right. And filtering is necessary just because of the sprinkler heads and stuff like that, right? So if you have impurities in the water, you need to be able to make sure that you're not cranking that through a nozzle head or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. The traditional wasteful way of irrigating is flood irrigation, which still exists for some types of crops. It is the most efficient for some types of crops. But generally, low flow, efficient irrigations drip, micro sprinkler subsurface. And that requires a clean source of water, typically filtered to 220 micron or so, sometimes more, sometimes less. And that requires automation of the filters and the other systems to provide that. And we sell our product primarily OEM to other manufacturers, filter manufacturers. But as time went on and we already had a good reputation in the field from our history of other products, most of our OEMs found it advantageous to just simply leave our name on the product. And as part of our service for them, we handle the direct-to-consumer service on those products, phone calls, et cetera. And through our dealer network, the other OEMs don't even need to get involved with returns and repairs. So that actually is our biggest service that we can provide.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah, that's nice. I mean, it's a tougher business, I think, if you have to support stuff directly. But you get the benefits of the brand stuff you're talking about.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's no reason why our product shouldn't go 15 years. If they keep the box shut, keep the bugs and pests out, no reason why they shouldn't get 15 years trouble-free out of our products. That's great.

Charles Alexanian: So, okay, so that's good. That's like a good overview of the actual products and stuff. So back to soldering as a toddler. Yes.

Chris Gammell: We, you know, being a family business, we've never had more than a couple of employees at any given time. So family, you know, family had to be there. My grandmother was our first bookkeeper. My mom did the wire harnesses. Dad did testing and some assembling and shipping and invoicing. And like all true small family businesses, we did nothing but lose money for the first many years.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah, I always wonder about – I just wonder, like, how that's possible, too. Was it, like, borrowing and, like, then you – Borrowing, yes.

Chris Gammell: Borrowing, yes. And then customers realizing you're a small company and realizing they can push you around a little bit. And just you have to get a name and really learn what you're doing. You know, I always laugh when I see these reality, quote-unquote, reality shows, you know, where it's a family business and they have to cook drama. And I'm thinking to myself, well, that's how I know that's not a real business. You don't have to cook anything. You know, just wait for the phone to ring.

Charles Alexanian: Right, exactly, exactly, right. Who's actually getting this order out the door today, right?

Chris Gammell: Exactly, yeah, yeah. It started in 77. By 1987, we had stopped losing money. And then by about 1990, they actually made a little bit of money. And then we've remained profitable. Although it's not an explosive growth industry, we've remained profitable ever since.

Charles Alexanian: That's good. I think the interesting thing, too, is that, and like, I've heard this from other people. Actually, when Chris Denny of Worthington was on here, he talked about, I think it was 70s era as well, of like the people who started Worthington Assembly, whatever they called it before, that it was something like Moronics or something like that. Yeah, yeah. But it was just like that era of just like, oh, well, we'll just start a manufacturing business. Whereas I think about that now in like capital investment and doing hand assembly and doing all this. Like, I personally, I would never think to do that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no. Same here. Same here.

Charles Alexanian: Did you have any insight into that? Of that was like, was your folks like, well, it was just a thing to do? Or what was it?

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, it was all they knew, you know, and dad had developed that product that he was more or less able to walk with. And that was that. You know, he was stuck here in Fresno. And the only other thing that my mom's family had done is run a grocery store. And they vowed they would never, ever get into retail ever again. So it was, you know, either a go look for a job. There was one job in between, though, that he had. It was a company called Lightronics. He used to manufacture calculators and digital watches and things like that. And that could be a whole show into itself. You'd be better off interviewing him about that on all the pitfalls of 70s large volume consumer electronics. Right.

Charles Alexanian: Well, I think we're going to get into it later, too. But like the idea of like these kind of remote manufacturing. And like I said, we'll talk about it later of like the challenges with it. But just the idea of that, it does sound like it's, you know, you make your own job in this case. And I guess the same thing with Worthington was like it was like kind of in the middle of nowhere, you know. But it was just this thing to get the job done. So from that perspective, it's interesting. We wanted to build this product. We thought there was a market for it. So we built it.

Chris Gammell: Well, my friend Don Schmidt, who in himself is an amazing story, told me one time about this very subject. He says they put the power plant where the coal is. They put the glass plant where the sand is. What did you expect was going to happen?

Charles Alexanian: Right. Yeah. No, that's a good point. That's a good point. Or even more to the point, I think they put it near where the power is these days. I mean, I guess the coal.

Charles Alexanian: It's still coal.

Chris Gammell: We're still a dirty coal society.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So that's the one thing we all should be focusing on. But no one seems to want to.

Charles Alexanian: Right. Right. So as you were growing up doing this stuff, I mean, how did that impact your electronics learning and stuff, too? I mean, it sounds like it was pretty hands-on from the beginning.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The actual assembly part of it and all that just came from here. Here's a bench, sit, put this together. So I learned how to read schematics. I don't even remember a time not being able to read schematics and do basic calculations for things. As far as the actual in earnest electronics learning didn't come until a few years later, of course, the requisite, whatever in one Radio Shack kits, of course. Of course. Dad got tired of me pulling parts out of inventory. You know, a six-year-old kid doesn't realize those half-cent resistors do add up after a while. Right, right, right.

Charles Alexanian: We're not making the count again. This is not good.

Chris Gammell: Exactly, exactly. Inventory's off. What's going on? Oh, Charles built a radio. Okay. Yeah, right. So there was that. Then as I got a little bit older and was able to actually really learn, you know, I've got a few basic books. And it always had the benefit of having experienced assemblers and a couple of experienced engineers floating about to ask the basic questions.

Charles Alexanian: Well, then did that end up transitioning to like, when is it like, hey, I built or I designed this thing. Like, when does it transition to that point? Is it much later?

Chris Gammell: Well, I mean, as far as having input on designs or actually designing my own products or both.

Charles Alexanian: I'd say, yeah, both really. I mean, because I think I'm guessing you probably did build some of your own stuff, but then like, when is it? When? Because again, I think there is this kind of like mental piece of like, you know, it's tied up in family and there's, you know, everybody has a role within it. But then if it shifts and it's like, hey, I'm now moving from helping with assembly to building this thing or designing this thing, I assume that kind of changes things too.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It took a number of a number of years. I mean, my father stopped being current on things in the 80s. He never made the jump out of mechatronics to full digital. So, you know, of course, as a founder of a company, you have to realize the point at which you're no longer effective to drive the technological future of the company. You're either, you know, an executive, you're going to run the business end of it.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. Got to sell stuff, got to get a hobnob, that kind of thing, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, somebody has to, you know, has to be able, you kind of have to have the clarity of mind of not worrying about, you know, doing development to be able to move forward, especially when you've got several employees for you and a number, you know, many customers. So that decision was made and we brought in a outside engineer who's actually still with us. He'll probably be with us until he decides to stop working. And we kind of went from there. We would not farm out the designs, but we would, you know, hire his time and he would do our design work for us. Oh, yeah. Right. We'd give him the input. You know, the first product I recall directly having some input on was in about 1992. We were redesigning one of our popular products and we wanted to figure out the feature set and things like that. And that was the first one that I can remember really having an input on. Here's how this thing should function. Here's how the display should lay out. Here's how the knob should be, blah, blah, blah. And that was the first step.

Charles Alexanian: Look, that's, I mean, that sounds like a pretty good chunk of time there, but it's also like a lot of hands-on time and helping out with the manufacturing piece. And speaking of the manufacturing piece, I mean, this was all through-hole stuff to start with, right? Yeah, correct. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We're still, some of our lines are still completely through-hole.

Charles Alexanian: Really? Okay. And so how does that impact like assembly processes and stuff like that? I mean, do you guys have, I guess we'll get into pick and play stuff too, because you and I have kind of gone back and forth on neoden things, but like has it ever transitioned? Do you ever look at going outsourced or of like doing, you know, SMG assembly?

Chris Gammell: We historically have been so seasonal that we've had to use outside vendors for, you know, to help, you know, help smooth over, you know, the supply difficulties. Our current place, I don't mind blowing them up, but it's a Telluride up in Fremont across from Tesla. And they're great at doing, you know, a hundred boards at a time sort of thing. And they're good about remembering who you are. So, you know, you do a few batches one year, you wait a year and a half and do another few batches. They don't go, who are you again?

Charles Alexanian: Right, right, right, right. Let me just dig into the files and files, right?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So we're not afraid of doing that. As a matter of fact, I'm right now kitting up to do a few hundred panels out with them. So that was this week's activity was making sure we had enough inventory, which with Chinese New Year.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah, it's a fun time. It's a fun time. Definitely gotten caught a couple of times myself, but oh well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, so the, I went through a period, you know, family business, fear and doubt are always the primary motivating factors. So the thought is, what if this thing doesn't happen? You know, what if Motorola comes in next week with their own product line at half the price and all this sort of stuff and dump a bunch of advertising money behind it? What if, what if, what if? Well, my parents kind of what if myself right into thinking maybe this is not a viable future at a certain point. Maybe I should look into other things. It all turned out to be nonsense.

Charles Alexanian: But I think that's, I think that's really fair though. I've heard that a lot of like people who are in family businesses too. Like, you know, maybe you get a second generation who are interested in doing it, but by third generation, usually, you know, either the business has taken on a life of its own or there's just less interest in it because it's such a big part of the family.

Chris Gammell: Well, it dilutes, you know, it dilutes. You figure, you know, all of a sudden you're serving the machine rather than running the machine. And that's a fear that I talked to other people in similar positions of the same thing. So, so I spent my teens thinking, well, maybe I should go figure something else out. Uh, and of course, you know, everyone being dumb and like every good band geek decides to throw away their original instrument and pick up the guitar. So, and of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh gosh. I wish I could go back in time and learn how to play the piano properly.

Charles Alexanian: Oh gosh. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyways. Uh, uh, so that of course, uh, leads down, you leads you down the standard path of, uh, you know, of all the effects pedals. Remember this is the nineties. So, you know, effects pedals are King and Oh, I could build that. I got the parts for that. And, and all of a sudden you think you can make something out of it, which is usually pretty bogus. Uh, but, uh, but, uh, uh, I went down that path, uh, as a, as a, uh, you know, just something, something, a diversion, something to do. And while I still had some time in my life to not really worry about the future, uh, I, I, I, I heavily investigated that market. Uh, I opened up, uh, at a certain point, a, uh, a repair business because there's not many other repair businesses in Fresno doing, uh, doing musical instrument electronics repair.

Charles Alexanian: Okay. So like amps and pedals and all that stuff. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. At a certain point I was actually, uh, manufacturing replacement parts for, uh, for amplifiers. Uh, this was in the, uh, the, the beginning of the swing where everyone was coming out with their own, uh, uh, uh, you know, Fender brand amplifier kits and things like that. Um, and I, uh, uh, our metal manufacturer at that point, uh, came and said, we're looking at expanding, uh, expanding our business into, into more things. We want to take on more work. So I went ahead and, uh, and designed up some, some duplicate chassis of some of those products. And at that point, uh, somebody I was buying from was under license from them to sell, uh, reproduction parts. So we went ahead and manufactured those for them. And, uh, and then, uh, reproduction carts or parts.

Charles Alexanian: Sorry. I missed that. Parts. Parts. Okay. All right. So this is, again, this is all in the, in the amp business, like how everything's chassis based. There's like a big transformer. There's a bunch of, a bunch of tubes on board, that kind of thing. A lot of surface mount or a lot of through hole soldering point to point.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Through hole. And then point to point with a fiber, a vulcanized fiber, uh, boards and islets and things like that.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: 60, 50, 60s technology.

Charles Alexanian: And it's amazing that it's still such a thing too. Like I, I, I, it never ceases to amaze me that the amp stuff is like, I saw an article, I think because Google like watches my articles and I've been looking at tube stuff at one point it was like, are circuit boards or hand, hand wire to amps better? It was like, what? No, no. I know.

Chris Gammell: It's just, you know, if you're going to go in and cut the thing apart, apart and modify it, you know, that's a different story because, you know, obviously unsoldering a wire from an eyelet, you can do that many, many times before it falls apart, uh, on the low cost. Uh, oh, I've got a story to tell about one of the, uh, uh, amp manufacturers that's shown it remained nameless. We shared a PC board vendor at one point and that guy came into, came into our shop, uh, uh, one day to talk to us and, you know, he was upset about something and he was outside on his phone and he says, they want me to go to half ounce copper, single sided, uh, unplated, you know, unplated half ounce copper. And he's, he in that moment decided he wasn't going to take their business anymore. So, uh, yeah. So, uh, um, that, that gives you a little insight into that world of how those, you know, the, the, uh, the, uh, uh, you know, the 69 or $99 thing you see at guitar center, uh, how they go about building that stuff.

Charles Alexanian: Right. Right. Right. Right. And if people don't know, standard is one ounce. If you go to like a JLC or an all PCB or a Bosch park, whatever, you get standard one ounce copper half ounce is going to be really, really thin two ounce. If you're doing thicker stuff. Right. And it's just going to give you less better, worse, uh, connectivity, worse thermal performance stuff. Exactly. So they were really cheaping out, huh?

Chris Gammell: As much as, I mean, they were squeezing nickels, you know, uh, uh, you know, so, and for no reason too. I, I once, I once heard a story from a Ford executive who said, uh, when we were selling Mustangs and Falcons and all that stuff, which were all essentially the same car, uh, you know, somebody said, well, why, why didn't you, you know, uh, uh, you know, uh, bonderize or, or a corrosion prevent, protect these, these bodies. All this is a dollar to dip the parts, you know, at that point. Sure. And he says, well, we sold a, uh, 245,000 of them that year. Uh, that was a lot of money back then. Yeah. That was, that was like 10 and 10 or 20 employees. Uh, you go to the board and tell them we can either do this thing or lay off 20 employees and see what they say. Right. Right.

Charles Alexanian: And that might mean that you few, you sell fewer cars in the future too, because now they're not rusting out. It's like, you know, it's a, it's a consumption business effectively. So yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Automobile aside, aside from the light bulb, the automobile was the original big consumption business of every five years you buy another one and you want to. So.

Charles Alexanian: Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: Uh, so, uh, yeah, uh, I'll try to pick it up here a bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Charles Alexanian: So, uh, well, I'm curious about the repair shop thing too, cause I think that that's a, that's a common thread in a lot. I mean, personally, I, I worked in a repair at one point that was like, I hated it to first off, but I think that's such an important piece for people getting started in electronics because you see, obviously you had stuff before it, but you see that you see the same problems over and again, you, you get that, you know, you get those 10,000 hours, like, uh, what's his name always talks about, uh, Malcolm Gladwell and other, you know, the researcher that he sold that from, uh, uh, but yeah, it's like, you see those patterns over and over again. So I'm curious about like that, that business and, and how, how that ended up working out for you.

Chris Gammell: Uh, if you want to learn electronics, pick up board level repair, uh, you will learn electronics whether you want to or not. Right. And soldering really well. Oh yeah. Yeah. You, you, you, you determine, especially in surface mount, every form of drag soldering you, you, you, uh, you get, you, you can always tell the engineer that, uh, or the, or the technician who does a surface mount repair because he has this little cup of all of his various, uh, fluxes ready to go at any given time.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, this goes with that one. This goes with that one. This works for that. And you get, you know, you, you hold, you hold the iron this way and you blow on it to get, to get that pin to flow. Exactly.

Charles Alexanian: Wiggle your ears. If you wiggle your ears while you do it, it really works.

Chris Gammell: Tongue angle. Tongue angle. Quite critical. Quite critical. Yep.

Charles Alexanian: Yep.

Speaker ?: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Uh, so, uh, yeah, kids, if you want to learn, uh, start doing repairs, uh, uh, you know, you'll learn real fast and you, you also learn the limit of the components and what they can actually do. And I like to say, you get that, you get that, you can tell by smell. You, when you, when you come up on a product, you can, you can kind of sniff out before you even know what's going on. Get a, get a general idea. Yes, I know it's profiling, but, but it's, uh, it actually does work out quite well. I just did it the other day. Someone, someone brought me a friend, traded me out an amplifier and, and he, he's an excellent engineer. And he told me, no, it works great. It's perfect. I, I, I brought it, had it sitting in my living room and I could smell something wasn't quite right and open it up. And sure enough, a screen resistor, uh, look that up kids, uh, had, had been partially, uh, partially burned. And sure enough, I put it on the, put it on the scope, put the signal into it and could see the, see it was, it was, uh, you know, distorted waveform and sent him a picture of it and a picture of the board. And he said, Oh geez, I should know better than that.

Charles Alexanian: Nice. Yeah. Well, it sounds like another thing that you got out of this is from the repair side, at least it sounds like, you know, you see, not only do you see a lot of equipment, but you get in contact with a lot of people, right. And you're kind of handling their, especially in the music industry, you're handling their babies effectively because that's how they have their signature sound, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, but it sounds like, I mean, you, you know, some interesting people from this. It sounds like, uh, given the tube stuff and other people.

Chris Gammell: Well, that led, uh, down another, another couple of paths, uh, that, uh, uh, uh, studios in town would start having me do stuff. Uh, I don't, I'd, I'd always played musical instruments and fiddled around with friends and bands and things like that. Uh, so, uh, uh, uh, yeah, you know, you just, one of the biggest things of course was trying to find repair parts, which was becoming increasingly difficult. We didn't have the internet really at that point. It wasn't like it is now.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. What is, what is the time, the time, the timeline of this, uh, of this repair business?

Chris Gammell: This, this is late nineties, late nineties and into, into early two thousands, you know, I mean, you try finding parts.

Charles Alexanian: Maybe, but, but maybe not, you know, like that kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh, it was, it was, it wasn't even eBay yet. It was you bid.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. I don't remember that one.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that's, I looked at, okay, kids look that one up. You bid, you know? So, so, um, uh, uh, uh, oh geez, that's a whole different thing. Uh, so finding parts was an adventure. Uh, you know, it was at the point where you just flip open the Thomas register. Oh, that's another one to look up kids. The Thomas register.

Charles Alexanian: Thomas is still around actually. They, uh, they're still, Thomas is still around. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Oh, wow. That's it. It's probably all online. I would imagine. Uh, picture 20 telephone books lined up, uh, holding your bench down. You know? So, so this was a magical thing where you would look up manufacturers of various items. You know, I need sockets. So look up the, look up the, the manufacturer's sockets. Okay. There's 20 manufacturers of sockets. You go down the list calling each one to see who's still in business. Yeah. Right. That's what's crazy about it. Yeah.

Charles Alexanian: You could, you could still find Thomas. I actually went to my central library last time I was there and I actually, you know, like it's, I, they still have them, but it's like, you know, a Thomas register from like the, you know, 1890s or, you know, they have 1920s. It's old. It's an old, I don't know if it's quite that old, but it's, there are some old versions that they had in there.

Chris Gammell: It would be great to look through some of those particularly war era ones. I really enjoy, one of my hobbies is looking through war era catalogs and things like that at the electronics mindset. They were far more advanced back then when we, than we give them credit for.

Charles Alexanian: Uh, I don't know if I get mine. Really? Like, like what kind of, first off, what kind of catalogs were you looking for through and what kind of stuff makes them more advanced? Cause it's so, it seemed like it was all, you know, it's all tube stuff and early, early termian transistors into the 50s, 60s. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But, uh, for example, the precision of things done back then was amazing. Uh, uh, accuracies, tolerances, and precisions were amazing back for what they had to work with. This is, they don't even have a, you know, a, a proper, you know, I mean, this was in the days of VTVMs where plus or minus 5% was considered great.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh, you know, uh, uh, if you look up the, uh, what they used to use for standard electronic standards back then, some of the wet mercury cells and things like that and lithium cells, uh, it's, it's really an art form. Uh, it's really a dark art, a lot of that stuff, but, uh, what they were able to accomplish was quite amazing. I mean, they, they made, they made a nuclear weapon with a little more than stuff today would be only usable as movie props.

Charles Alexanian: Right, right, right.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, so as, as Todd Black, uh, uh, uh, says, uh, that's the stuff that put us on the moon and that makes you think a little bit.

Charles Alexanian: So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Anyways, uh, uh, so getting parts was always an issue and, uh, that led me two different directions. Uh, first, the quality of speakers, uh, at that time, and I've been out of it now, I'd imagine things have gotten better, uh, but the quality of speakers being made by the major manufacturers at that time was awful. Uh, and, uh, uh, I had encountered a gentleman by the name of Don Schmidt, uh, uh, uh, out of the Chicago area who was a parts sourcer. He primarily, he had partnerships with, uh, factories in China and, uh, factories around the United States for, for parts for speakers. And, uh, I, I, uh, eventually after realizing that, that the guy was, you know, the legitimate real deal.

Charles Alexanian: Right. He's not selling, selling you sawdust in a box, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. After the first few times that he'd say, hold on, I'll have someone contact you. And I'm talking to the former president of this and that company, uh, you know, Rolex for Jensen, Utah, all those companies, uh, that I realized, oh, he is the, you know, and that gentleman is someone you should, you should probably interview because he has an amazing, uh, history and he's right there local in your area. He's, he's in Naperville. Uh, uh, uh, uh, he can, uh, uh, get, getting off the train in his town's like stepping off into Pleasantville. It's remarkable. You know, so, so, uh, uh, uh, but, uh, uh, eventually he was able to get me sourced with an American manufacturer to manufacture good quality 10 inch Alnico magnet speakers for me. And, um, I had a few customers lined up. Some people that people in the, uh, you know, aficionado, uh, uh, realm would realize, would recognize. We went ahead. I had the products made, purchased them, labeled them, brought them in, tested them. Um, and turned around to those people who were interested in them and said, here they are at a reasonable price, ready to go. And all of them said in unison, that's great. We'll let you know. So that was a lesson number two in, uh, how not to do things. Uh, uh, make sure you have their money first before you go invest your own money.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah, that's a good, that's a good one. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, uh, um, um, you know, uh, that was, that, that stung a little bit. So that, uh, that and a few other experiences and just the general influx of, uh, import cheap stuff into that market. Uh, uh, I, I decided to, to, to leave the repair business behind. Uh, another friend of mine was reopening his business. So I just put a message on my phone. Uh, if you, uh, if you need repairs, everything's now gone over to this shop. Thank you very much. And that was it. So, um, uh, once again, I, I kind of needed to, you know, see if there was something else I wanted to do. I did keep customers though, from that area era, there was certain studios that I was doing work for that. I liked the people there. Um, uh, and, uh, I decided that would be kind of a fun thing to keep my finger in that business. Uh, and that, uh, um, uh, well, I'll get to that a little later. Uh, I decided at that point I wanted to, um, uh, it was a college time and, uh, I already knew this electronics thing pretty well. And I decided that if I ever wanted to pursue a career in that, uh, just, just what I knew already would be, would be good enough. So I decided to expand a little bit and decided to go get my, uh, try to go get my electrical contracting license. So I went to a school for that, uh, and I took the programs, took the NEC courses. And just about the time that I was about to go, uh, I would need to go get another few years work experience at another company. And many of our customers are actually electrical contractors. Uh, so I'd talk to a few of them to see if I could just go along, you know, and work with them. I'd essentially, yeah, I'd be installing. My own products essentially in the field, uh, which would be convenient. They wouldn't need to train me and I'd get the work experience. But, uh, uh, at that point our business started taking off and, uh, and I, I, I made the decision that I would need to stay there full time. And I've been there ever since it's now been, uh, 20, uh, uh, 22 years. I've been, I've had the same bench.

Charles Alexanian: Wow. Nice. That is a, that's a level of cruft. I'm sure that, uh, that is unrivaled by some, you know.

Chris Gammell: Uh, can, uh, is cantankerism a word? You know? And sometimes I, I, the joke I always say is I'm going to be there the rest of my life. One day the other employees are just going to flush me down the toilet when I die and no one will notice. Goldfish style? Goldfish style. I'll get to go at the goldfish Viking funeral. Yeah. That's right.

Charles Alexanian: Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm fine with that.

Charles Alexanian: That's great. That's great. So then like, I thought you, so you had said that the, um, the sourcing stuff went in two directions. I figured that that was going to go towards the tube stuff that you started doing. Where did that come into it?

Chris Gammell: Well, one of those times searching down the Thomas register, uh, looking for tube distributors, because at that point, most tubes coming into the country were controlled by two different import sources. Uh, there was a new sensor, Mike Matthews in New York is still around. Um, and, uh, uh, then groove tubes, basically, uh, it was bringing stuff into, into LA and I met with the grooves tubes people and wasn't very impressed with their level of experience and knowledge. And then, uh, uh, met with the people at new sensor and they seemed, they, they made no pretense about it. We bring stuff in from cheap from Russia, you know, we pretest them to make sure you don't get a dud. And, uh, you know, our, you know, we're, we're not going to go over there and tell them how to, how to fix our tubes or anything. Uh, so we just sell them at a price where you buy two, you know, if you need one to work by two and test them. And if you get a bad one, send it back, you know? Uh, so, okay. And at least they were, at least they were honest, you know? Yeah. So, uh, I would buy from them, but still at that point, there was still a lot of old stocks sitting around on distributors shelves. And I actually spent quite a bit of time going around buying up old television distributors and things like that, stocks of, of old tubes sorting through, uh, getting rid of the ones that no one needs and keeping the good ones. And back to the Thomas register started going down, uh, tube distributors and manufacturers who were still in business. And most of them, of course, were just, you know, no, you know, you know, the, didn't,

Charles Alexanian: didn't connect the phone, right? The phone was like the unconnected signal. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I, I wish I had that. Uh, I can probably, you can probably find that tone somewhere on the internet, uh, but it's a particular tone.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. Yeah. No, there's also a doo, doo, doo.

Chris Gammell: That's the one. That's the one. These numbers are all connected.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. That's the one. And, uh, uh, I got one of them. Someone actually picked up the phone and it was, uh, my now friend, uh, Miss, uh, Ronnie Ellsbury down in Oceanside, uh, California at a company called MU Incorporated. And she, uh, uh, proceeded to explain to me that they, they really were, were a second source for the government for very specific particular things, mostly high voltage things. But she was located in California and I, I talked to her, uh, about, uh, you know, what I was looking for. And she says, yes, that's what everyone's looking for. We've entertained some ideas of doing this stuff, but we've determined that most of the people in that business, we don't want to do business with.

Charles Alexanian: Right. Especially if you're coming from the government side where people are paying lots of Boku bucks for, for a tube versus, you know, someone trying to replace a, you know, something on their fender. I'm guessing it's pretty stark difference.

Chris Gammell: At that time, the cheapest product they were selling was a 2C53 and it was about $140, you know? So that just gives you an idea of what sort of market they were in. That would say high voltage, high voltage pass triode used in x-ray, uh, uh, regulators, supplies and x-ray machines and things like that. So, right.

Charles Alexanian: Can we, can we take a quick break just for what are tubes in case people don't know what they are? So we say tubes, right? We're talking about vacuum tubes, but, but could you give us a quick, a quick look at what that is and how they're specifically how they're still used today?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Uh, so to get, uh, electrons to flow in a controlled manner, uh, uh, either for rectification or for amplification, uh, you need something that we of course refer to as a semiconductor. This can be a solid material or it can be, uh, simply, uh, by, uh, application of energy in the form of heat to a metal, the liberation of electrons, which can then traverse, uh, a vacuum, uh, uh, in space. Uh, early at the earliest attempts were of course, uh, uh, uh, crystal detectors, which are solid state, which work on forming a junction of which electrons can go one direction, but not the other direction. The technology to get that to work in a controlled fashion just simply wasn't available at that time, but the light bulb industry was, and it was determined that in light bulbs, you could get electrons to cross the void, uh, by, uh, from one heated piece of, uh, uh, of metal to a, uh, positive, uh, uh, potential collector. And that was of course, uh, referred to as the Edison effect. Of course, Edison didn't, didn't find it. One of his people did, but it still got called the Edison effect anyways.

Charles Alexanian: Yep. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Uh, look that one up kids. Uh, and then, uh, uh, that sat for about 10 to 15 years unused, uh, until, uh, until, uh, uh, it was determined that it could be used as a detector by a number of different people. And, uh, and the first one to really capitalize on it was DeForest, uh, who's kind of known as the father of the vacuum tube and determined that that could be used as a detector, uh, of, uh, radio signals. Then in an effort to attempt to increase the sensitivity of that detector, they added an additional element between the, uh, the hot body of metal and the collector, which they referred to as the grid, uh, which they would vary potential on. And the idea was to attempt to get, uh, get the rectification point of that down, uh, lower to zero to be a more sensitive detector. And that did work. And that was actually the first application of those tubes. Uh, but, uh, they also discovered that as the quality of vacuum, uh, got better, that the tube would actually act as a, uh, as a first switch and then later, later as a linear amplifier. And that's really the birth of modern electronics is when they determined they could actually make a linear amplifier.

Charles Alexanian: Right. Right.

Chris Gammell: And then off to the races, right up to what we have today.

Charles Alexanian: Well, yeah. I mean, it got supplanted eventually as the switch stuff got supplanted and then eventually even the transistor stuff got supplanted. But, but I think, I think that's a really good point though, about those, those, those four things you were talking, well, I guess you're talking about three things, right? You're talking about rectification and then linear amplification and then switching. Those are probably the big ones that all got taken in solid state definitely took over all of them in the majority cases. But what you're talking about and, and what Ronnie was working on was in some cases you just can't really get away from because of the spaces that are involved and everything like that. The, the, the, the, rather the physical space, you just needed to have more physical separation that a vacuum tube offers.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, what I was referring to is with, with the, with the exception of ZVS devices, everything is either still a rectifier, a switch or a linear amplifier, uh, down to, down to the smallest, smallest geometry solid state device today. It still falls under one of those three categories, uh, less ZVS devices, of course, which follow a little different principle, but, but, uh, um, uh, uh, yes, uh, in certain applications, uh, high voltage, high power dissipation, uh, and, uh, and need of linearity, uh, still in some instances, uh, tubes are still the best thing and high power, uh, high frequency, uh, generation, uh, the solid state devices, uh, the geometries involved are just, just very difficult to get the physical heat out of the device and have enough, uh, physical separation that the voltages don't arc over, especially at RF.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. Yeah. So what, what are some of these things that, like, so you said x-ray, but then also like, is it like AM towers, FM towers, I guess, you know, like AM, FM towers or like a TV transmission, obviously it's kind of dead.

Chris Gammell: Uh, yeah, well, don't forget most, most TV transmissions are still operating around the, a lot of it's still in VHF, UHF range.

Charles Alexanian: Uh, and, uh, digital mode now instead of, instead of just, uh, instead of just pure analog.

Chris Gammell: Well, what really cemented the viability tubes into the future was, uh, uh, radar and, radar and microwave, uh, the, the, the, uh, reflex, klystron cavity magnetron, uh, and, uh, and all the various, uh, versions of that, uh, uh, there's, uh, of, uh, you know, bunch pulse, you know, and wave modulated traveling wave tubes. All of these are still extensions of the same basic vacuum tube, uh, uh, uh, uh, information, uh, technology. And if you want to do further research on that, uh, and remember most of our telecommunications still work off of traveling wave tubes and things of that nature, especially satellite communication, uh, look up, uh, the company Varian, the Varian brothers. Uh, they're the ones who really, uh, yeah. England gets credit for the magnetron for the radar, but they really don't deserve it. It was really a, a, uh, gentleman from the Netherlands. And then the Varian brothers independently developed their own system, which they helped for-

Charles Alexanian: Is that the Klystron stuff? Is that right?

Chris Gammell: Yes. That's part of, that's part of that family. All, all of those are all part of, of a similar family and, uh, we're still using them today. Uh, still, uh, Varian is still in business as L3 communications, uh, Perkin Elmer, um, and all of those big, big, scary, huge companies still manufacture the things by the thousands.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. I think Varian's involved in, um, I think semiconductor stuff too. I think they do some of the ion implementation, implantation stuff as well. Yes.

Chris Gammell: They manufacture ion implantation devices, uh, and, uh, which are, which, uh, I just recently learned a lot of them still use old, uh, old, uh, pass regulator tubes, uh, cause I got a request from somebody with some, some, some fab somewhere in Asia, uh, wound up in my email box saying, we need these tubes and we need them now. So they're still being used in, in, in, in modern processes there. Cause a lot of those machines have simply never been replaced. Right. Uh, you know, how do you, how do you, you know, they're, they're, they're targeting a beam.

Charles Alexanian: Right. It's effectively a big CRT television, but you basically, you know, instead of electrons, you're like, how about, how about boron? How about phosphorus? Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yep. That's exactly it. Yep.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Uh, so how do you steer, steer a 40,000 volt beam with a hundred thousand volt tube? You know? So, right. So, uh, okay.

Charles Alexanian: So let's, let's go back, let's, let's go to Ronnie again. So, so basically you called up Ronnie and you said, Hey, can I, did you like go and learn from her? What, what happened there?

Chris Gammell: Well, uh, we, we talked and, uh, she actually said, I'm, I'm actually taking a trip with my husband. We're coming up, uh, coming up by you. Might if we stop in and visit and talk with you at first, she said, I just want to talk to you and explain what, what the, you know, what the real story is. Uh, uh, uh, and, uh, she did. And she explained to me, uh, the various processes and, and mostly, uh, the reason why we don't do things in the United States, not for any environmental reasons or anything like that. It essentially boils down to labor and materials availability. Uh, a lot of the stuff was either hand assembled or a very, or a large degree of automation, which is very expensive to implement. Uh, uh, one custom machine tool, maybe a hundred thousand dollars. How many of them do you have to sell to re-advertise that cost over to make money? A lot. Uh, and also you, you can't pick up the phone and call, you know, call 10 different people and say, I need, you know, I need glass bulbs of this size. Uh, I need metal parts of this size and this specification. I need them next week and I need them cheap. Right. It just doesn't exist anymore. The, the market, uh, the market has, uh, has moved on. And, uh, these were all the roadblocks, uh, because as most people in the music business will tell you, they're very cheap. No one wants to spend a hundred dollars for a tube to shove in an amplifier. They're trying to retail for $300.

Charles Alexanian: Right. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: So that really was the end of it. A lot of those guys, uh, spent many years, uh, to try to sell their import stuff saying we can't environmentally do it. Here that that's nothing that's completely bogus. Uh, all of the things that they purport would happen would lead to bad quality tubes. It, it, it is, it does have to be done nearly under clean room, uh, clean room cleanliness. Not, you know, not, not to that extent, but chemically must be done to near clean room cleanliness. And, uh, and, uh, you know, all of the things that get accused of, of having mercury and all that stuff would actually lead to bad tubes. So. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, she came up, we visited and I realized I liked these people. And, um, uh, when I would go down to San Diego, I'd go visit and, uh, I would take time, uh, to help them, uh, calibrate the machinery, uh, you know, test sets, little engineering things. And, uh, she would, uh, um, uh, show me, you know, the processes and things of that nature. Her husband passed away. Uh, he got, got, got ill and passed away. And, uh, so she was left alone, uh, uh, with only her, uh, her uncle who at that time was in his late eighties and a one part-time employee to help her run the company. So, uh, I would, I stepped up the amount of times I would go down. I'd try to go down there every, every month or every other month and spend a weekend and help out. And, uh, that went on for, uh, for many years until, uh, uh, uh, two years ago. She actually told the government everything was last time by as of about 2002, 2003.

Charles Alexanian: Right. Which of course means that they're like, uh, we'll take 20 years worth, please.

Chris Gammell: Well, well, you would think that, but there's laws that prevent them from doing that. Uh, the, the contrary to popular belief for government spending is just this tap of money that flows, you know, flows to large companies. Well, maybe it does to the large companies, but the small companies, they will do everything they can to string things out, not pay you and, and, you know, do whatever they can, uh, to, to make life difficult. Uh, and they'll try to push you around a little bit. Uh, she had a good working relationship with her buyers for many, many years. They understood what she did. Uh, but those people had retired and the new wave of people came in. Uh, she just didn't have the time or desire to try to bring them up to speed, uh, with, uh, with how things were and, uh, simply decided to close up, uh, as of two years ago, she made the decision that she was going to close the shop. And she asked me to start, uh, finding potential buyers for. Hmm. Uh, I, at that point started, uh, started buying, uh, bits and pieces off of her that I would know, know I would need to bring home to set up my own operation. Uh, and, uh, did that for over the course of about a year. And, uh, even before that I had started experimenting here at home with things because I didn't want to have to drive to San Diego every time I wanted to try something out.

Charles Alexanian: Right.

Chris Gammell: Uh, so, so about, about 10, 15 years ago, I started, uh, started making my own little rudimentary tubes. Uh, I never really advertised it to anybody. Uh, just, uh, something, something to do as a hobby and, uh, still do it to this day.

Charles Alexanian: Uh, well, walk us through that real quick because like, what, what would it take if someone was interested? So you've written about this on Hackaday as well. That's kind of how you started writing with Hackaday, I believe. Um, yes. But what, what, what does it take to make the simplest vacuum tube if someone was going to interest, be interested in doing that?

Chris Gammell: Well, the hardest thing is glass work. Of course, uh, glass work is an art. Uh, I don't pretend to be an expert at it. Uh, as a matter of fact, as last night I was having great difficulty, it seemed like nothing I could do, uh, would work last night. So that's when you just shut everything off and go to bed. But, uh, um, uh, the, uh, uh, the basics are you need a hot, uh, hot emitter, uh, which in most basic, uh, sense would be a, uh, would be a, uh, tungsten, just plain tungsten, uh, typically small diameter. The, the typical diameters used in, in basic devices are anywhere from one thousandth of an inch, uh, up to ten thousandths of an inch. Um, and, uh, that's run at incandescence and it will provide, uh, provide electrons at that point. And then something to catch them, uh, generally speaking, nickel is used as a very, very low vaporization, uh, point, uh, uh, uh, vaporization pressure at temperature, which is critical. Um, uh, things in vacuum tend to sputter and evaporate. That's how mirrors are made and carbon film resistors.

Charles Alexanian: Go watch, uh, Krasnow making his, or using his sputtering machine. He loves that thing. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I look at that, you know, and, and, uh, and I tried it one time, uh, but without proper technique and technology, all I did was make a mess. Did make some mirrors, but, uh. Yeah, right.

Charles Alexanian: But you're not going to be custom plating it like micron thicknesses and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, no, no, no. My, my, my, my, my thickness control is, is it boiling yet? Okay. It's already over. Right. Right. That's.

Charles Alexanian: I should, I should have turned that off about a minute ago. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, so, uh, once again, I'm sure that's a whole, a whole career someone could dive into just doing that. Uh, but, uh, um.

Charles Alexanian: Well, so like, but the, but how did you figure out, so you'd mentioned like, you know, even Ronnie was like, she had trouble sourcing stuff at a professional level. How did you figure out what you were going to start putting into, into a tube? Like, like, like sourcing, did you just source like tube stock of glass or like, you know, like when you talk about nickel and tungsten and stuff like that, is it just sheets of tungsten and nickel?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Uh, you can still get for the most basic form. Uh, you can still get, and the most basic form of a tube is actually still in production. Uh, look up a BA Bayard Alpert ionization gauge, uh, with a tungsten filament. And that is the most basic form of a tube you can really get. And they're used for measurement of vacuum, uh, and, uh, uh, pull up some pictures and you'll see, you know, basic construction techniques. But, uh, uh, the basic raw materials are still available for simple, uh, tubes. When you want to start making things that were, uh, really usable though, you have to remember those companies took 20 years of development and research. A lot of it done by Bell Labs to, to, you know, to, to get proper materials. And, uh, I'll give you an example in a, in a receiving type tube with an oxide cathode, a nickel sleeved oxide cathode, uh, an increase of, uh, one 10th of 1% of manganese, which is a common, common additive to metals for foundries and rollers to make it work better. A 10th of a percent of increase over, uh, other reduction materials can completely poison the tube and make it completely unusable. So, uh, uh, and you don't know that until after the thing is already done and a failure. So, uh, you're going to try to condense the works of Bell Labs, um, uh, RCA, General Electric, and Federal Radio into, uh, one company of one person trying to chase all this stuff down. It's not, it's not going to happen.

Charles Alexanian: There are some YouTube videos about making tubes at Bell Labs. I'm going to try and find them. Uh, but the, the, just the tube manufacturing stuff. I mean, like they had like glass masters there and on site, you know, multiples, multiples of these people. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's two, the two videos I highly recommend people look at. Uh, number one, if you're interested in glasswork, uh, Phillips has a video from the thirties. That's an excellent video of, uh, of their glassworks at that time. And, uh, and, uh, a lot of their stuff I didn't realize they were, they were blowing, you know, a lot of the, the, the movie and projector bulbs and stuff they were blowing by hand. Yeah. Uh, um, and then also, uh, uh, the Mullard tube company, uh, has a, uh, has a, uh, there's a video, uh, from them in the late fifties, uh, early sixties. Uh, and it shows very good at showing the entire, uh, uh, thing beginning to end from raw materials to a finished product out the door. Uh, so I recommend people watch that. Uh, and then there's other ones from American companies and things like that. So, but those are the, those are the main ones. And there's a couple of individuals out there who have, uh, uh, rudimentary products or rudimentary, uh, uh, parts that they make, and they show you, uh, all the way, uh, Ron Soylund's one of them. It goes by Glass Slinger on, uh, YouTube and, uh, and then there's some other people too. Uh, uh, Dalabor Farnay in, uh, Czech Republic is manufacturing Nixie tubes. Very nice.

Charles Alexanian: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We actually just sold him a piece of equipment. Uh, so, uh, oh gosh, we're almost turned an hour now. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll hurry things up. We haven't even gotten to podcasting yet. Uh, so, so, uh, um, uh, I went ahead and started looking for customers to buy the business. And, uh, uh, one group, uh, based in California, uh, uh, came, came along and decided they, they didn't have much money, uh, but they had all the intent in the world and they actually wanted to buy the company, uh, as it was less the real estate. And we're going to attempt to continue manufacturing products. So we thought, okay, fine. You know, these, these people are the right type of crazy. So now they're actively engaged. Well, they're, they'll, they wouldn't agree. They wouldn't disagree with me. Uh, they're currently, uh, actively engaged in trying to find a place to set up the facility and, and, and get some, you know, get some, uh, uh, uh, get a, get a proper path to walk down and we'll help them as much as we possibly can. Yeah. Uh, so, uh, so that'll be further, further news down the road. Uh, like I said, I myself have, uh, retained the ability here, uh, for any of the, a lot of the historical processes and things like that. I mean, maintain the ability and the ability to, to continue doing those things, uh, because there's always firms who would go to, uh, to MU and say, can you please help us with this problem? You're the only people that have the, have the antiquated technology to do it with. So, so, uh, so as far as that goes, the loss of loss of technology and, and, and things I've, I've, I've made sure that it wasn't going to be completely lost.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. So you mentioned, you mentioned podcasting. Let's jump to that. What, so obviously we're on a podcast now. What are you, what are you talking about? Okay.

Chris Gammell: Well, so like I said, it's split two different ways. Um, the, uh, when I got rid of the repair business, uh, I maintain a few customers for studios because I enjoyed doing that sort of stuff. And somebody I knew was a producer, uh, down at the, uh, Adam Carolla podcast. And he had mentioned to me that, uh, that, uh, they were going to be expanding their studio and, uh, that there was, there was, there was actually something I probably shouldn't talk about, but they were going to be out of the picture pretty soon and that they would no longer have anybody in house with the, with the ability to fit out that studio. So I said, okay, I'll go down and have a look. So I did. And I, I'd been a fan of, of, uh, you know, Carolla's radio show and, and a man show and all that stuff. So, you know, I'm already knew the guy, I knew what I was in for. Uh, so, uh, I went, went down there and, uh, and started looking around and they were building a nice little studio there and I said, okay, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll help. And in looking around, I noticed all these, all these race cars in back, particularly Datsuns and I'm myself and, and, you know, Datsun fan and a race car fan. Actually the first vehicle I ever drove before a go-karts or anything like that was, uh, my neighbor growing up had this little formula Renault, uh, it looked like a little mini, uh, F1 car. And he would, him and a partner would go drive at events and I got to drive that thing around the block a few times. And that was it. I was hooked. So I said, well, geez, you know, I, I enjoy doing this too. So I kind of made a deal at that time. Well, I'll charge you just, just basically my materials, you know, materials and all that's and a little bit of travel for doing this. And, and, uh, you know, don't throw me out when you go racing, you know? So we did that. And ever since then, I, uh, I've been, uh, uh, uh, maintaining and, uh, and expanding their studios down there. And of course, uh, Corolla digital as it is now is, uh, is the, uh, uh, uh, home to the most listened to podcasts on earth. The Adam Corolla show, the Dr. Drew show, uh, all of those shows, uh, uh, are, are consistently, uh, the highest, uh, highest listened to podcasts in their, in their groupings and their rankings. So, uh, so that's kind of nice. And a lot of the people, they're all of the producers down there. Uh, you know, shout out to, uh, Chris Laksamana, uh, Mike Dawson, uh, Gary Smith and, uh, uh, Matt Fondalier who really runs, runs the whole office, runs the operation, uh, there, uh, uh, those guys are, uh, are, uh, I consider them, uh, good friends. And, uh, even if everything else went away, I'd, I'd still, I'd still continue to be friends with those guys for, for a very long time. So, uh, uh, but, uh, that, that is a whole interesting little world, uh, of, uh, you know, he, he is, he does not, is not, and does not consider himself really a part of Hollywood, uh, which is, which I would, I would say is reasonably accurate. Uh, but, uh, uh, my gosh, the people who come through that door are interesting people. Yeah.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Been all, been, been, uh, been all, been all over with them to live shows, uh, twice to Europe. And, uh, and it's, uh, I, I like to joke, it's my getting away from actual responsibility because, uh, at, at actual work, uh, where, uh, of all this stuff I do, I actually am a real product manager, uh, every day. Right, right. Uh, that, that's, that's, that's where I start getting nervous, uh, parts availability, uh, keeping the business going, uh, it's getting harder and harder every day. And, uh, that's, uh, that's it. Yes. Finally, actual modern electronics. I will talk about.

Charles Alexanian: Okay. All right. I mean, that's good. I mean, like this shows like the, I mean, it, obviously it, I think a lot of people can, can, uh, relate to the fact that like, you know, electronics is your job, but it's also your hobby. And obviously it led to some interesting, some side gigs and some, some, obviously a lot of interesting people like you mentioned. Um, but, but, but, but, but the, but sometimes you still have to go back and figure out where the hell you're going to get the next capacitor because holy crap, which I think, I think is one of the, I think, I think for like a couple months. Now I've been getting, you know, two in the morning texts from you. They're like, what the hell China? I can't get a 62 weeks on a lead time. What's going on here?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's that little window into my life. Yeah. Being a small manufacturer, we, we have to, you have to work through just, you know, distributors and, uh, we order such a weird eclectic mixture of stuff that, uh, it's, you know, I always joke with our, with our, with our, you know, with our, our purchasing guy who's our, who's really my brother-in-law. Uh, one day I'm just going to redo everything just to be parts out of the DigiKey catalog. And we're just going to order everything from them. And two of my vendors probably just hit the ground in a panic, but, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, it, it, it, it is to the point now where, um, I'm, I've, I've put out word to everybody, all of the vendors, some of them don't listen, uh, but we will only be now accepting name brand, uh, particularly passives, uh, because my gosh, you should see the junk, uh, that some of the lower tier distributors are digging up and shipping over here, particularly in surface mount components, but, but always has been in capacitors.

Charles Alexanian: Well, how do you, how do you tell about the quality? Are you, is it, you're seeing failures after assembly and that kind of thing, or is it, you're actually doing incoming inspection?

Chris Gammell: Well, we actually had, we, we do both. Um, we, uh, uh, first of all, if it gets in and we're small enough to where I can still physically every day, go back there at all the stuff coming in the door and look it over. Uh, you know, if, if I can't, if I catch real low quality stuff, I'll just, you know, send it back. Yeah. Yeah. Send it back. But, um, uh, we, we actually just had, just had a rash of, uh, ceramic disc 0.2 picofarad capacitors that, uh, uh, something went wrong in their processing and they were, uh, they were hygroscopic. So they were sucking up, sucking up moisture right out of the air. And then when we'd go to, go to soldering, the, the, they'd spall. Yeah. They'd spall. They wouldn't pop. They'd spall. And that was causing all sorts of problems.

Charles Alexanian: What does spall mean? I don't actually know that term.

Chris Gammell: Uh, the, the, the surface started crumbling off.

Charles Alexanian: Oh, wow. Did you see that picture that, uh, Dave Jones had posted where it was just, uh, some ceramic caps are just a surface mount cap that are with two leads attached and then encapsulated in like a, a fake thing.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Yeah. Uh, actually that, that, that has legitimate beginnings. Oh really?

Charles Alexanian: Okay. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the, um, uh, monolithic timing capacitors, a little yellow epoxy dip. They look like micro tantalums. Uh, those, if you, if you crack those open, those are generally speaking a MLCC capacitor, uh, in there with leads attached dipped in epoxy. And, uh, believe it or not, that's actually what, what I changed the specification to on all of our timing caps. Oh, okay.

Charles Alexanian: Interesting.

Chris Gammell: And, uh, um, yeah, that is, that is actually, I mean, the picture was not legitimate, you know, I mean, well, it was, you know, that, that was not a legitimate thing, but the, but the idea of that has been around for a long time. And that's what the, uh, monolithic, you know, uh, um, um, um, um, low value caps are. Got it. Got it. Uh, and, and that comes, that comes from how they did the wire bonding on the disc caps, which they dip it in basically a cement that yellow, yellowy, orangey stuff that they are. That's basically a cement that's supposed to be varnished over to prevent, uh, prevent, uh, uh, moisture from getting in. But, uh, they didn't get that message on this batch.

Charles Alexanian: Right, right. Interesting.

Chris Gammell: So, uh, that electrolytic, your, your bulk electrolytic caps, uh, you know, they are, they are the heart of your product. Uh, especially, you know, if you're doing anything with any sizable amount of power, just because a manufacturer has a spec on them doesn't necessarily mean that's what they are. And, uh, I periodically take, uh, take, uh, caps, uh, are, are most used as a 25 volt, thousand microfarad bulk, you know, through whole cap that we use on pretty much everything. And I'll, I'll run, uh, uh, I'll do my own ESR tests on them and my own forming tests on them. And, uh, yo boy, there is a difference between brand. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you know, you, you really do want to spend those extra cents on that Nishicon or Rubicon or, or, or something like that. And that's, that's for two years has been an issue for me because of the parts availability. Uh, you know, uh, you, you kind of get what you get. It drives, it drives, uh, our company controller nuts because, you know, one, one month I'll order them from, you know, from whatever distribute future electronics or something like that. And then the next month I'll, I'll see, they'll pop up at Mauser. They'll have, you know, they'll have 5,000 of them and I'll grab those.

Charles Alexanian: You're a bargain shopper, huh?

Chris Gammell: I'm desperation.

Charles Alexanian: You go to the flea market one day and you're like, yeah, I got these off the back of a truck.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's, that's what I suspect some of our distributors are doing, buying stuff in the market in China and sending it to us. Well, if, if, if they're going to do that there, I'll just do that here. And at least I'll know what, what, what brand they are.

Charles Alexanian: At least you can inspect them as you buy them instead of after, after they get shipped. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But part of my biggest problem now is I'm physically having to do that. It's, you know, it's, it's, I'm trying to design a whole different raft of new products. And now, you know, the, the biggest thing, one of the biggest growing market segments right now is, is IOT and agriculture. Sure.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. Smart, smart, smart, smart ag.

Chris Gammell: You know, we're, yeah. And, and we have a number of customers who are, were telling us they're getting approached by these, you know, uh, one, two man shops, you know, to do, to do automated systems for them and they can't trust them. Yeah. They, you know, they need to know they're going to have support for this 10, 15 years down the road. Right. Well, good luck with that. And they can't, well, yeah. Uh, and they know they can get that from us. So, uh, they looked at that. That's really the biggest impediment for all of these small companies doing this stuff is, is they don't, they don't have the decades of trust built up between that. That's interesting. Farmers are not a trust.

Charles Alexanian: I was going to say, I was going to say. So like, so what is it like selling to farmers? I mean, are you selling directly, I mean, you're selling white label still to like, I guess an OEM to, to the, uh, to like a integrator or something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we do that. Uh, but most, most of the customers have now come around to the idea that it's easier for us to have our name on the box because when the customer has a problem, they call us directly and they don't have to have their own service department. Right, right. So, and we're, we're perfectly fine with that. Uh, but, uh, um, we sell, we sell through distributors, but the distributors are very close. It's still a distributor. The farmer's driving into their shop, picking up things. Got it. Yep. Yep. Uh, so, so I, I say distributor, but it's, you know, it's, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's a little more personal. Sure. Uh, and then we, we all of, uh, we have a very open policy and all of the distributors know it, um, that, uh, the customer anytime is allowed to call us or bring the product in and have us review it for them. We will always build them back through said distributor, but, uh, but, uh, we have a very open door policy on, on, on service.

Charles Alexanian: There's no like firewall or like you have to ship it in that kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: None, none. Very often the customer will drive in directly to us. They'll hand us their one for repair. We'll hand them a loaner. Uh, you know, we'll have them, you know, we'll have them sign a packing slip. Uh, we'll say, well, you know, what's your distributor you go through? Cause they've got discounts set up with their own distributors that they like using.

Speaker ?: Sure.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. You know, who do you use? We'll find out that information. We'll give them a quick call. So-and-so is in here. They brought this, we're sending them out with the loaner and then off, off and running. We are, the customer remains up and running because in, in ag, in the middle of summer, if you're irrigating and you only have a few days access to water, because that's how they generally limit water delivery here. You know, you irrigate the first week of the month, you irrigate the second week of the month, or you only can irrigate between these two hours of the day. Yep.

Charles Alexanian: You better do it or else you start using money at that point, right?

Chris Gammell: Cause your crops die. Oh yeah. You can, you, you can have $10 million of crops go upside down in a few days. You know, if you get a spike 114 degrees, you know, and, uh, and you can't put water down, uh, you're, you're, you're just calling your insurance company and saying, sorry guys, you know, uh, that's real stuff. Yeah. Uh, you want to talk about nightmares. Uh, I've, I've talked to citrus growers out here that, uh, uh, that were, you know, it gets down 26, 27 degrees. They have to irrigate, uh, changes to dew point out in the field. And, uh, and raises the temperature a little bit. And, uh, if they can't do that, they can see an entire year's worth of citrus on 5,000 acres turned to useless in minutes. Wow. So, uh, uh, uh, you know, these things have people, people, a lot of times pile on big agriculture, but with big agriculture comes big headaches and big worries. Yeah. And, uh, a lot of that big agriculture is controlled by small growers. So they're the ones who suffer. We, we don't let that happen. Uh, my cell phone is on 24 hours a day and I do get those calls, uh, sometimes in the middle of the night, you're, you're, you're flooding the high, you know, your controller's flooding the highway or something like that. That's a, that's a great call.

Charles Alexanian: So we've, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. I've, I've gotten that call a few times. Yeah.

Charles Alexanian: So, so, so then what about the shift to, to like IOT and smart based stuff? Like, is, is that getting pushed at the high level from the, the big companies that are like, uh, that are pushing down on their small growers or is it small growers being like, look, I just need to know how this goes. Like, like what, what, what are the pushbacks that you're getting?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It, it, it mostly comes from the scenario is, uh, grandpa passes away and, uh, and the, the grandson takes over the ranch and grandson also has another job. In the city. So he can't afford to be out there on the ranch all day, seeing what needs to be done. He wants to be able to see remotely what's going on. Um, big, big growers have whole departments full of people who take care of that stuff. And they're generally speaking, not going to trust their tens of millions of dollars of crops to a $300 irrigation controller, uh, that, that uses an iPhone app. They're, they're not going to do that. They may want that for just informational purposes. Uh, but, uh, but they're, they're not going to want that. Similarly, the small grower, uh, he doesn't have enough people to run around and do that. So he may want to, you know, see from his home what's going on. It's, it's kind of a, it's kind of a middle out. Uh, oh, oh gosh, Silicon Valley. It's, it's middle out, uh, uh, at this point. Uh, whereas the, the people at the high end either already have their own proprietary systems or just simply don't need it. And then the smallest of the small guys, they probably live on their ranch and look at it every day and don't care. Got it. Okay. Uh, I've often, I've often joked our, our biggest seller would just simply be a box that just says, you know, water and not water for the big knife switch that throws sparks when they, the sparks are critical. Throws sparks when they throw it. Sparks work great with water too. Uh, yeah, yeah. Oh, fantastic. Right. But, uh, uh, but no, we're, we're, even though most of our products are, are, are fairly old in design, um, where we are, we are moving along and we're moving into moving into IOT. Uh, we had an entire system based off of just, uh, SMS, uh, a few years ago up and running. Uh, but, uh, after talking with a number of different carriers, uh, finally getting ahold of people high up who could answer questions, uh, the general consensus with all of them was don't do that. Get, get, get on the internet. Don't rely on any of the other services. And, uh, and, uh, that's when we decided, uh, uh, and not, not, not to spill too much about what we're doing, but, uh, but it's what a lot of other, uh, IOT people do to get low bandwidth is get us on the internet, uh, which means we can use any modality, uh, you know, be it wifi, you know, ethernet or, uh, or a cell modem, get us on the internet and we'll just start publishing MQTT things. You know, everything, everything will go that way. And, uh, that's, that, that's what most, that's no secret. That's what most people are going to have to do to fit in, to, you know, to get the costs down on the service. Uh, the carriers want everything to just simply be, uh, internet traffic. They don't want anything else. They don't want to handle voice. They don't want to handle SMS. They don't want to handle those other things. So, uh, and that's actually where, where, uh, uh, where I started, that's really when I started calling you in the middle of the night while you were working at hologram. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, uh, cause that, that, that's still a little, little plug for them. Uh, uh, that still is, uh, is the easiest way to just simply get me on the internet. Right. Right.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. Well, that's good. That's good. I mean, I think that, I think that that's pretty, uh, relevant to people that are listening to like people like, you know, maybe, maybe not relevant that they're, they're looking specifically at these problems, but I think a lot of people are, you know, maybe looking for business types and stuff like that. It seems like the B2B, I would still call this B2B market, even though you're selling to individuals probably who are small growers, uh, you know, B2B market and doing like service based service based things that are including hardware like this. It seems like if you can get the trust, like you mentioned, there's a lot of need, you know, it's a, it's a practical use for, for internet of things type stuff. And from that perspective, it's, it's interesting. And it's interesting to me that, that you as a, uh, you know, as a maker of these things, you said you're actually having trouble finding people to work on it though, to work on hardware. So let's talk about that real quick.

Chris Gammell: Yes. Uh, we're, uh, uh, like I said, we've had, um, uh, uh, the same, uh, main engineer since the, uh, since the eighties doing our, doing our hardware. Uh, we, in, uh, uh, 1998 or 99 hired an in-house engineer to do, uh, to do, um, um, uh, firmware and hardware as well. And, uh, those, those, between those two were, were pretty busy, but they're both a gentleman kind of towards, towards the end of their careers. And, uh, and they've, neither one of them has really ever been a production engineer. They're design engineers, not really production engineers. Uh, and, uh, really to be perfectly honest, I need somebody to help take over part of my job. Uh, cause here I am running around taking care of, uh, day-to-day things, answering assemblers questions, uh, doing part sourcing, working up new part numbers, uh, you know, uh, uh, you know, assembly tools and things like that. And then I've got to turn around and handle the business end of it, the product management side of things. Uh, and it's, it's really too much for one person. We did, um, uh, we do have a consultant that we use to do, uh, to do software. And he's a, he's a, you know, relatively, you know, younger engineer and he's very, he's, he's, he's, he's, I like to refer to him. He's, he's the wall. I throw things over, uh, anything, anything that has, any, anything that has to do with high level or, you know, high, high level embedded. I throw over the wall now to him because he's the, he's, he's the, he's the, he's our wizard. He's the one who, who can, who can, who can take the thing magically find a library somewhere out there and get the thing working in 45 minutes. So, so we have one of those.

Charles Alexanian: Right. But you, you'd mentioned too, that like some of it is just limited by location that you guys, you know, you're in Fresno, but it's, it's not necessarily a tech center. And then you're kind of get what you get.

Chris Gammell: I need a, I need a production. I need a production engineer, a production and quality control engineer. If I was in the Bay area, I could stand outside with a sandwich board and within the first hundred cars driving by probably have someone pull over inquiring about the job. I mean, if, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we're, uh, I'll, I'll put it this way in our entire history. We have never had a single person quit. So that tells you what sort of working environment we have.

Charles Alexanian: Right, right.

Chris Gammell: Nor have we ever actually had to fire a person.

Charles Alexanian: That's good.

Chris Gammell: Uh, we, one time we did have to lay a couple of people off, uh, just for, for slowdown. Uh, but, uh, you know, that's beyond our control really. Uh, but, uh, uh, uh, we are, we are a family business. But we treat all of our people like family.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah. So. Well, and I think that this is something that other, and this is kind of how we started talking yesterday about this too. But it's just like that, that is not as, uh, you know, basically as companies start to age and stuff like that, they're either the methods have to change or the people have to change. You have to grow the company in a certain way, you know, like, so like replacing, replacing engineers who decide to retire. I I've always said, I think there's going to be, you know, after the 2008 crash, I thought there was a bunch of engineers who were kind of hanging on just because they weren't able to retire because their portfolios crashed. Now portfolios are back up. I think, you know, this stock market stuff, but I think portfolios are back up. The age is right. Stuff like that. I, I think that a lot of boomer engineers, you know, who are gray beards who are going to just start to be like, yeah, well I'm done. Uh, I'm not sure there's, you know, I think there's gonna be a lot of jobs that are open specifically in places like you're talking about that are like more remote, more, more obscure, might not know about it, you know?

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah. Uh, well I'll give you an example. Um, you know, I can, I can find, you know, uh, uh, software developers, you know, they're out there. I can find, uh, uh, uh, web, web app developers that's out there, but I need somebody who can walk around that shop and kind of just, like I said, sniff out the problem. Yeah. No, the plating, the plating on these boards doesn't look quite right. Right. Let's investigate this or that assembler over there. I've noticed there, uh, you know, when they're putting those screws and I can hear they're going to a different torque.

Charles Alexanian: You're right.

Chris Gammell: What's going on over there. Right. That's the sort of experience that people really need. And you only get that by doing, you, you, you only get that by throwing yourself headlong into hardware projects and, and, and experiencing what goes on. You know, the, the most attractive thing about an engineer is someone who knows how to get something out the door.

Charles Alexanian: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You know, and get it out the door, right. Um, uh, you can go into an endless development cycle and we have our own versions of endless development cycles. You know, Lord knows we have our own versions, endless development cycles, but we still have to get the things out the door, get them, get the customer happy, have them have something that they know is going to be reliable. We'll gladly sacrifice a feature for reliability. We do that all the time. That's actually one of my biggest parts of being a product manager. Right. Say no, say no, say no, right.

Charles Alexanian: Make that, make that next switch product.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. You can, you, you, you get it. You get a sense, uh, after you do enough of your own development and see other people doing it to know, okay, here's how much effort this is going to take to debug and verify this, this particular feature. Here's the potential downsides to it. What you may think is that, oh, this is great. Uh, well, it may be great, but it may have some downsides and we may spend the next 18 months trying to figure out how to do it right. We can't afford that. That's the sort of experience you really need to get. And you only get that by doing. Uh, and, uh, there will always be need for hardware engineers always. Uh, you know, but they're just the people it's not, it's not the attractive thing. It's not the whiz bang anymore. You know, designing a board. Oh, don't even get me started on the EDA, EDA problems. Well, I'll give you a quick, quick one with that. Uh, a lot of our stuff originally in the eighties was done in high wire. Uh, then in-house we switched to, uh, uh, well, we tried dip trace for a while. None of us liked that. And we went to Eagle use that for a number of years. Then when Eagle decided they were going to change their, their, their, you know, their thing to an online subscription base, we like everybody else freaked out. And just at that time, Altium came around to everybody and they cut the price of Altium basically in half looking to pick up rebound people who were, who were reeling from losing Altium or losing, losing, uh, you know, their, their, their version of Eagle, which from the inside view, Eagle was already kind of not supporting their product particularly well. I had some interesting phone calls with them where it was the equivalent of them picking up the phone, screaming, what do you want from me? And hanging the phone up. It was the engineering equivalent of that. So, so, um, uh, so we went ahead and got a seat of Altium and, uh, and we're, we're using it and it's, it's good. It's nice. Uh, but my gosh, are they, as, as far as a piece of software you own, they are so restrictive, you know, uh, where initially they told us, you know, a number of different things. Well, things change, they've changed their company policies and now we're getting text messages because how we, how we handle internet at our shop, we have a number of IP addresses and when they see it bounce around, they, they get, they get nervous.

Charles Alexanian: If only there was a solution that was open source and free. Jeez, Charles, I don't know, man.

Chris Gammell: We, we, we just, we just now started our new product, a new, a new product and a new product tree in KyCAP. So, uh, so, uh, uh, at our shop, Jason has, has, has watched many of your videos and I told him if he wants, if he, if he wants, I don't, I don't think he needs it at this point, but, but if you, uh, but you could, you could always use it. I said, if you want to buy a course at contextual electronics, just let me know. I'll do it for you.

Charles Alexanian: Give my number, give my number, give my number.

Chris Gammell: That's fine.

Charles Alexanian: That's great.

Chris Gammell: Well, you know, uh, Hey, it's a tax write-off. Yeah, right.

Charles Alexanian: So if, uh, if people are listening and they're interested in maybe giving you a shout if they're in the Fresno area, what, what is your, uh, how should they get in contact with you?

Chris Gammell: If you're in the Fresno area and, uh, you're looking for an engineering job or you're willing to move to the Fresno area, uh, uh, uh, go ahead and contact me. My, uh, my, uh, uh, email is, uh, broken speaker seven at, uh, gmail.com. Uh, and, uh, uh, uh, go ahead and let me know and we'll see if we'll see, uh, you're gonna, it's, it's, it's not an easy work, uh, but, uh, you'll be doing everything from, uh, from literal hardware engineering of our metal and plastic enclosures, uh, to, uh, to, uh, testing and quality control and everything in between. Uh, uh, uh, if I, uh, if I have to explain to you, uh, however, what a, uh, what a differential long tail pair is, uh, then, then, then, then, uh, uh, that, that would be a good first step. That's usually my one that I catch most new engineers on is, uh, design, design me a differential input to do this and their eyes roll back in their head and they start going to Wikipedia and it's like, okay, I'm sorry. We're done here.

Charles Alexanian: So I thought you told me before it's actually broken speaker nine.gmail.com. Is that right?

Chris Gammell: Yes. Broken speaker nine. I'm sorry. I roll it forward every now and then, uh, depending on what I'm working on. Got it. Yep. Seven was the one for the liquidation. Burner addresses are a thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool.

Charles Alexanian: Okay. Well, Charles, thanks so much.

Chris Gammell: But anyways.

Charles Alexanian: Thanks so much for being on the show and, you know, talking about, I mean, obviously a lot of interesting, uh, past and good luck with the family business too. I think, I think it's really interesting to hear that stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. In hindsight, you know, I, I kind of wish I could have picked, picked one thing and not jump around from thing to thing to kind of focus on, uh, might've been a little, a little more interesting for people, but, uh, but Hey, you know, this is how, this is how your, our lives are built. Uh, uh, many, uh, unseemingly or seemingly unrelated things connected to each other that lead you down your own weird little path. And, uh, uh, we, we didn't even, we didn't even get into Neoden or any of the modern, uh, modern assembly stuff. Uh, but, uh, that, that could be a whole show unto itself, uh, low rent. Most people will say, why do you bother with that? You're a real company. Why don't you just rent more time on someone else's, uh, someone else's machine or buy a real machine? Well, you know, at a certain point, uh, we had to get our feet wet. We only do things in batches of, you know, you know, 50 or a hundred at a time. And it just, uh, just simply happened to fit us that we could fit all of our products on one set of feeders. And, uh, I eventually did get the thing to work. So it does work, but, uh, it's not, it's not a finished tool. Right. It's, it's definitely a, uh, you know, a, uh, you gotta stay on top of it. And, uh, each time you fire it back up, you got, you're learning a new cork. So, uh, uh, that's about as far as I'll get with that. But, uh, I would certainly not accept other customers assembly work on it only for our own stuff. So we could set it up and leave it alone.

Charles Alexanian: Awesome. Well, we'll have to have you back on to talk more about, uh, future assembly processes. And hopefully we'll, we'll find you some people here. And I'm, I'm glad that our, our paths have crossed over the years too. It's been, it's been good.

Chris Gammell: Same here. You know, same here. It's, it's, uh, it's, uh, uh, uh, you know, sometimes I like to, uh, you know, I like to imagine a more carefree world where I could go work on my own projects and have fun and write articles and do all these interesting things. No, not yet.

Charles Alexanian: Awesome. Yeah. I'm here. That's good. That's good. Well, thank you, sir. Thank you much. All right. Well, we'll talk to you soon.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Bye-bye.

Speaker ?: Bye-bye.