the watmm GAS thread

It's mad that if you put Godfather in an eurorack enclosure, it'll eat up 900 mA unless you disable the LEDs with a jumper, then it'll take only 350 mA. Nevertheless, seems to me to be a fun box, and when they update the firmware w/ support for combining two channels as one stereo, it'll be even nicer.

  On 5/24/2023 at 1:16 PM, TubularCorporation said:

No photos, but I jsut found this awesome looking AdLib compatible OPL2 Raspberry Pi shield that only costs $32.

 

But for another $150 (plus a Teensy) you can combine it with this:

It looks like it's more designed around the same seller's OPL3 board, but it says it works with the OPL2 also. An AdLib clone with CV inputs and a display with full GUI would be a lot of fun. It even has a multitrack sequencer with song mode!

With an OPL3 it should be on par with most of the original Yamaha 4 op FM synths (I don't think the OPL3 can do everything the chip in the TX81z did, but I might be wrong about that), but i really like that OPL2 sound.

Not dropping that much money on gear any time soon, but I'll probably get the actual OPL2 board just to have around.

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So for anyone who was interested in this, apparently it's almost impossible to source authentic, working OPL-3 chips now because the guy who designed this bought essentially all the known existing stock of them recently.  I'm sure there are some around, but it's not going to be super easy to get one like it was a year or two ago.

Kicking the tires of a Vermona DRM1 MKIII w/ OXI One. DRM1 is wicked, but additional appendages are required to tweak things live.

  On 7/6/2023 at 12:12 PM, dcom said:

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OK this looks really useful. Too expensive for me, but if I could I would.

EDIT: also I wish it was bigger, those knobs are too small and close together for my taste, but not as bad as most Eurorack stuff.  That Space Echo he has in the background is a good example of the size and spacing the controls on a performance-oriented piece of gear should have, IMO.

Maybe next year I can get a Behringer Fredo for $150.

  On 7/7/2023 at 3:47 PM, TubularCorporation said:

OK this looks really useful. Too expensive for me, but if I could I would.

I'll let you know how it is when Enjoy Electronics delivers and I've acquainted myself with it.

Definitely.  If it really delivers, I could actually see myself selling off some old rack gear and Eurorack stuff I built during the pandemic, and then racking it up in a homemade case with a few utility modules and a spring reverb and making it the hub for all of my audio processing.

  On 7/7/2023 at 3:23 PM, dcom said:

Kicking the tires of a Vermona DRM1 MKIII w/ OXI One. DRM1 is wicked, but additional appendages are required to tweak things live.

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Oof. Well jell here. Been oggling various iterations of the drm for the last decade or so. Did you get one with the gate/cv board?

Yeah, a DRM and a Filterbank (or better yet a dual filterbank) are two of the things I've always wanted but will never actually buy unless I win the lottery I don't play or something.  So nice, but I've made three $1000+ gear purchases and 5 or 6 upper-three-figure ones in the past decade and that's about as much as I really need to spend on gear in my life probably.

  On 7/8/2023 at 2:31 AM, user said:

Oof. Well jell here. Been oggling various iterations of the drm for the last decade or so. Did you get one with the gate/cv board?

No, a second hand unit with just default MIDI note on + velocity support, but with MKIII, the trigger inputs are only triggers, no velocity; MKIV has CV triggers if you opt for the pricier model, otherwise the differences between III and IV are so small that what I paid for the the MKIII it's no contest. I would love to know more about electronics so I could add my own CV inputs for e.g. pitch for all the instruments. The DRM1 has enough panel space to add a huge number of mods.

I got a second hand Erica Synths Matrix Mixer from a friend I've bough gear before, it's something I've had my eye on for a long time, so I pounced at the chance to get one for half what a new one goes for. It just might be enough for me to delay getting a proper mixing desk. The Godfather gets here on the 26th, I'm almost salivating.

If any of you own an Electribe 2, someone managed to make a custom firmware here: https://github.com/bangcorrupt/hacktribe

After thinking about it forever I now own a Dreadbox Typhon. 

Sounds lush tbqh

  On 7/18/2023 at 12:29 PM, dcom said:

I got a second hand Erica Synths Matrix Mixer from a friend I've bough gear before, it's something I've had my eye on for a long time, so I pounced at the chance to get one for half what a new one goes for. It just might be enough for me to delay getting a proper mixing desk. The Godfather gets here on the 26th, I'm almost salivating.

Not sure I'd ever find myself in the market one myself, but after recently watching a demo, these things would be pretty great for live sets. Quickly being able to recall all kinds of wacky hardware routings via-program change could yield amazing results. 

Is there any kind of pause in sound when switching presets? Any issues with effects trails, etc.?

Hooked my old D-110 and PG-10 up again yesterday.  I can't believe I almost sold them to raise money for a Hydrasysth, what was I thinking?

Honestly, I've got a new 1tb SSD coming to replace my old recording drive, I finally got a good price on a Unitor for the Atari ST so I can start using Notator finally, and I've got an Atari HDD to SD adapter on the way.  Other than more hard drives and a SATA to CFAST cable I can't think of a single piece of gear I need or want (unless someone has an original Arp 2500 or something they're looking to give away for free, obviously).

I guess more/better cables and some day I'd like to replace the Amatek power conditioners I got cheap on eBay with the step up model that has full ground isolation, but it's really not that big a deal.

umm

I'd like to get my old Sunn amp, acoustic guitar and TX-802 professionally repaired - they're all a bit beyond what I ahve the tools and experience to do myself without a serious chance of making things worse.

EDIT: a good band saw, that's the thing I want.  I had a shitty band saw that I gave away when I moved to a smaller apartment years ago, and you never realize how useful a band saw is until you have one and then don't have one.

  On 7/24/2023 at 9:31 PM, dcom said:

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Wow This looks crazy! Didn’t know this existed!
Seems to be discounted at the moment but I’ve bought too many shit in the last few months (Digitone, M8, OP-1 Field, SP404 mk2, few mics, few pedals… uffff!) 

how do you like it so far?

  On 7/26/2023 at 7:30 PM, xox said:

Wow This looks crazy! Didn’t know this existed!
Seems to be discounted at the moment but I’ve bought too many shit in the last few months (Digitone, M8, OP-1 Field, SP404 mk2, few mics, few pedals… uffff!) 

how do you like it so far?

It's amazing, four mono channels (w/ two pairs of stereo out) with separate controls for most things, only the reverb params are shared. Per-channel gain, saturation, delay, double tap delay, reverb, filter, compression w/ sidechain, panning and whatnot, I haven't even scratched the surface yet and I've spent hours jamming with just a couple of sound sources. It's expensive, yes, but definitely worth it - it even has two LFOs you can route to internal things or via the patch bay to other modular gear; gate ins and outs, extensive MIDI control, you name it. Definitely useful for live setups, but I'm sure I'll find a lot of use for it at home, too. It's really hands-on, and there will be firmware updates which will allow combining two mono inputs to a stereo pair input with single controls etc. There's nothing else out there that does what Godfather does, Elektron Analog Heat +FX comes close, but I went for the Godfather, and I think I chose wisely.

  On 7/26/2023 at 7:56 PM, dcom said:

There's nothing else out there that does what Godfather does, Elektron Analog Heat +FX comes close, but I went for the Godfather, and I think I chose wisely.

yes, i was thinking of getting an Analog heat +Fx (had the non-fx version few yrs ago) or the super powerful pedal from Eventide, H90; both cost around the same as Goodfather ... 

but tbh hw effect boxes are cool and i have few pedals that i use all the time (and other boxes that i use as efx processors like SP404 mk2, Octatrack, Op-1 Field...) but they are probably the least important thing to me in my studio, especially bc i rarely perform live and at the end i always mix my tracks in a DAW where i have tons of interesting plugins ... still, ill most probably buy one of the aforementioned boxes (soon?)

  On 7/26/2023 at 8:21 PM, xox said:

i was thinking of getting an Analog heat +Fx (had the non-fx version few yrs ago) or the super powerful pedal from Eventide, H90; both cost around the same as Goodfather ... 

I also have an Empress ZOIA Euroburo, which is an amazingly versatile device, but it's far from the hands-on capabilities of Godfather. You can do anything and everything on ZOIA, but you'd have to build a patch to use an external controller to get even the rudimentary functionality of Godfather. I don't have that many outboard effects units, I have the Roland AIRA modular effects (Scooper, Demora, Torcido, Bitrazer) and a TC Electronic M100; also, the Roland SP-404A can be used as an effects processor. Now that I have an Erica Synths Matrix Mixer I can do almost any routing configuration I can think of - I'm still missing a proper mixing desk, but it'll have to wait.

I wish there was a minimal, high quality, ACTIVE monitor controller that didn't cost $800+.  All I need is clean buffering, level calibration for every instrument, and the ability to select between 2-3 inputs and route them to 2-3 outputs with popless relay switching.  There are kits, but even those are more expensive than they really need to be, and the more affordable commercial units Iv'e tried are all pretty terrible.

Ever since hearing aphex describe how he made Fenix Funk 5, using parallel bandpass filter section on a fenix modular to simulate vocal formants, I've been obsessed with finding an analog monosynth that has parallel multi-mode filters (via a switch or otherwise). You would think with the oversaturation of analog monosynths there would be SOMETHING capable of doing this by now. Even most of these huge flagship monos cannot do it. Modular could do it, but I don't feel like diving into that. Theres a lot of synths that come close, but I haven't found one. Some have a formant filter mode, some have one parallel high/low pass filters, but nothing quite like that sound.

I Just found out about the SER-2020, which seems to be a clone of the Synton Sryinx (which are incredibly rare and way out of my price range). And holy shit this seems amazing? Kind of the exact filter sound I've been looking to incorporate into my setup. Synton style formants for a reasonable price, not to mention it just sounds good, I love character synths. Somehow this completely flew past my radar a couple years ago.
 

I bought a valley people Box loaded with 2 gain brains and 2 kepex's gonna get a maxi Q and do eq dependent expanding with the kepex. Not many duckers and side chain compressors in hardware other than these. 

  On 7/30/2023 at 8:26 PM, marf said:

I bought a valley people Box loaded with 2 gain brains and 2 kepex's gonna get a maxi Q and do eq dependent expanding with the kepex. Not many duckers and side chain compressors in hardware other than these. 

Awesome, I've never had my hands on that stuff but the early Symetrix stuff (that was essentially also valley People IIRC) is generally great.