Curiosity Club with Nial McGaughey is tonight! Nial is the maker of the fine and odd Hovercraft Amplifiers, and we're thrilled for him to throw down on his pastiche of tech and art. We'll be covering loud sounds and "braingasms"—obviously worth showing up for that.

Nial McGaughey: Strummable Braingasms: Using Limitations, Leftovers and Lemons to Create the World's Loudest Artwork 6pm PST At the Hand-Eye Supply store Or Streaming onlineNial will talk about the roots of his interest in, and process of, creating bespoke tube amplifiers from castoff and surplus materials. When designing and building a custom amp for someone, Nial builds a profile on them and the sound they are after to create a one off amp tailored just to them. Through out the talk he will touch on topics like holistic design, knowing when a project is "done", the analogies of cooking food in coming up with new things, taking more than one route to get to a destination, creating a deeply satisfying multisensory experience, the beauty and history of dead technologies, specifically why tube amps sound "good" to our ears and how his amps are a bit of omakase and bricolage.

Nial McGaughey is a Designer, Engineer, and Founder of several Musical Instrument manufacturing companies. He spent over two decades breaking things in the video game and software industry with a 'secret other life' playing in bands around the world.