the watmm GAS thread

  On 4/29/2020 at 5:42 PM, Taupe Beats said:

A friendly tip:  There's a great iOS app called Patch Base where you can get editors for a lot of the synths mentioned in the last couple pages and many others. Developer is a nice guy. Not too expensive.

https://coffeeshopped.com/patch-base

I would buy in a heartbeat if I had an iPad. Unfortunately it does not exists for phones.

  On 4/29/2020 at 8:18 PM, thawkins said:

I would buy in a heartbeat if I had an iPad. Unfortunately it does not exists for phones.

Yeah, I've definitely looked at it before btu all the computing devices I have are running either Windows, Android or GEM.

Happened upon a free Casio sk-10 today. At first it didn’t seem to want to power on but after realising I probably got the polarity on the adapter wrong I was in sampling heaven straight away. 
Now waiting for some gas to build up so I can do the obvious thing and play a farty rendition of fur Elise on the minikeys. 

Gonna clean it up a bit tomorrow and maybe see if there are any simple mods that I could do. 

TBH I'd leave it stock, it's a classic.  Or add the MIDI mod.

Exciting things are afoot here:

PSU, knobs, switches, encoder and display are all good.  Bootloader and firmware are flashed on.  Haven't checked USB or MIDI i/o yet. Will start building voice cards tomorrow!

Once things settle down a bit with the pandemic I think I'm going to sell the Mother32 and use the money to build a ReSEMble.

Too cool for school, Tubular...

Hopefully it'll work.  If you count from when I started putting money aside for parts it's been around 14 months so far, maybe a bit more, although I didn't start building until March.

The Resemble kit seems like a clunky mess, unfortunately. Thirteen PCBs and a spaghetti tangle of power cables. 

Looks like the inside of a Serge system to me - a bunch of separate modules behind a single panel.

  On 4/30/2020 at 11:56 PM, TubularCorporation said:

TBH I'd leave it stock, it's a classic.  Or add the MIDI mod. 

Yeah, it crossed my mind that it’s probably wise to leave it a bit, at least until my circuit bending skills have improved a bit, got some cheap toys to practice on first. Will probably try to put an audio out on it first. 

  On 5/2/2020 at 11:05 PM, user said:

Yeah, it crossed my mind that it’s probably wise to leave it a bit, at least until my circuit bending skills have improved a bit, got some cheap toys to practice on first. Will probably try to put an audio out on it first. 

I actually glanced to quickly and thought it was an SK-1, an SK-10 is probably fair game although I think they're actually a lot rarer.  I've seen tons of SK-1s over the years but I've only ever seen one SK-10 and it was literally full of rainwater.

Kijimi's more or less up to three voices, although I'm waiting two missing resistors and one missing cap per board so I couldn't actually get voices 2 and 3 100% finished.  But they're really close, 5-10 minutes of soldering, installing ICs and calibrating is all they need.

At the rate I'm going I've got about 25-30 more hours of work and the whole thing will be done (not counting the 8 outs mod).

I just found out about model:cycles yesterday and it was real funny seeing modey playing coy for a few pages

I just ordered one but I fear it’s going to turn out the same way as when I ordered a mnm in 2016

elektron should save a few units only for musicians that can pass an entrance exam instead of opening the floodgates to a bunch of tech guys that have bots set to monitor the elektron webstore and auto-buy any new products. 

I need a bass accompaniment for my electric guitar. Heard this was just the ticket?

cool, calvin from sweetwater said they were told by elektron that next shipment is coming second half of may

Honestly, modey getting stock patterns on the cycles is one of the greatest achievements I have heard of in watmm history 

So close...

Two more voices to go.  For some reason the pitch bend isn't responding right (doesn't actually cover the range I set it to) but that's some kind of configuration issue and could easily be on the controller side, the hardware is 100% working as far as I can tell.  Close enough I cased it up, going to hook it up to the monitors and mess with it as a 6 voice tonight for a bit, see if I can figure out the pitch bend, and then build the last two voices tomorrow.  Sometime next week after I've had a break I'll build the 8 output board, but I don't want to deal with measuring ant drilling for all those jacks yet.

  On 5/6/2020 at 5:32 PM, sheatheman said:

I just found out about model:cycles yesterday and it was real funny seeing modey playing coy for a few pages

I just ordered one but I fear it’s going to turn out the same way as when I ordered a mnm in 2016

elektron should save a few units only for musicians that can pass an entrance exam instead of opening the floodgates to a bunch of tech guys that have bots set to monitor the elektron webstore and auto-buy any new products. 

haha, it was so hard to keep it secret. I did tell some of my chip friends about it at a bar a few days before it was announced, and then a few people went and bought one after hearing my comparisons to nanoloop 2, which was nice

Also it's a *lot* easier to get a good sound out of than the monomachine, but somewhat similar in that you can dig a bit deeper and get some unique sounds out of it. Not nearly as deep as the monomachine, but I think that's a positive point. Like I've said a few times, I could take it to a gig with nothing prepared, and improvise a whole set on the spot. Actually that's what I've done in my streams with it.

  On 5/6/2020 at 11:50 PM, sheatheman said:

Honestly, modey getting stock patterns on the cycles is one of the greatest achievements I have heard of in watmm history 

It was certainly the highlight of my year last year. Being recognised by a company whose gear I really get along with is pretty huge for me.

@TubularCorporation

man, i would be so nervous to get the kit. but the price difference is amazing, which shows how much the labor is worth. figure they must pay a technician at minimum $30/hr ish to build it, if their business model is set up that way. how long is it going to take you total?

The factory version is mostly surface mount, actually, so it's a lot lower labor than the kit, but I think it comes with real NOS SSM2044 filter ICs instead of the modern clones.  Allegedly the originals sound nicer, but they're hard to get.  There were some for sale recently on one of the DIY synth Facebook groups but they were $50 each.  Fair price from what I've seen, but yeah, not going to be buying 8 of those.

EDIT: actually I doubt they use NOS SSMs in the factory model.

My GAS was doing so well, but now I need a 0-CTRL

I was never really into the MakeNoise vibe before, but something about this is whole concept and way of working resonates strongly with me.

Also the 0-Coast looked cool to me but always seemed like it was missing something. This seems to be exactly what it was missing.

  Quote

We have 0 control

We do not understand

We have 0 control

We are not in command

There's no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end

When we all disintegrate it will all happen again, yeah

Expand  

(the GAS song by Bad Religion)

Kijimi is DONE.

Well, except that the MPE mode is all fucked up, but that's not a hardware thing (EDIT: I sure hope it's not, it really seems like a firmware problem to me), that's some kind of setting or bug that's making the pitch bend scale wrong if I turn on MPE, like instead of having separate pitch bend on 8 different channels distributed to the 8 voices, it's applying all of the pitch bed 8 times over on every voice, so say I've got pitch bend set to +/- 4 semitones, in the single channel modes it's normal but in MPE the same bend range will bend the actual pitch by about 4 octaves, with no other settings changed, even after a full factory reset on the controller and the Kijimi. 

Weird but I'll figure it out, and in the single channel modes i sounds incredible and it's really fun to program, nearly control-per-function (a few modulation options that were added in updates are a little more buried but it's basically a control-per-function synth as far as the actual voice architecture). Worth all the effort and expense, which was really a lot more than  could afford even as a kit, only way it was possible was by collecting the parts slowly for a year.

Nothing to share yet but I'll be recording a bunch with it over the next two weeks before I have to go back to work, so hopefully I'll get something representative to share soon.

EDIT: Talked to Black Corporatio support, everything that was giving me issues is either already being handled in the next update or added to the list.

No examples yet though, I've just been recording endless online jams with people and building stuff, but soon.

I got a white/grey case for my PO-33 and it's making me use it more. I'm more vain than I thought. Samplers should be a grime-collecting shade of white or beige to match their auditory destiny.

  On 5/9/2020 at 6:56 PM, sweepstakes said:

Samplers should be a grime-collecting shade of white or beige

Haha, I agree. So many people complain about the enclosures of Elektron's Model boxes being white/grey, but for me they really do evoke that late 80s-early 90s sampler/computer/game console feel. 

  On 5/10/2020 at 2:05 AM, modey said:

Haha, I agree. So many people complain about the enclosures of Elektron's Model boxes being white/grey, but for me they really do evoke that late 80s-early 90s sampler/computer/game console feel. 

A lot of Indian electronic instruments are actually made by companies that also produce medical equipment, and it shows in the design.

I'm all for it and I wish more gear looked like it belonged on a pole next to an I.V. bag.

Nuclear missile control is obviously the best technology aesthetic, we all know that, but medical computer is right up there.

I'd put it on par with 1980s CAD workstations.

But it can't step to this:

The Elektron Model line looks like medical equipment for sure.