Yea I built my fair share of those sec designs.. but when compared to a 12v 40khz source off of a 120vac supply cuts down on alot of junk to package.

But im also having a desire to stick to the original desktop ideas that were perfected at maximizing the action at the terminals. This probably also includes the need for a good spark-gap for the quickest transients to reproduce the illuminating parallel wire experiments (transistors may not be as quick for efficiency sake).

The hallogen transformer + a flyback circuit sounds like it can compact the Blast part of this design. Leaving the spark-gap up for exploration still.

I remember your QCW plasma forming 'swords' topic... I also would like to hear another installment on that again :p