By George Petersen

WITH THE AUDIO EDUCATION FOCUS IN THIS MONTH’S MIX, I figured I rant about the learning process. When I was a high school kid back in the Paleolithic 1960s era, I wanted to learn electronics. I experimented a lot (destroying a few radios along the way), assembled Heath and Knight kits, and regularly built DIY projects featured in Radio-Electronics and Popular Electronics magazines. In-between splattering solder on my thumb and digging into these articles to figure out how to adapt the circuits to 220V/50 Hz operation (I was living in Europe at the time), I couldn’t help but notice some ads featuring a stern-faced guy who said, “Get more education or get out of electronics!”

The pitch was to promote a correspondence school’s learn-at-home electronics course. These days I can’t even recall which school it was from, but that man’s message was clear and very relevant. Today’s systems—live or recorded, analog or digital, virtual or actual— are more complex than ever, and keeping up with changing technologies requires continuing education.

However, textbook and in-class training alone aren’t enough — actual hands-on experience can make all the difference in the world. For example, changing a diaphragm on a high-frequency compression driver isn’t exactly rocket science. All you have to do is select the right replacement part (with the proper impedance), remove a few screws, match the polarity of the wires, plop the new one into place, and tighten things down.

However, there’s one detail that shouldn’t be overlooked: the procedure should be done with a nonferrous screwdriver. Unless you’re using a brass or an aluminum screwdriver, the powerful gauss field of the driver’s magnetic structure will yank the tool out of your grasp, attracting it into the center of the driver, instantly shredding the fragile, and very expensive, diaphragm. When it happens in the real-life, non-textbook world, it’s not a pretty sight and hardly a lesson that’s soon forgotten.

Other lessons aren’t so technical. Once, while walking through an audio school, I noticed a leather couch in the back of one of the facility’s control rooms. I asked the instructor if he felt the material was the right choice for a school, where students—carrying a pencil (or even a screwdriver) in their back pockets could damage the upholstery. The instructor replied that if this scenario did occur, it would be better for a student to learn the lesson at school rather than on the job. His reply was simple, but spot-on.

For me, that decades-old message from the mean-looking guy in that electronics magazine still holds true.

When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Click here www.jenpet.com and check ‘em out.

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