Hi, my name is Christopher Pereira, but I normally go by Chris. I am an Electrical Engineering student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
I have always loved to learn how things work and by extension, learn how to fix them when they break. At first, I only would help my parents fix things around the house, that is, until I got to high school. I went to Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School (GNBVT for short) and I enrolled in their Engineering and Robotics program. Here, I realized my passion and ability to be able to diagnose problems and fix them with a variety of different things. Now, I have fixed things in my car, my guitars, my computer, and other odd things as well. As for my major, I went with electrical engineering in particular because electricity has always been fascinating to me and I like to learn about it.
Here is a picture of one of my guitars that I have worked on. I originally bought this guitar very cheap, so the pickups naturally left a bit to be desired. In order to fix this issue, I bought better pickups and decided to install them myself. The only issue was they did not fit in the pickup holes in the body and the mounting hardware for that and the output jack were too small. Instead of giving up, I made the holes bigger by carving them out, and then I measured the current pickup mounts and 3-D printed my own custom mounts for the guitar. I also drilled the mount for the output jack to make it bigger. After looking up the wiring diagram for the pickups, I soldered the wires in the correct way, replaced the knobs with new ones, and put everything together to test. By using my problem-solving skills, I was able to understand the problem, find a way to fix it, and implement it by using resources that I found on the internet and by using things I've learned in school as well as general intuition.
In this picture, I am playing guitar with my band which is one of my favorite hobbies. In order to continue playing out, I need to constantly make sure my gear is working correctly, so I like to inspect it and fix it myself. For instance, I replaced the pickups on this guitar as well as an upgrade to the stock pickups that came with it. I've also had to do some small body work like lowering the string height in order to make it the best guitar it can be and to help me play it. I've been playing guitar for about 6 years now and I look forward to getting better and upgrading my current gear.
Skills:
- Proficient in Multisim
- Adept in Solidworks
- Competent in MATLAB
- Advanced mathematics (Calculus)
- Knowledge of C/C++/C# languages
- Soldering
Repair Experience:
- Replaced disc brakes and headlights in cars
- Built a computer
- Fixed various computer problems
- Electric guitar repairs, mainly wiring and exchanging components
- Home and tool repairs
Hobbies:
- Playing music in a band
- Composing music
- Video games
- Watching movies