This is my answer to Paul Taylor's very cool letter copied at the bottom of this page, a letter sent to me about 8 July 2006.

I built a WR-3 receiver circuit board into a larger enclosure in order to accomodate THREE controls and the addition of a 1/4-inch phone jack for a guitar pickup, and the usual BNC antenna jack for a whip antenna to use the WR-3ga as a VLF radio receiver to "probe the electrosphere."

The three controls are: 1) the usual audio amp gain/ ON-OFF switch control the regular WR-3's have; 2) an actual audio volume control pot. between the input FET stage and the LM386 audio amp for the headphones. 3) a high-pass control pot./switch that swiches and dials in a 150 mH choke that acts as a high-pass filter when switched in - for emphasizing those higher musical notes or VLF sounds (and you can listen to VLF closer to powerlines with the high-pass filter switched in, at the expense of lower audio freqs.).

The First time I tried this with a guitar (borrowed from a friend and neighbor Craig). I connected Craig's guitar to the WR-3ga and found it workes as fine as a gutar amp as Paul suggests below.

I tried this on about 08 August, as shwon in the photos of the floor of my shop adjacent to my radio room.

The outside photos in the montage of 4 pictures above were taken 11 August in the high-desert near Darwin, Cal. - the first time I took the WR-3ga into deep-quiet country off the powergrid by 3 miles., and happily during a rare and pleasant mid-morning whistler event emanating from ligntning storms a few hundred miles to the east and south-east (Arizona Monsoon).

There were puretone and fuzzier whistlers - at least a few per minute, sometimes a couple at a time, some of the stronger lightning static bursts launched consideably loud whistlers - all conveniently at 10 a.m. and later local time - another example of the surprises in store in VLF listening. Chances are good that there were nice whistlers earlier that morning and night.

Paul's Letter:

Hello Stephen.
I bought a couple of WR-3s from you last year and just recently found a new use for them. I suspect that you or somebody else has probably thought of this but in my excitement I figured I'd pass it along anyway. I have wanted a portable practice amplifier for my electric bass guitars for sometime now but didn't care for what was already available on the market either due to the price or due to flimsy construction. Then all of a sudden it dawned on me... the WR-3!!!...all I need is a small portable amp to use with my headphones and gee isn't the WR-3 in essence an audio amplifier! So I got out my Steinberger XT-2 bass and assembled an adapter to get from 1/4 inch headphone plug to BNC and ...insert drum roll here... I was off an running. The WR-3 works great. You have to use the volume control on the guitar to achieve the best listening level as the volume control on the WR-3 doesn't have much effect until you get to the upper end of the pot, at which point you get a nice mild level of distortion...cool! The neat thing is that the Steinberger has passive electronics and I was still getting great volume levels so it ought to work great with one of my Ibanez basses with active elecronics. Anyway I thought I would pass along my discovery and excitement to you. Its not to often in this world to get such a great toofer like the WR-3.

Thanks again Stephen for such a versatile product!

Sincerely, Paul D. Taylor/WA6ENT