Studio Pics

I still need to open up the MPC and replace the tact switches for the down cursor (doesn't work at all anymore) and the 5 button (still works but was already a bit intermittent when I got it back in 2009 or 10), but I've finally more or less combined my 2010-2016 workflow with my 2017-2020 workflow.

Found a used Octatrack rack kit on Reverb for about half the price of a new one (but it looked unused until I scratched it with a scribe while I was marking the spacing of the screw holes onto some acrylic scrap and my hand slipped).

Unfortunately I stripped off about 3 inches of teeth from the nicest hand saw I've ever owned when I was cutting the acrylic spacers that let the Octatrack cover still fit on with the rack ears attached.  I'd have thought 2mm of acrylic would be more gentle on a saw than stuff like 1" thick pieces of hardwood (which is the kind of thing I've used it on with no trouble for years, since maybe 2013) but I guess I was wrong, because the acrylic somehow literally sheared the teeth completely off. Really sucks, because it was about a $40 saw and I'm not going to get another one any time soon so I'll just have to use the part of it that still has teeth from now on.

Worth it, though. Whenever I've set up both together in the past it was jsut a mess because they'd take up all the table space so anything else I was using would have to be somewhere else and if I wanted to record MIDI from an external controller I'd have to set it up somewhere off to the side where I couldn't easily reach (or see) either sequencer while I was using it, and it just made it a struggle.  Now I've got a little sampling and sequencing station I can set up wherever I want to work.

5 years of hoarding old, cheap video equipment is finally starting to pay off.

So cool.

Tube do you have huge pulsating coils of cables snaking out of your windows and into the earth?

Not yet, I'm working on it.

  On 10/12/2020 at 2:25 AM, yekker said:

So cool.

I think you will find that - especially during summer - it is not cool at all.

Why didn’t you use a cheap hack saw? If my $5 hacksaw can cut through metal it can cut through acrylic 

  On 7/11/2020 at 6:19 PM, Silent Member said:

I found a picture of my setup circa 1997, behold the masterful ergonomics

 

If you're wondering where the chair is, there was none, I sat on the floor or stood. Yes , there's a Juno 106 and a DW-8000 in this picture as well.

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Love it. Ghetto!!!

  On 10/13/2020 at 10:30 PM, sheatheman said:

Why didn’t you use a cheap hack saw? If my $5 hacksaw can cut through metal it can cut through acrylic 

I actually ruined a nice saw this way - the acrylic heated up enough that it stuck to the teeth and snapped about 4" off them completely off. A hacksaw works well as long as you go slow.  Get it close and then finish it with a file.

My current little lo-fi set-up. Tired of staring at screens while making music.

An Ibanez GSR180 Bass is on the way. Time to actually learn an instrument in my old days.

EDIT: Page 200!

That's nice. Wondering how that setup sounds like.

New stuff thanks to a special person in my life.

Wow, I wish a special person in my life would drop $6k on gear

  On 11/23/2020 at 1:07 PM, Grain Bastard said:

New stuff thanks to a special person in my life.

....

nice, i've got that same Alesis mixer. had it for well over a decade now, still in pretty solid condition.

how're you liking the 0-coast? been considering some semi-modular stuff over the next year-ish and it's one of the top contenders.

that Red Panda Particle get some nice sounds? i think i remember hearing it and some other Red Panda pedals on some YT videos and they were all sounding pretty interesting.

  On 11/23/2020 at 2:58 PM, sheatheman said:

Wow, I wish a special person in my life would drop $6k on gear

Hope it was not inheritance.

  On 11/23/2020 at 4:34 PM, thawkins said:

Hope it was not inheritance.

Lol, no it wasn’t thankfully. I’m just extremely lucky. She would be special without such a gesture, just to clarify

  On 11/23/2020 at 3:08 PM, auxien said:

nice, i've got that same Alesis mixer. had it for well over a decade now, still in pretty solid condition.

how're you liking the 0-coast? been considering some semi-modular stuff over the next year-ish and it's one of the top contenders.

that Red Panda Particle get some nice sounds? i think i remember hearing it and some other Red Panda pedals on some YT videos and they were all sounding pretty interesting.

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The Alesis mixer is ok - I use it as a sub mix as I have a 6 input sound card. Could do with more but this allows a few more connections.

love the 0-Coast - I would never recommend it as your only mono synth or starter synth but it does stuff that more ‘standard ‘ synths don’t. For example you only get one oscillator but lots of other circuits on the device can create tones such as digital oscillator from the random maths section - this video shows it off - 

The Particle is a great effect - think granular delay stuff etc - like the 0-Coast, something a bit different

^  Well put on the 0-Coast

I had one of those Alesis mixers for a few years and it used to heat up a LOT on the upper right corner near the power supply.  Does yours?

  On 11/23/2020 at 5:22 PM, Grain Bastard said:

The Alesis mixer is ok - I use it as a sub mix as I have a 6 input sound card. Could do with more but this allows a few more connections.

love the 0-Coast - I would never recommend it as your only mono synth or starter synth but it does stuff that more ‘standard ‘ synths don’t. For example you only get one oscillator but lots of other circuits on the device can create tones such as digital oscillator from the random maths section - this video shows it off - 

The Particle is a great effect - think granular delay stuff etc - like the 0-Coast, something a bit different

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these days i'm using the Alesis as a sub-mixer as well, got a main Zoom mixer/recorder. relatively sturdy little beast tho. 

i've got plenty of other synths so that's not my concern...gonna give that video a watch, thanks. i've seen a fair few videos/reviews/tricks on it, but don't think i've seen that one yet.

nice on the Particle  

  On 11/24/2020 at 12:22 AM, TubularCorporation said:

I had one of those Alesis mixers for a few years and it used to heat up a LOT on the upper right corner near the power supply.  Does yours?

mine gets pretty hot, no doubt. always wondered why. figured it would degrade the internals over time, but doesn't seem to have (yet).

Mine was used so I was never sure if that was normal or not, never caused any problems for me either. The only piece of gear I've had that ran hotter (other than amps) was one of these:

And it runs so hot that it sometimes just glitches out completely, but it was free and I hang on to it for those times when I want to sound like an 11 year old Dream Theater fan in 1990.

Lol, yes it does run pretty warm - I’m also very wary of it as it’s basically the same Behringer mixer in drag that I used to own. That ended up being used on a Flare audio sound system my mate owned (a blatant Funktion-1 rip off) and used to send signals from I various amps etc - anyway, the thing was loud-as and the parties were invariably a bit rowdy. The odd person who would invite themselves behind the decks would soon learn to not mess with things as you would get a huge electric shock off the mixer if you touched it - it was proper dangerous IMO but carried on working. Thankfully the alesis doesn’t exhibit this behaviour

I might eventually get a better mixer but it’s ok for the moment. When jamming it’s nice to put a bit of reverb on to sit things in the mix and it’s fine for that. If I record thru it I turn them off.

In the Alesis mixer's defense, it's older than the Behringer counterpart, the friend I got mine from bought it a year or two before the Behringer came out (mine was the original one that only had a mix out via USB but no individual channels).  I know it's hard to believe, but I think Behringer might have actually copied it!

I've had one pice of gear that gave me shocks like that, too, and unfortunately it's the MPC2000xl.  I've never figured out what's going on with it and it's never damaged anything but there's something going on that shouldn't be and has been since I got it in 2009. Also I recently noticed that if I have it plugged into a mixer channel with the level (of that channel) all the way down everything is fine while the MPC is on, but if I trn the MPC off then I get a low ground loop hum at the output of the mixer. So the MPC is back in semi-retirement until I can figure out that whole issue and hopefully fix it when I finally open it all up to replace a couple of buttons that are wearing out.

Sticker finally showed up this morning, so my cheap-ass DIY record clamp is complete.  I don't know about any audiophile stuff but it sure helps with warped records (and not going to lie, the bass definitely sounds punchier and tighter).

Looks very slick. Did you mill it? 
 

May I propose the name Spindoctor if you decide to mass produce them including the sticker?