the watmm GAS thread

The Wizard Of IDM: How To Sound Like Aphex Twin (GearNews)

  On 2/11/2023 at 5:03 PM, dcom said:

The Wizard Of IDM: How To Sound Like Aphex Twin (GearNews)

lotta people have that gear. not a lotta people have that talent

Wonder how much effort it would take to write a script that crawls the "It has been used by..." lists on vintagesynthexplorer and have it churn out articles like that for every artist that's mentioned on there. (pretty sure the list is something like, fsol, afx, autechre, crystal method, bt and depeche mode) Oh, and fatboy slim ofc. And the chemical brothers.

love the filter on the Casio FZ-1. Wish it could be cloned. Nothing like it

The Mixfader is simultaneously one of the cooler and most frustrating things I've used. If I could just get it to permanently set to sending a MIDI CC, and not have to calibrate it every single time, would be a beautiful device!!! 

Anyone know of an alternate individual x-fader controller with that kind of action? I don't want to use an entire mixer.

  On 2/11/2023 at 10:33 PM, marf said:

love the filter on the Casio FZ-1. Wish it could be cloned. Nothing like it

When I was like 15 or 16 and really in to Zappa, a year or two after he died, his estate sold off most of the gear in his rehearsal space.  Most of it was expensive, and anything that wasn't was things like monitor wedges and flight cases that I didn't need and couldnt' afford to ship even if I did.

But there were two FZ-1 keyboards from the 1988 tour for $100 each, fully functioning, and I had my eye on them.  But this was the 90s, gear info wasn't so easy to find, and I had no idea that Casio made any professional instruments.  I thought they were some obscure Casiotone model.  $100 seemed like way too much for a Casio (that's more like $300 in 2023), even if it HAD belonged to Frank Zappa, and I definitely couldn't convince my parents to lend me the money, I already had two or three SK-1s that were all free (the band had maybe 5 total between us, they were so common you could literally find them on the sidewalk back then) and you could get a Juno 60 or Korg Poly61 for about $100 more (me and the bass player in my band did exactly that a couple years later) so it never happened. It wasn't until years later I learned what I had actually missed. 

  On 2/11/2023 at 5:03 PM, dcom said:

The Wizard Of IDM: How To Sound Like Aphex Twin (GearNews)

This article boils down to "have rich parents."

Pretty sure it takes more than that, although it probably wouldn't hurt.

Every synth youtubers / influencers right now :

lol^

i think it’s looking and sounding really interesting actually, as far as groove box type devices go. the knobs/faders/buttons all in a compact but not tiny space is a great thing. looks like the visual feedback of the screen is actually useful and contextual, for the most part. got a little weirdness to it but not too too cheesy.

great write up over at cdm: https://cdm.link/2023/02/roland-sh-4d-polysynth/

Yeah, the SH-4D seems fun, but I'd still rather have a Pittsburgh Modular Taiga.

Wait, so is this an MC-101 with knobs?

  On 2/12/2023 at 4:14 PM, TubularCorporation said:

When I was like 15 or 16 and really in to Zappa, a year or two after he died, his estate sold off most of the gear in his rehearsal space.  Most of it was expensive, and anything that wasn't was things like monitor wedges and flight cases that I didn't need and couldnt' afford to ship even if I did.

 

But there were two FZ-1 keyboards from the 1988 tour for $100 each, fully functioning, and I had my eye on them.  But this was the 90s, gear info wasn't so easy to find, and I had no idea that Casio made any professional instruments.  I thought they were some obscure Casiotone model.  $100 seemed like way too much for a Casio (that's more like $300 in 2023), even if it HAD belonged to Frank Zappa, and I definitely couldn't convince my parents to lend me the money, I already had two or three SK-1s that were all free (the band had maybe 5 total between us, they were so common you could literally find them on the sidewalk back then) and you could get a Juno 60 or Korg Poly61 for about $100 more (me and the bass player in my band did exactly that a couple years later) so it never happened. It wasn't until years later I learned what I had actually missed. 

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interestingly, i have a casiotone from Coil that was auctioned off after johnn died. it was like the only thing i could afford from the auction.

I have Liza Minelli's midas venice console which she used as a preamp for karaoke. 

In high school I played in a band with a guy who's dad had a guitar cable that he once loaned to Chuck Berry.

The joke is that I'm not actually joking.

I once visited a guy who still owned a Vox AC30 that he loaned to John Lennon when The Beatles played in Karlstad in 1963. Had a handwritten, signed thank you letter and everything. 

Behringer Taurus clone is tempting, and it's pretty cheap even by Behringer standards.

While we're name dropping, I have the Hammond Auto-Vari 64 that might have been used on the 8 Heads In a Duffel Bag soundtrack. 

Top that, u cant

How does behringer keep it cheap ?

Well, a single oscillator monosynth is pretty simple.  I've built stuff more complex than a Minitaur from kits for less than $200, so when you factor in economies of scale, cheap labor and owning your own component factory it makes sense.  

"How does Roland have the gall to charge $400 for their Boutique series synths?" is the real question.

  On 3/4/2023 at 6:41 PM, TubularCorporation said:

Well, a single oscillator monosynth is pretty simple.  I've built stuff more complex than a Minitaur from kits for less than $200, so when you factor in economies of scale, cheap labor and owning your own component factory it makes sense.  

"How does Roland have the gall to charge $400 for their Boutique series synths?" is the real question.

Arent the boutiques all digital ? why not get the vsts which are using their same acb technology if im not mistaken.

I mentioned it in a different thread last week, but the TC-8210 plugin/USB controller thingy is still $29 shipped on Amazon (promotional pricing that was supposed to end sometime last year but I guess never got changed here).  I got one and just set it up a coule hours ago, so far I've got to say $29 is definitely worht it for the plugin - sometimes you need a really familiar reverb and this does a bunch of them very well. For $100 I wouldn't have considered it when youcan get tthe Valhalla stuff for half that (and there are plenty of other great reverbs for even less, or free), for under $30 it's a bargin and totally worth it.

The remote control is actually pretty handy, too, less of a gimmick than I expected and if you're going to have DRM on your plugins this is way better than an iLok or license server or something.

So I guess score one for Behringer.  If one of the other plugins in this line shows up this cheap I won't hesitate to buy it.

  On 3/4/2023 at 7:26 PM, Wunderbar said:

Arent the boutiques all digital ? why not get the vsts which are using their same acb technology if im not mistaken.

If they were like $150-$200 for what's essentially a  dedicated, low latency DSP platform running one of their plugins, with a hardware controller and USB audio/MIDI interface, that would be a great product for people who needed something to play out with that was portable and wouldn't be too big a loss if it got stolen or broken, or people who were just starting out and wanted something with a bit of tactile control (and resale value) that plugins don't have.

For $400 you're well into the zone where you could do better without spending much more, or go with the plugin without compromising enough to justify the price difference. A Dreadbox Nymphes is $100 more than a Roland Boutique.

  On 8/26/2022 at 2:36 AM, TubularCorporation said:

Oh, there is one piece of gear i still really, really want, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) it's rare and expensive so I don't expect to ever get it.  But it would be so, so nice. The Midas XL88 analog matrix mixer:

 

 

https://www.midasconsoles.com/product.html?modelCode=P0AHI

 

There's a beat up one on Reverb for $1300 right now, that's about as low as I see them get.  If only.

 

EDIT: the sad thing is I know enough about the theater and broadcast setting swhere this kind of stuff was used to know that a lot of them probably went straight into the garbage when they were upgraded to digital.

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On the topic of matrix mixers:

http://mapmap.ch/index.php/ongoing/landline/

I was just talking about how the world needed more pin-matrix patching options with a friend at practice last night.  I didn't know about this one!

I think I already mentioned it, but I realized a little while ago that I can use the old Roland M160 (basic 80s line mixer, 16 inputs with othing but level, 4 aux sends and panning) I got cheap and recapped about a year ago ago (but don't use because it hums a lot in my setup)  should work as a 16x4+2 matrix mixer if I ignore the dedicated returns, but I haven't tried it yet.