Monomachine User Appreciation

  On 6/2/2016 at 7:14 PM, Chesney said:

Hold out man. Obviously monitors are an essential buy but damn they are boring haha.

thnx man i'll try to endure. but i feel that the next week could be the dead end of my patience so it'll be either the silver elektrons or neumann kh120a + rme babyface pro (or something something)

shall see...

hahah sounds familiar. I also waited three months for my monomachine; I was so close to asking for my money back and buying some other inferior similar product (a spectralis mk1 came up on ebay, I was seriously considering it).

Try to be patient, as difficult as it seems!

for all the people waiting, this would be a great time to get them off ebay. prices are low!

i got my octatrack & monomachine both used off ebay and they were both in like new condition. my monomachine was just 3 months past its manufacture date when i got it!

just set a search to notify you when one is available & be super careful who you buy from.

Very true, all my elektrons have been second hand apart from the A4 which I preordered and had a grueling wait.

The mnm I got at the start of the year was only £400

I've looked and each time the prices were higher than the new price drop piece of $800. I guess people who bought theirs for 1200 don't really want to let go of it for so little.

I could cry right now.

Can't believe this has happened. Just telling someone about how I've gotten into taping everything from the monitors so I don't lose any magic moments, go to show him what I've been working on and my MnM craps out. I'm actually gutted. This thing has been a dear friend for so long and I'm really hoping it's an easy fix I can do myself. Sounds like a speech that belongs in Star Wars or some shit but it's so true.

OH NO

  On 6/10/2016 at 4:11 PM, futureimage said:

I could cry right now.

 

Can't believe this has happened. Just telling someone about how I've gotten into taping everything from the monitors so I don't lose any magic moments, go to show him what I've been working on and my MnM craps out. I'm actually gutted. This thing has been a dear friend for so long and I'm really hoping it's an easy fix I can do myself. Sounds like a speech that belongs in Star Wars or some shit but it's so true.

at least you have one! (seriously though. sorry bud).

paid for one 3 weeks ago that was supposed to arrive to the distributor in 10 days. last email i got states:

    Quote

HI redacted,

Still don't have a firm ETA from Elektron - they are very aware how behind they are and they're getting hit up from pretty much everyone regarding this delay.

I do appreciate your continued patience, I expect to have some traction on this by next week for sure - ideally they are in transit at that time.

Thanks

redacted

Blargh blargh blargh blargh nothing but tears of sadness and woe for everyone it seems

The above is meant truly sincerely, no joke. This thing is incredible and I'm so sad that people can't get hold of them.

:(

fuuuck man that's horrible. I'd seriously lose my shit if I saw that error. Does elektron tend to factory reset machines when they repair them?

edit or yeah the internal connections may just need re-seating. Seems to be a common problem.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFqePDmliFb/

Also, shit that is fucking horrible about your monomachine. let's just hope that the parts need to be reseated. It'd be crushed if that happened to mine...

^ hahah, cenk is so adorable

On a similar note soundwise, I finally made a somewhat accurate 303 emulation on the monomachine, too bad it's grossly inappropriate for the track I'm working on :P

sorry to hear that, futureimage.

if it's any consolation, the way things are going you will have that repaired & sent back to you before the people waiting to buy new ones will receive theirs.

  On 6/10/2016 at 9:59 PM, modey said:

fuuuck man that's horrible. I'd seriously lose my shit if I saw that error. Does elektron tend to factory reset machines when they repair them?

 

 

edit or yeah the internal connections may just need re-seating. Seems to be a common problem.

Wellll gladly I've only lost 6 patterns worth of new stuff... which is all taped as audio whilst developing the patterns, so it's all retrievable. It's just getting the thing to boot which is causing me to panic.

There are three things I'm going to try:

-Reseating and cleaning internal interconnects

-Replacing the CPU board battery

-Inspecting the CPU board DSP + SRAM

I think it's going to the be latter that has the problem - there's no reason that I can see where the test mode would report a problem caused by interconnects if the DSP and memory chips are on the same PCB as the CPU. What I think it must be are some cooked-up joints on that board. It's mounted "upside-down" at the bottom of the unit. Is there any ventilation in the MD or MnM? No. Therefore, as soon as that board gets warm, the joints are just going to go to shit after a certain time.

Unfortunately, there are no photos online of what the component side of the CPU board looks like, but from the limited research I could carry out, it looks like all the chips are in QFP packages, not BGA. The former allows me to resolder/reflow the joints, the latter would not. So, I'm hoping I can so a quick reflow of everything (with a shitload of flux) and the joints will be OK. I feel fairly comfortable doing this as I used to do this as a dayjob, and in plenty of ways still do. All my fingers are firmly crossed.

Will report back. I'd rather not send this thing back - I think the problems Elektron may be having are sourcing the SRAM chips for this very CPU board. If the Mk2s use the same chips as the Mk1 for the DSP RAM, it looks like they're pretty difficult to source now.

why don't you ask elektron? maybe they'll say something else than "send it to us"

That sucks dude. At least you didn't have tons of work already in it...plus the online Elektron community is pretty active, maybe seeking out help from some of the gurus at Elektronauts could lead to a solution.

Can I ask how you're recording audio constantly? This is something I've been considering implementing myself now that I'm working with a bit more hardware and doing some jamming, I'm curious to how easy this option would be for me to have as part of my setup.

  On 6/11/2016 at 1:35 PM, auxien said:

That sucks dude. At least you didn't have tons of work already in it...plus the online Elektron community is pretty active, maybe seeking out help from some of the gurus at Elektronauts could lead to a solution.

 

Can I ask how you're recording audio constantly? This is something I've been considering implementing myself now that I'm working with a bit more hardware and doing some jamming, I'm curious to how easy this option would be for me to have as part of my setup.

I use Reaper and just record the stereo mix. It's perhaps not the most elegant solution but it's all there right away to edit down rather than having to fuck around with dumping an external recorder's data to the computer.

I'm considering upgrading to an audio device that can record each mnm channel to a separate track, but I do a lot of processing and routing of tracks within the mnm itself so it probably wouldn't be the same..

  On 6/11/2016 at 12:12 PM, futureimage said:

 

Unfortunately, there are no photos online of what the component side of the CPU board looks like, but from the limited research I could carry out, it looks like all the chips are in QFP packages, not BGA. The former allows me to resolder/reflow the joints, the latter would not. So, I'm hoping I can so a quick reflow of everything (with a shitload of flux) and the joints will be OK. I feel fairly comfortable doing this as I used to do this as a dayjob, and in plenty of ways still do. All my fingers are firmly crossed.

 

Will report back. I'd rather not send this thing back - I think the problems Elektron may be having are sourcing the SRAM chips for this very CPU board. If the Mk2s use the same chips as the Mk1 for the DSP RAM, it looks like they're pretty difficult to source now.

 

oh damn, good luck! Hope you get it fixed. I'm so bad with a soldering iron, I couldn't imagine reflowing precision gear like this.

sorry just had to post this little snippit I'm working on

just monomachine + alesis midiverb

- melodic percussion (again, FM is so good for this)

JOHN* IS RISEN

Just took the MnM back to the studio, tried on OS reflash - nothing. Opened it up, disconnected the PCB interconnects - none of the terminals looked unclean or corroded, and cleaned with isopropyl but nothing came off. Decided to just try powering it back up before looking at the CPU/DSP board, and lo and behold, it booted.

If you want a thrilling video diary of what happened...

Keeping an eye firmly on how it behaves over the next week - I'm playing a brand new set in a fortnight's time, hence I wanted the MnM back so impatiently and didn't want to wait for Elektron, though I had gotten in touch with them. Either way, I'm very very very happy and going to drink plenty of beer to celebrate.

*thx Sean

yeh the re-attaching connectors thing often comes up as a solution for things like this..

Oh nice one, Could be as simple as something getting inside from the gaps around the buttons, causing havoc and you taking it apart and shaking it loose.

That's a nice sounding loop Modey, post it again when it has developed.

That's great news futureimage! Good to know in case it ever happens to the rest of us with elektron gear.

Thanks chesney! It's part of something I'm working on for a potential label release so I'll post the EP here for sure.