An area to heavily delve into

[saturated]

I really want to play around with
-diode limiters
-cutoff limiting
-clamping circuits
-separator circuits
-voltage multipliers
-voltage limiters


And all that where the input is a signal and the circuit consists of not much more than a diode, a resistor, and a capacitor 

Should be cool

Then down the line introducing DC and zener diodes and transistors etc

I think the first item of business is gonna be constructing this circuit

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But instead of introducing AC I want to use DC for the signal and attempt to measure test and observe each step observing how the output responds to the input. The book gives a play by play but I've read it slowly a thousand times and I can nod my head and go oh hell yeah that's how it works sign me up  but I'd rather see it in slow static motion 

Obviously some of the time I'll have to be slowly increasing or decreasing the DC and paying attention

Speaking of paying attention I think I just realized I better start with AC and find a good combo of capacitance and resistance to produce a nice outcome.

 

[saturated]

The first problem out the gate

Why can't variable DC power supplies have positive and negative

Like my function generator does

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As of now I'm trying to dream up something I can take an ordinary say 0-20V DC power supply and convert it to a symmetrical -20 to +20 DC power supply

Now I learned earlier that to make a waveform like a sin wave go up (add DC) just put the DC in series so that is not so hard for me to comprehend

But how does Hickock put neg DC in series in all at the control of a single knob

I need to look at some amp schematics and stuff where they have a pos and neg rail that shouldn't be so hard

But how to bring them together without an explosion 💥

So I'm thinking ok get a neg rail and a pos rail and maybe put a variable resistor between them

But that sounds like a disaster  shorting pos and neg rails

I haven't ruled out taking the lid off of the Hickock to see how they did it because I can't find a schematic