W
hen I was five years old, my dad gave me
my first lessons in soldering and playing
the piano. Dad was a biomedical technician.
Simply put, he’s the guy that fixed all the stuff in
the ICU that keeps people alive. As a result, we
had no shortage of electronic scrap and parts.
At one point, we even had an entire X-ray room
in our garage — a decommissioned unit that he
eventually donated to a veterinary clinic.
Keep in mind in the 1980s, pre-internet, DIY
electronics projects came from books and the
sage wisdom of those who came before you.
While most kids my age were learning the
alphabet, Dad taught me the basics of logic gates
and analog circuits. We had access to vintage
computers years before they started popping up
in our schools. To say he influenced our interests
would be a bit of an understatement.
My brother John and I grew up in Michigan.
We spent our formative years working with
computers and playing music together. The long
cold winters kept us indoors and focusing on
our crafts. I was more into guitar playing, and he
took to the drums and electronic music. When
we weren’t playing music, my evenings consisted
of dialing into BBSes, learning computer
programming, and downing Jolt cola. As a result,
I’d spend my days napping through my classes.
The two of us played in several bands
throughout those years. We became acquainted
with music production and performing at live
shows. We were even known to pack a venue
from time to time. Even still, it seemed a bit far-
fetched that we’d make a career as professional
musicians.
Call of the Coil
My electronics education really took shape after
high school. Though Dad preferred that I enroll
in a university, I opted to learn from experience.
In 1999, I got my first job working in consumer
electronics repair. I had to fix everything — TVs,
VCRs, DVD players, you name it. Being on the
receiving end of all this broken stuff, you tend to
learn a lot about what makes a great product.
Every manufacturer had its quirk, whether it was
inadequate heat removal or shoddy solder work.
It was also during this time that I was first
introduced to Nikola Tesla. I knew surprisingly
Jay P Morgan
little about the inventor. My boss, Bob Strand,
from one of the TV shops I worked at, replicated
several of his experiments. He had Tesla coils
made from homemade capacitors, plasma
globes, and all sorts of fun experiments around
the shop.
My interest really picked up around 2003
when I met my friend Steve Ward. We were
both members of an online forum called The
Geek Group. Their headquarters was near my
hometown, so I would show up and help out
with everything from sorting junk to building
experiments.
One day, Steve came to the shop with a small
solid-state Tesla coil he’d been working on. It was
about 12 inches tall and made a pretty impressive
spark. That is, compared to the spark gap units I
had become familiar with. The machine had two
knobs. One was for controlling the spark length,
and the other controlled the spark’s frequency.
As a musician, my first instinct was to grab that
frequency knob and eke out a frustratingly pitchy
rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” It
was at that moment I realized that the Tesla coil
needed to be a musical instrument.
13
makezine.com
JOE DiPRIMA is the founding
member of ArcAttack. In the lab,
he’s the primary hardware and
software developer of the group’s
custom show equipment. On the
road, he oversees the installation
of ArcAttack tech, and plays the
guitar and lightning guitar on stage.
M77_012-17_ArcAttack_F1.indd 13M77_012-17_ArcAttack_F1.indd 13 4/13/21 10:04 AM4/13/21 10:04 AM
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