u/wasabichicken

Hi folks,

As some of you Linux users might be aware, Darkglass does not ship a Linux version of their Darkglass Suite.

The good news is that the Windows installer runs great via Wine, so we can relatively easy install the Suite using that. The bad news is that Wine (at the time of writing) doesn't implement every Windows function that the app needs to work — or at least, my Wine version doesn't. Another piece of good news is that parts of the Darkglass Suite is shipped as an Electron app (including the javascript source), which makes it relatively easy to hack.

So I did. You can check out the result here.

That linked document contains the gritty details, but the short of it was that for the Darkglass Suite to run via Wine I needed to shim a few functions, feeding them the device data that the Suite expects. I also ran into some permission problems, so I had to add my user to the dialout group as well as adding a udev rule (this probably varies by distro, I use Debian).

What I tested and what seems to work:

• Firmware upgrade,
• Registering via Darkglass MyPedal,
• Adding/deleting/rearranging presets,
• Installing blocks from Marketplace

If you try this out, you're 100% on your own and doing so on absolutely your own risk. I will not be held liable if you accidentally brick your Anagram and have to ship it somewhere to get it fixed, that's entirely on you.

However, if you want to tinker with it, perhaps see if you can get it to work with your distro or your Anagram, go right head: it's all yours. Pull requests are welcome.

Good luck, have fun!

Unhappy with the Brother laser printer I got, I returned it and picked up a Canon MF664Cdw instead. I deem the image quality to still fall short of that random inkjet printer I tried, but significantly better than that of the Brother printer. I think this is what I'll be working with going forward.

Not much else to say about this printer. It seems to handle the 300gsm cardstock just fine, though the sheets do come out slightly curled as expected. It also seems to grab the paper at a slight angle, meaning I need a larger margin of about 3-4mm between rows or my paper guilloutine trims too much border. In the printers defense, this could also be a skill issue, or perhaps an issue with the guilloutine.

So far I've made one (unsuccessful) attempt at duplex printing. It printed the back side alright, but off by about 2mm. I believe I'll need to try this again, but this time use the single-feed tray. If it doesn't work, I'm likely to give up on double-sided cards.

As for the cardstock, it was something I got off Etsy, at about 1€/sheet. Kind of pricey, and it might be slightly flimsier than real M:tG cards, but it's not noticeable when sleeved. I'm happy enough with it, and will likely order more.

The star of the show is the die cutter I got off Alibaba. Also pricey, and cutting cards is still manual/error-prone labour, but I love that every card is now precisely the correct size, just what it said on the tin. Can recommend.

Anyway, thought I'd share. Happy printing.

Board: Pedaltrain Nano

Signal chain: Darkglass Anagram (that's it)

Auxiliary extras: AirTurn BT500 S-2 page turner

Power: the PSU that the Anagram shipped with, daisy-chained to power the AirTurn too.

Recently got an Anagram, and while I'm super excited to dig deeper into that beast of a pedal, it does mean it's time for my analog birds to leave and go enrich the lives of other people. 🥹

It's not entirely painless (losing the B7K Ultra was especially tough, it was one of my oldest and definitely my favorite), but... it needed to be done. Besides, not everything is leaving: the AirTurn will stick around, and I'm of the firm opinion that one can never have to many tuner pedals, so the TU-3 is staying too.

Next, I'll try to find a way to power both the Anagram and the AirTurn from just one power supply on a Pedaltrain Nano board. I'm considering a EBS Runsten, but... suggestions welcome.

Eager to move on from my first attempt, today I got a laser printer: a Brother DCP-L3527CDW. My intention was to use this with some 300gsm cardstock (currently in shipping), but I printed some test pages on regular paper + thicker 220gsm matte photo paper in the meantime to see what the image quality and curling would be like.

Not gonna lie, the image quality doesn't hold up compared to my earlier inkjet attempts. The colors look slightly faded (could possibly be fixed with color correction), but the mottled/grainy grays and text makes the cards, even at a distance, look merely okay. Close up, they're... well, I refer to the images. It's not pretty.

The thicker paper curled quite a bit, but for what it's worth, this printer has a hatch in the rear that (when opened) skips the duplex stage and spits out the sheet directly, for a moderately straight paper path. A shame there's no tray there to catch them.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to return this printer and look for a better one, I'm just waiting for the ordered cardstock to arrive so I can test with that before I make the decision. In the meantime, your printer recommendations are very welcome.

To be continued.

(Obligatory shoutout to crycry 🙏)

So I decided to get into proxying, accepting that it would be somewhat of a journey of experimentation before I can settle on a workflow that I'm happy with.

For this first iteration, I picked up some 220gsm matte photo paper and some 125 micron lamination pouches, mostly because... well, that was what was available in my local crafts store. I borrowed my brother's inkjet printer and laminator machine, went to work, and this is the result.

Lessons learned:

• Image quality is excellent. I would not hesitate to pick up an inkjet printer over a color laser if image quality was my concern. I'm really happy with the result here.
• The cards are far too thick, far too stiff, and they delaminate easily. For the next iteration, I'm think that I should use thinner paper and/or thinner pouches. The machine I used did not have adjustable heat settings, sadly.
• The cards came out too glossy, perhaps there are matte pouches or something I could try.
• The paper guilloutine couldn't handle the card's thickness, I had to improvise with a roller knife and a ruler. This, and cutting the corners manually with scissors, absolutely sucked. I've ordered a die cutter, there's no way I'm spending 2+ hours cutting twelve sheets of paper into a hundred cards again.

I'm also starting to look into suitable laser printers in case I'd like to try cardstock down the line, and I'm eyeing the Brother HL-L8260CDW. It doesn't look super expensive, yet seems capable (your printer opinions/reviews are very much welcome).