I went to AHMW (Analog Heaven Midwest) in Indiana yesterday. Pictures are here if you want to see them. I recorded a bit on my Tascam DR-07, and will be putting some of that somewhere soon.
Some thoughts:
- I really shouldn’t have played with the new Tom Oberheim SEM. I want one now. I probably won’t get one unless Tom Oberheim releases a kit (and that seems unlikely), but man that was cool.
- I also got to play one of the first 50 original Minimoogs. Very cool, but luckily I’m not feeling the draw like I am to the SEM – maybe it’s because the SEM is sort of affordable, whereas a Voyager or a used Mini is quite a bit out of reach. I’ve got my MG-1 – it’s Moog-y enough for me 🙂
- I also really liked the Jürgen Haible Living VCOs. That’s gonna go on the to-do list soon.
- I also really need some more sequencers. I’ve already got some ideas in the works, but just need to execute them.
- I think an STG Sea Devils Filter PCB is in my future as well – how can I turn down Doctor Who related modules?
- I kind of liked the Vermona DRM1 MKIII – I think its layout is going to influence the Bass++/other electronic percussion unit I’m going to build. I like the “all the per-voice characteristics in a row” layout, though the Mega Percussive Synthesizer is way more complicated than the Bass++, so that may screw things up a bit. Gonna take some thinking to get that one right.
- Lastly, I really, really need to de-jank a lot of my DIY gear. It’s mostly pretty good (and improving, I think!), but there are a few things that have moved from the ‘slightly irritating’ to the ‘really bothering me’ stage. In particular, I really need to re-do the power wiring for my MFOS modules (they were built early in my modular,use the MFOS ‘let’s not use a standard power connector’ thing, and I used solid-core wire instead of stranded, since I didn’t have any 18-gauge stranded wire at the time. They now pop out of the crimp connectors with alarming regularity. That’s gotta be corrected.), tune the resonance on my LPGs (nasty self oscillation occurs at about a quarter turn), try to fix my remaining x0xb0x issues, and lastly, do some kind of serious surgery on the Arduino Sequencer, since it managed to fail *again* this year.
In other news, the prototype of my Arduino module moved from breadboard to a protoboard relatively well. It’s powering up from 15V (which worried me a little bit), though the DACs don’t seem to be working. I’m guessing it’s something simple. Will probably debug as part of De-Jank-a-thon 2010 🙂
Coming soon: A revised project list (including work to be done for De-Jank-a-thon 2010), and maybe some other news of import.