TubularCorporation

Oh yeah, I definitely appreciate the stuff that isn't pure snakeoil (like multi-thousand-dollar hand braided power cords and shit). Only reason I'm not still using a '63 HH Scott tube stereo I got (free, no less) a long time ago through work is because it needs some service and I can't afford it or do it myself, but it sounded amazing and wasn't even what most audiophiles would call a particularly great amp (although respectable). The people who are more into the DIY side of things especially, like the home-built turntable crowd who figured out how to make high end turntable motors out of old floppy drives - that stuff is great. But there's also a whole lot of people with more money than sense and other people selling them questionable products. $600 audiophile SATA cable:

I've got a friend/former bandmate who runs a small, regional moving company and around the mid 2000s when he was just getting started he would do odd jobs sometimes for reliable, repeat customers. At one point, he was hired by a wealthy audiophile type who called him a lot for small things and sometimes gave him really nice stereo equipment for free because it "wasn't good enough," to help move a pair of McIntosh tube monoblocks (worth around $40,000 each) and the speakers they were hooked up to up on to a high shelf in a closet because the audiophile guy was replacing them because he had gotten a cheap Bose iPod dock for christmas and though it sounded and thought it sounded better. When my friend showed up to do the lifting he found that the guy had the monoblocks and speakers set up in his small, personal yoga room, with the speakers sitting on the floor, pushed up against one of the long walls, pointed directly at a mirrored wall 10 feet away, so of course they sounded bad. The guy had the money and interest to set up nearly $100,000 worth of stereo equipment in his yoga room but actually had no clue how to set it up, how it worked, and couldn't really hear the difference in sound quality anyway, he just bought it because it was expensive so it must be good, and then stuck it in a closet. That's what the majority of high end collecting is like across the board, and it hit synths really hard since around 2010, especially late 70s and newer stuff (old modulars haven't been even vaguely attainable in decades).

Yeah, the synth colleting world today is like the guitar collecting world 15 years ago, or really collecting in general when you get right down to it.

Incidentally, think you can still get people on Gearslutz angry if you tell them you like the Wedge.

Incidentally, I originally found out about WATMM through a link to this thread posted someplace else in '12 or '13, I don't even remember where.

Internet Club is one I always come back to. There was one cassette (or maybe CD-R I never had a physical copy of it) from early on, '10 or '11 I think, that was a single 40 minute or so track, sounded like it was recorded live in a basement or something and really highlighted the drone roots of this stuff, but I lost it in a hard drive crash in 2014 and can't for the life of me remember the title or artist now so I haven't been able to track it back down - that was one of my favorites was it under one of his other aliases? https://www.discogs.com/artist/2836382-Datavis It's interesting to wonder how many other producers like you made vaporwave stuff before the genre / scene was firmly rooted in 2012/2013. I still feel weird about the size, scope, and broad "definition" of it now. Could have been, none of that artwork looks quite right but it's been a while. I wouldn't call anything I've done "vaporwave" exactly, but a lot of it draws from the same kind of palate (late 80s/early 90s library and soundtrack music especially) and I guess shared roots in drone, although I'm more from the psych/space/krautrock end of the drone spectrum and really only started to get back into electronics heavily n 2013 after a pretty long break. But yeah, when I hear the term "vaporwave" I still think of the stuff that was happening before and when I first really heard about it (which is around when it started to really blow up in early 2013). Not that genre labels and definitions matter too much really.

This is pretty ancient but I'd never run across it before. VST port of the EQ from the old Ensoniq PARIS: http://www.hometracked.com/2007/05/09/download-the-paris-eq-vst/ Supposedly it's a direct port of the EQ code from the original DSP card, so it should sound identical (not that I've ever even seen a PARIS system, much less know what the EQ sounds like, but people always seemed to love it).

Internet Club is one I always come back to. There was one cassette (or maybe CD-R I never had a physical copy of it) from early on, '10 or '11 I think, that was a single 40 minute or so track, sounded like it was recorded live in a basement or something and really highlighted the drone roots of this stuff, but I lost it in a hard drive crash in 2014 and can't for the life of me remember the title or artist now so I haven't been able to track it back down - that was one of my favorites. I've always been more of a dabbler in vaporave though, by the time I really started paying attention in 2013 (because people kept recommending artists to me after they heard the 90s cable TV soundtrack inspired stuff I was doing back then) it seemed like the feeding frenzy was already in full swing and I wasn't really comfortable self applying the label (I mean I never really am, but more so than usual).

I'm pretty sure in the original research that tied the phrase to marijuana, "short term memory loss" meant "memory loss that was short term" (i.e. while you were actually stoned and maybe a bit for a short period after), not "loss of short term memory."

Speaking of the PSS140, one of it's secrets is that the pushbutton volume control is completely digital and works by just reducing the word length of the DAC, so if you turn it down on the keyboard and back up with a preamp you end up with a pretty distinctive, noisy bitcrushed effect. I think it's an 8 bit DAC to begin with and there are 6 or 7 steps of volume, so you can get it down to very low wordlength, maybe even 1 bit, but it never sound harsh and distorted in the way bitcrushing effects do. Not sure what other PSS series keyboards do that.

PSS570 is great. I've never had one but a friend/former roommate has had one for years. It's got the qualities I like on the old Yamaha PSS140 I got for christmas back in grade school and still use for certain kinds of sounds, but editable.

Symetrix stuff is pretty great, I got a friend of mine into it and he's been using one of their power amps for his monitors and a couple of their preamps, all with great results. I picked up a 301 compressor last summer for $16 on eBay because it doesn't have the (rare, $100+) power supply, but I haven't gotten around to building a new one and trying it yet. Oh, and you should check out the Alesis Wedge, still one of my favorite cheap reverbs, if only because it has algorithms where you can sweep the reverb time from less than 1 second up to about 107 seconds (not a typo, it goes to 100+ second decay times) smoothly with virtually no artifacts at all. You can get them for next to nothing in nonfunctional condition and it's almost always just a matter of remelting the solder on the power jack because it's not very well attached. I really can't think of a better bargain in reverbs out there right now.

I have the Behringer RV600 which is a copy of the Verbzilla, iirc. Great pedal, love the 'space' setting. It's not quite as lush as my rackmount verbs but it's got its uses. Cool, I'd have been considering that if I didn't need the actual Tonecore dock. The Behringer CC300 I picked up last fall is fantastic, I use it a LOT. So much that I'm actually slowly getting the parts together to build one of those Jurgen Haible clones of the Roland Dimension D. But that's it, that's all I need. The Verbzilla, and the Dimension D clone, and the lamp, and the paddle game.

Ended up going a completely different direction and getting a Line 6 Verbzilla, not just because it's supposed to be a pretty solid true stereo reverb but because the only working Tonecore dock I have is mono but I've got a stereo-compatible Red Panda Bitcrusher in it, so if I want to use that on a stereo source I can swap it into the stereo dock that the Verbzilla comes with.

It was the Ibanez SDR1000+ (got outbid, I guess the plus prices have gone up more than the regular 1000) Everything I've read, my experience with other 70s/80s Ibanez rack units (HD1000 is really underrated in my book, and the AD202 is one of my favorite BBD delays of all time, also pretty underrated) and the few Youtube demos all make it seem really nice for the price I was expecting ($100-$150) but once you get near $200 there are more options (including the original Sony MU-R201 that the an OEM version of). The original 1000 is pretty common, the plus (which has a few more algorithms than the original or the Sony version) a bit less so.

I've heard nothing but good stuff about that Virtualizer Pro, it's really that good huh?

It's not super obscure or anything, the one that it's an OEM of is relatively inexpensive, too, even on eBay, and they show up a lot. A few years ago a friend of mine gave me a delay from the same line that is chronically underappreciated in my book. Sounds great, I assume because the digital section is something like 22kHz at either 8 bit or 12 bit (I've heard both) so there is a ton of analog filtering going on - it has a block diagram on the top of the case and there are analog filters on the input, output, and two in the feedback loop (pre and post insert) and the dry signal stays analog, unlike most newer (late 80s and beyond) digital delays that digitize everything and do all the processing in DSP. Since the reverb I have in mind is a lot more highly regarded I expect I'd love it based on what I think of its unpopular cousin. I'll name it once the auction I'm watching is over. Modey, there's an untested Microverb II on eBay right now that didn't sell at $20 and was relisted at $15. I've always kind of wanted one of those (love the microlmiter) but I'm holding out for a Microverb I since it has a reverse reverb in it and is supposed to be a bit dirtier sounding.

For all my big talk I've been feeling the urge for a certain early 80s digital reverb that's still kind of under the radar and inexpensive because it's an OEM version of another, more well known one. I'm not going to name names just in case I decide to put a bid on one after I get paid tomorrow.

Well that was easy. Time consuming, but completely routine. Solder wick never ceases to amaze me. I still have to install the leads for the filter and pitch bend control but I already tested it out without them and it works really well. Not going to put the Juno66 logo sticker on it, though. That's just going too far.

I don't remember exactly but it was in the same range that I've used before (probably a bit too hot but under 400c) so I'm wondering if the temperature control on the thing is messed up. At the price I paid I wouldn't be surprised, especially since I had actually desoldered the same part with the same settings once the day before and it was really easy. I haven't damaged a part with a soldering iron in over a decade (I overheated a pot once trying to solder a ground wire to the outside with a cheap iron back when I was first learning to work on stuff) but I've damaged something with hot air in the last 5 days so for this job I'm sticking with what I know. Those big, old, through hole boards are pretty easy to work on anyway.

I've got an off-brand rework station but I've only needed to use it a few times so I'm not that good with it yet. First time went fine. Second time I got the heat/nozzle size/timing combination wrong and actually melted part of the surface of a PCB, although somehow it still works so I just slathered some epoxy over the trace that was lifting and hope I never need to repair that pin header again. So in light of that I'm not sure I want my next hot air rework job to be the Juno, I think I've going to go with the solder wick and patience method of just loosening up the legs one at a time, and just bring in the hot air at the very end if I absolutely have to.

Turns out it takes FOREVER to get 17mm brass spacers, first order took a month and they sent me 5mm by accident so now I'm waiting on my second order before I can install the pots on the Jasper. In the mean time, tomorrow is the slightly terrifying job of taking out the main board, desoldering the CPU and drilling some holes in the chassis of my Juno 6 to put in the Tubbutec mod. It's really basic (other than cleanly desoldering a DIP-40, but I don't want to clip the legs off it I don't have to) and yet the stakes are on the high side.

They had to shut off all of the water in the building to repair a drain at work today so I've got the day off. Only reason I'm not baking beans right now is that I need the oven to bake some bread. Also having fun figuring out what they had in mind with the MC-303. If it was my first sequencer or I was expecting an all in one production setup (like most people who bought them new probably did) I'd be pretty unimpressed, but as a no frills step sequencer for external gear I'm having a good time with it so far. If only you could switch between X0X and real time recording on the drum track without stopping playback (as far as I can tell you can't).

about 90% of the fruits of more years hoarding and trading gear than I should admit (although there've been a couple of big purges over that time). A few things are in cases in another room and I hadn't replaced my old DR660 yet when I took this. EDIT: Yes, most of this stuff isn't exactly respected classics, that's part of the appeal for me.

I see and raise: MAPLE beer beans