Wiardgroup

>not who...
>Where!!! the heck is Mankato......,
>Mankato is a (beautiful)  town in Southern Minnesota (Minn St. Univ is there)
>This fabled hamlet is the stomping grounds of the legendary Thomas
>Henry who has recently founded Magic Smoke Electronics
>
>and it's NOT what you think!
[snip]
>(hey guys! The Henry books are coming back ... the HENRY Books are
>coming back!!!)
>-doc
>(licensed senile smart ass)

I'm happy for the publicity, though a bit o' correction is in order. 
Thomas Henry isn't behind Magic Smoke Electronics, but MSE is the new 
(soon to be) source for his products.

Tim "Servo" and I started MSE because Thomas closed Midwest Analog 
but people still wanted to buy his books. Thanks to Scott Stites, we 
were able to contact Thomas and purchase the book rights. (We'll have 
them for sale again Real Soon now, I promise! By the way, they'll be 
PDF files -- anyone have problems with that?)

As it happened, Thomas also had a new VCF design, and did we want to 
buy the rights to it, too? Well, we were certainly interested! So Tim 
Servo built one and loved it -- just as Scott Stites had done -- so 
we went for it. Another unit was built and delivered to Gino for the 
EM article. We're very grateful to Gino for including us, to say the 
least, and super happy about the positive review.

We are still working on the website, producing PDFs of the books, and 
moving the VCF toward production. Of course, this is not our "real" 
job, so it's all taking longer than we'd like. I'll have the mailing 
list running in a few days, and Tim is almost done with the 
Electronic Drum Cookbook PDF.

As for the Mankato name: Tim and I were on the phone talking about 
the VCF's designation, "TH-201". Not too catchy, right? So we decided 
to actually name it. Trying to recall where Thomas was from, I opened 
one of TH's books and saw that he signed the Preface as "Thomas 
Henry, North Mankato, MN." Mankato jumped out at me. It sounds 
interesting (kind of Japanese), *nobody* has heard of it ;-), and it 
would be a nice little tribute to Thomas -- almost an inside joke. It 
prompted a funny comment from Scott:
         "Good thing Thomas isn't from Sheboygan!" ;-)
Nothing against the good people of Sheboygan, of course...

The Mankato filter will be available as PC boards first, then as 
kits, and as Frac Rack and Eurorack modules after that (assuming that 
things work out properly -- as you all know, it gets harder and 
harder to build things in the U.S. at reasonable cost).
--
john