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is your relationship toxic ?

Your relationship may be toxic if it is characterized by behaviors that make you feel unhappy, including disrespect, dishonesty, controlling behaviors, or a lack of support. 

what is a toxic relationship?

In a healthy relationship, everything just kind of works. Sure, you might disagree from time to time or come upon other bumps in the road, but you generally make decisions together, openly discuss any problems that arise, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. 

Toxic relationships are another story. In a toxic relationship, you might consistently feel drained or unhappy after spending time with your partner, which can suggest that some things need to change. 

Maybe the relationship no longer feels at all enjoyable, though you still love your partner. For some reason, you always seem to rub each other the wrong way or can’t seem to stop arguing over minor issues. You might even dread the thought of seeing them, instead of looking forward to it as you did in the past. 

Below are some hallmark signs of toxicity in a relationship.

what are the signs of a toxic relationship ?

Depending on the nature of the relationship, signs of toxicity can be subtle or highly obvious.

When you’re in a toxic relationship, you might not always find it easy to notice the red flags popping up. All the same, you could notice some of these signs in yourself, your partner, or the relationship itself. 

1. lack of support

Healthy relationships are based on a mutual desire to see the other succeed in all areas of life. But when things turn toxic, every achievement becomes a competition. 

In short, the time you spend together no longer feels positive. You don’t feel supported or encouraged, and you can’t expect them to care about anything you do. Instead, you might get the impression that your needs and interests don’t matter, that they only care about what they want

2. toxic communication

Instead of kindness and mutual respect, most of your conversations are filled with sarcasm or criticism and fueled by contempt.

Do you catch yourself making snide remarks to your friends or family members? Maybe you repeat what they said in a mocking tone when they’re in another room. You may even start dodging their calls, just to get a break from the inevitable arguments and hostility.

3. envy or jealousy

While it’s perfectly fine to experience a little envy from time to time, it can become an issue if your envy keeps you from thinking positively about your partner’s successes.

The same goes for jealousy. Yes, it’s a perfectly natural human emotion. But when it leads to constant suspicion and mistrust, it can quickly begin to erode your relationship. 

4. controlling behaviors

Does your partner ask where you are all the time? Maybe they become annoyed or irritated when you don’t immediately answer texts or text you again and again until you do. 

These behaviors might stem from jealousy or lack of trust, but they can also suggest a need for control — both of which can contribute to relationship toxicity. In some cases, these attempts at control can also suggest abuse

5. resentment

Holding on to grudges and letting them fester chips away at intimacy

Over time, frustration or resentment can build up and make a smaller chasm much bigger. Note, too, whether you tend to nurse these grievances quietly because you don’t feel safe speaking up when something bothers you. If you can’t trust your partner to listen to your concerns, your relationship could be toxic. 

6. dishonesty

You find them constantly making up lies about the whereabouts or who they meet up with.

7. patterns of disrespect

Often you realize that you are tolerating actions of disrespect that you would never permit from any other person.  

8. negative financial behaviors

Sharing finances with a partner often involves some level of agreement about how you’ll spend or save your money. That said, it’s not necessarily toxic if one partner chooses to spend money on items the other partner doesn’t approve of.

It can be toxic, though, if you’ve come to an agreement about your finances and one partner consistently disrespects that agreement, whether by purchasing big-ticket items, spending excessively, or withdrawing large sums of money.

9. constant stress

Ordinary life challenges that come up — a family member’s illness, job loss — can create some tension in your relationship, of course. But finding yourself constantly on edge, even when you aren’t facing stress from outside sources, is a key indicator that something’s off. 

This ongoing stress can take a toll on physical and mental health, and you might frequently feel miserable, mentally and physically exhausted, or generally unwell. 

10. ignoring your needs

Going along with whatever your partner wants to do, even when it goes against your wishes, is a sure sign of toxicity.

11. lost relationships

You’ve stopped spending time with friends and family, either to avoid conflict with your partner or to get around having to explain what’s happening in your relationship. 

Alternatively, you might find that dealing with your partner (or worrying about your relationship) occupies much of your free time. 

12. lack of self-care

In a toxic relationship, you might let go of your usual self-care habits.

You might withdraw from hobbies you once loved, neglect your health, and sacrifice your free time. This might happen because you don’t have the energy for these activities or because your partner disapproves when you do your own thing. 

13. hoping for change

You might stay in the relationship because you remember how much fun you had in the beginning. Maybe you think that if you just change yourself and your actions, they’ll change as well. 

14. walking on eggshells

You worry that by bringing up problems, you’ll provoke extreme tension, so you become conflict avoidant and keep any issues to yourself.

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Understanding ABY Switchers – Radial Engineering

Radial Bigshot | Switchbone | Twin-City

ABY switchers are primarily used to feed two guitar amps from a guitar. The AB designates the ability to switch between amplifiers, while the Y means that both amps can be turned on at once.  Using an ABY switcher is easy. You connect your guitar or the output from your pedal chain to the ABY, and from the ABY, you feed the two amps. Unfortunately, the results often include tremendous noise, weird tones, and even an electrical shock!

Passive versus active

BigShot ABY

True-Bypass Switcher

The Radial BigShot ABY is a true-bypass ABY switcher that toggles or combines two guitar amplifiers in phase and without hum & buzz caused by ground loops.

The BigShot ABY is a compact passive switcher.

ABY pedals generally come in two categories: passive and active. Passive ABYs do not require any power to make them work while active ABYs must be powered like most other guitar pedals.

Passive ABYs are simple switches that divert the guitar signal to one amp or the other.  There is no ‘buffer’ or electronic amp inside the ABY to manage the signal. Some tone purists prefer passive switchers as they do not color the guitar signal in any way. When running two amps at once, the signal going to each amp is reduced by half, like a simple Y-jack cable.  The BigShot ABY is a passive ABY switcher.

Active switchers employ a buffer or unity-gain amplifier to lower the impedance to reduce susceptibility to noise and manage the electrical signal. A buffer not only drives the signal further without noise, but the capacitors in the signal path also block noise that may be coming from the amp from bleeding back into the guitar. The Twin-City and Switchbone are active ABY switchers.

True-Bypass

Pedals that completely remove the effect circuit from the signal path are known as true-bypass pedals.  The concept here is that a true-bypass pedal will relay the original sound of the guitar without any buffer or loading on the pickup which could alter the clean tone. The downside with true-bypass pedals is that they tend to produce switching noise. This is due to the hard contact that is created when the footswitch is depressed and the internal relay is called into action. The noise is most noticeable when using high-gain amps. The BigShot ABY is a true-bypass ABY switcher.

Active Switching

The benefit to using active switching with a buffered circuit is that it allows the electronic engineer to manage the signal to eliminate noise. The Twin-City employs electronic switching while the Switchbone employs a series of photo-electric chips (optocouplers) that ramp up and then ramp down the signal in a controlled fashion in order to eliminate the hard contact. This type of switching requires the signal to be buffered.

Radial Twin City ABY

Twin-City

Active Amp Switcher

The Twin-City is an active ABY switcher that toggles or combines two guitar amplifiers in phase and without noise, with a class-A input buffer to drive both amps without any loss of gain.

Switchbone V2

Amp Switcher & Booster

The Switchbone V2 is a feature-packed ABY pedal that also features a third output to allow switching between up to three amplifiers without noise.

Types of buffers

There are two general camps when it comes to buffers. The most common is the use of an integrated circuit (IC) while the second is more of an old-school discrete class-A approach. For maximum efficiency, ICs pack thousands of transistors inside a very small package to produce tremendous gain. To control the gain, various degrees of negative feedback is applied. Most guitarists hate the sound of these buffers as they make a nice warm-sounding guitar sound harsh. This is the primary reason guitarists complain about the sound of wireless systems. Both the Twin-City and the Switchbone employ 100% discrete, class-A circuitry. Instead of trying to control the gain of a chip by applying tremendous amounts of phase-canceling negative feedback, individual transistors are used at each gain stage. This means only the absolute minimal amount of negative feedback is applied. And because we are using class-A circuitry, you get a much purer signal path.

Load Correction

Early on, we discovered that even with the very best circuit, buffering a guitar signal can make it sound ‘too clean’. To solve the problem, Radial invented Drag Control – a simple load correction circuit that compensates for the overly clean signal path and replicates the tone as if connected directly to the amp. This encompasses compensating for the natural roll off of the cable and of course the load that is typically applied from a tube amp – whereby it sounds totally different from a transistor amp. Check out the Dragster.

Ground loops

groundloop
Transformers are inserted between audio paths to ensure ground loops don’t occur.

The hum and buzz caused by a so-called ground loop are produced when two amps are connected together and share both an electrical ground and an audio ground.  The noise problem can be mild to acute depending on the amps, the electrical circuit and other factors such as spurious noise from the electrical system. The first line of defense is to connect both amps and all of the pedals to a single power strip. This ensures the same electrical phase is powering both amps. Unfortunately, more often than not, this solution rarely solves the  problem that is inherent with varying voltage references and grounding schemes on the amps. To solve the problem, transformers are inserted into the audio path.

Transformer Isolation

A typical transformer is a device that is made up of two coils and an inner core. The primary or input coil becomes magnetically charged when current is applied. The magnetic field is then transmitted through the core where it excites the secondary coil which in turn produces an electrical current.  This creates a magnetic bridge that passes audio, while blocking stray DC currents and noise. Since the bridge is magnetic, there is no direct electrical connection. This disconnects the audio ground and breaks the ground loop, thus eliminating the hum and buzz. The Twin-City and Switchbone have transformers on output-B for this reason. The BigShot ABY also has a transformer that may be inserted into the signal path. As transformers are passive, you can lose some of the signal going through it unless the signal is first buffered by a pedal.

Phase

phase-amp-1_360
Your tone will sound “hollow” if the amps are out of phase. Inverse the polarity to make the audio waves line up correctly.

When playing two amps, it is important that they both play in phase. This means that both speakers are pushing outward instead of one going in, while the other goes out. When both amps are on, if the sound is distant, the amps are likely out of phase.  In order to phase-align the amps, you must be able to reverse the polarity at the output of the ABY switcher. This requires a transformer.  The BigShot ABY, Twin-City and Switchbone are equipped with transformers and 180º degree phase switches to invert the polarity.

Switching noise

As mentioned above, true-bypass switches are basically hard electrical switches produced by a footswitch or an electronic relay. These do not color
or load the pickup but do so at the expense of a loud pop. This is most noticeable when using high-gain or distorted amps. The BigShot ABY uses a true-bypass footswitch. Electronic switching as used in the Twin-City employs an electronic circuit to do the switching. This buffered circuit allows the engineer to control the switching to eliminate the loud pop. In this case, the buffered signal is always in the signal path. The Switchbone goes one step further by employing opto-couplers that ramp up and down the signal for a super smooth and quiet transition. Opto-couplers employ an internal light and receptor to do the work. These are expensive and rarely used.

Electrical Shocks

To avoid an electric shock, never disconnect the U-ground on your guitar amps. This is sometimes done to eliminate noise. The ground is there for safety and will save your life if ever you find yourself on a wet stage or somehow get entangled in a situation where the power system from the lights or PA is at odds with your guitar amp setup. Radial makes ABY switchers that solve the noise problem without placing you in harm’s way!


radial engineering

Radial Engineering