the watmm GAS thread

[TubularCorporation]

7 hours ago, rhmilo said:

This statement piqued my curiosity so I looked it up. Frac is 15v whereas Eurorack is 12v so that might cause some trouble (and fried Euro modules, which, as you rightly point it, can be expensive).

 

The PAiA modules actually regulate the 15v down to 12v so they should be safe. A few people on Muffwiggler apparently patch between PAiA and Euro modules with no problems.

4 hours ago, sweepstakes said:

Gave in and got a BOUM. Welp it should make some nice stuffing for the Elektrons' bras/boxers. Staving off residual MS20 lust now with cold showers and SuperCollider.

I really want a BIM but there are so many more practical ways I could use that money.

[acid1]

Ugh... black friday purchases

• Noise Engineering Terci Ruina
• Noise Engineering Confundo AND Integra Funkitus
• Nerdseq

[sweepstakes]

3 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

I really want a BIM but there are so many more practical ways I could use that money.

The BIM I can definitely live without; I'm not feeling any pressure to complete the set. Between SC and Octatrack, I have all the mod delay I want. If I ever wanted more, I'd go for the Thyme. It does sound very good, though.

[TubularCorporation]

2 hours ago, acid1 said:

Ugh... black friday purchases

• Noise Engineering Terci Ruina
• Noise Engineering Confundo AND Integra Funkitus
• Nerdseq

I rerouted my Black Friday GAS into just ordering a copy of Bruce Haack - Haackula on vinyl and not getting any gear at all.

[user]

I found this today:

It's not that exciting, the digital distortion thing had me going at first because I hoped it would be a digital distortion but as expected it's just a gigantic jogwheel that makes super cool authentic 90s dj hiphop style scratch sounds.

The thing that makes it somewhat interesting however is this:

It has trigger inputs! And it has a headphone out and a mic in. So at least it will provide some sample fodder and I can hook it up to the modular for polymetric carribean digital music style ambient rock. It runs on batteries so there's a good chance it will start making cooler sounds when they start running low. When I'm a bit less shit at electronics I might try hooking it up so a controllable power supply so I can starve it and get permanent crunchy disco drums.

Also I dropped it on the tiled floor of the restaurant I went to with my brother and something came loose inside it but it still works, this thing was clearly built to last.

Edited December 4, 2019 by user
Extra super important info

[TubularCorporation]

Oh man, that looks great! I've never seen something like that with trigger inputs before.

 

I'm not usually big on circuit bending but that looks like a prime candidate.

 

EDIT: you are absolutely REQUIRED to reclock that thing.  Just grab one of these: https://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forsale/LTC/LTC.html

(the more expensive one with the trimmer on the board), find the clock crystal and a power source on the main board of that thing, and do what has to be done.  Maybe not a first mod project but would be an easy second one and I bet it would sound great. I reclocked an old Behringer Virtualizer with their kit and it sounds pretty incredible. Instant sci-fi horror ambiences. I bet if you slow the clock way down on your whatever-it-s that scratch sound effect will sound like the universe turning itself inside out.

 

 

Meanwhile I've gone flanger crazy and can't stop myself looking for cheap old flangers.  Found an old Yamaha FL-01 on eBay for a bit over $30 (because the paint is really chipped up, allegedly it's fully working) and it just showed up at work from Japan today!  From the demos and descriptions it's really good at doing the whole late 70s jet engine flanging thing, so it should be a good companion to the DOD flanger that can barely even scratch that territory but does all kinds of metallic swirly phaser-like sounds better than any other flanger I've used so far.

I feel like 80s retro has been going so long that 80s flangers way overdue to stop being uncool but for now they're still way easier to find cheap than most other kinds of pedals and I love it.

Edited December 4, 2019 by TubularCorporation

[TubularCorporation]

What even IS this thing?

 

 

This auction is the only record of an RM-8000 even existing that I can find.  Roland's English support site doesn't mention it at all, haven't tried Roland Japan.  The auction says "very rare" and I guess they're right. 

 

Maybe it's for playing in-store music in shopping malls or something? Or some kind of sequencer?  I just don't even know but it has a remote control and is called a "music support system" so I'm leaning toward in-store MIDI muzak.  Maybe it's a preset-only JV2080 with a built in MIDI jukebox of some kind?

Whatever it is I wouldn't buy it even if I had the money but I'd love to see one in person just to know.

Edited December 6, 2019 by TubularCorporation

[user]

17 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

EDIT: you are absolutely REQUIRED to reclock that thing.  Just grab one of these: https://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forsale/LTC/LTC.html

(the more expensive one with the trimmer on the board), find the clock crystal and a power source on the main board of that thing, and do what has to be done.  Maybe not a first mod project but would be an easy second one and I bet it would sound great. I reclocked an old Behringer Virtualizer with their kit and it sounds pretty incredible. Instant sci-fi horror ambiences. I bet if you slow the clock way down on your whatever-it-s that scratch sound effect will sound like the universe turning itself inside out.

That's a great idea, cheers! I'm planning to get some diy supplies somewhere this month, just gotta brush up on my soldering skills which are currently a little below the level they were when I was 9.

[Squee]

Don't wanna go into details but I just spoke to the nice people at Output and holy shit... excellent customer service! Highly recommended.

[sheatheman]

Man, there’s a Muzak (now mood music or something) brick and mortar off the highway here, and they have those super arcane clandestine music players for malls and stuff. I’ve messed with one once. I miss that world. 

[TubularCorporation]

10 hours ago, sheatheman said:

Man, there’s a Muzak (now mood music or something) brick and mortar off the highway here, and they have those super arcane clandestine music players for malls and stuff. I’ve messed with one once. I miss that world. 

I wish I could remember who it was but an older guy who comes it to work told me a few months back that he had a girlfriend in the early 90s who worked in some administrative position at Muzak.  He said she had exactly the personality you'd expect and it didn't last long.

 

Anyhow, my best guess for that box is definitely JV-2080 sound engine with a programmable MIDI jukebox for commercial installation. Between the screen and overall UI it's definitely 2080 adjacent. Before the 2080 they weren't using LCDs like that and by the XV series they were using different buttons.

Edited December 7, 2019 by TubularCorporation

[TubularCorporation]

 

If only these things didn't cost more than a brand new DSI Propher rev2 or something.

 

OTOH, it wouldn't take too much coding or electronics know-how to make something similar, but instead of an expression pedal put in an Ardiuno and a bunch of digipots so you could have direct MIDI access to the expression pedal control of each pedal independently. Or alternatively, it probably wouldn't be too hard to make a Eurorack interface that let you access the expression pins and audio i/o directly - would only be a matter of scaling the voltage correctly and maybe adding some kind of overvoltage protection just in case. All of the 01 series Yamaha pedals have a little pin header inside for interfacing with this thing, with audio i/o, power and separate pins for positive and negative expression control - just wire the expression pins to digipots controlled via MIDI, and the audio i/o pins to a patch panel, and you have a MIDI (or Eurorack) controllable, modular, analog multieffect system.  Most of the actual pedals are relatively cheap if you dig, that $35 FL-01 I just got sounds fantastic.  If only there were more hours in the day.

 

EDIT: also, unrelated, I accidentally just discovered that one of those low budget Chinese-or-something companies is making bootleg Ibanez Soundtank pedals - IN 2019

 

Edited December 8, 2019 by TubularCorporation

[auxien]

^i saw a similar pedalboard concept the other day when i was digging around some old forums and for sale shit, i think it was maybe a Boss version of that, but maybe it was the Yamaha and my memory is wrong. thought it was pretty intriguing and i started wondering 'hm yeah would be great if you could just make it smaller somehow and there were lots more weird and unique options' then realized i'd invented eurorack.   but anyway that is interesting, sad that they're going for expensive prices....the ones i saw i don't think were too much, but again, don't exactly remember the brand/condition/etc either.

[modey]

1 hour ago, TubularCorporation said:

also, unrelated, I accidentally just discovered that one of those low budget Chinese-or-something companies is making bootleg Ibanez Soundtank pedals - IN 2019

oh shit they're still making them? I have Daphon delay and phaser pedals I bought in 2006 that are still going.. I don't use them much anymore at all but they're better quality than I expected.

[TubularCorporation]

1 hour ago, auxien said:

^i saw a similar pedalboard concept the other day when i was digging around some old forums and for sale shit, i think it was maybe a Boss version of that, but maybe it was the Yamaha and my memory is wrong. thought it was pretty intriguing and i started wondering 'hm yeah would be great if you could just make it smaller somehow and there were lots more weird and unique options' then realized i'd invented eurorack.   but anyway that is interesting, sad that they're going for expensive prices....the ones i saw i don't think were too much, but again, don't exactly remember the brand/condition/etc either.

I don't know what the voltage is but it looks like it might actually be able to accept CV directly, too - it's hard to see in that photo but one of the rows of patch points is actually CV inputs, so I guess the expression pedal s jsut a variable CV source that you can patch to either the negative or positive inputs for different pedals (I think there are a couple of mults so you can control more than one pedal at a time, too).  I wouldn't be at all surprised if they'd made it compatible with Moog or Roland or something.

 

At any rate, it makes me want to get the chorus and phaser pedals from the same series some day (the delay is way too expensive) and make a little box with patch points for audio, and CV i/o and a shared power supply.  I had no idea these things had that pin header inside an were part of a modular pedal system until I opened the flanger up to clean out the pots and see if there was a convenient place to install a power jack since it doesn't have one (only power options are a battery or installing it into one of those pedal boards).

1 hour ago, modey said:

oh shit they're still making them? I have Daphon delay and phaser pedals I bought in 2006 that are still going.. I don't use them much anymore at all but they're better quality than I expected.

 

I guess so!  I'd never heard of them.  anyway, I went down a big rabbit hole of cheap Chinese pedals and ended up ordering a $19 Tube Screamer clone off of Aliexpress.  It sounds pretty good in the handful of Youtube demos and unironically uses Comic Sans.

[sheatheman]

Man. I’m really wanting a pedal steel. Seems like an impossibly expensive acquisition, so might settle for a $80 rogue lap steel from amazon.

i just need some c6 in my life. Maybe a lil e9.

but I really want 10 strings. 

[TubularCorporation]

You could get a 10 string lap steel.  Most of the things the pedals on a pedal steel are used for started as advanced lap steel techniques like bending behind the slide with your last three fingers while you hold it with your index and thumb, anyway.

 

Lap steel is just a board with some strings on it so you can get a decent one for not too much at all (or build one in an afternoon or two with basic workshop and not too much experience).

[thawkins]

If you want 10 strings, can't you just buy another guitar and put the two next to each other? Viola 12 strings. For bass strings, use a bass guitar.

Damn youths want everything easy and cheap!

[sheatheman]

Yeah I think I’m at the point where I could build a lap steel. But when you can buy one for $80...

7 minutes ago, thawkins said:

If you want 10 strings, can't you just buy another guitar and put the two next to each other? Viola 12 strings. For bass strings, use a bass guitar.

Damn youths want everything easy and cheap!

True. I have 2 electric guitars. 

[TubularCorporation]

I guess it's mostly down to the quality of the prts and materials and whether that makes a difference. No way to know unless you try.

 

I don't think it would cost much more to build a halfway decent one, really, as long as you can get a good block of maple locally and don't have to pay to ship it. Lap steel hardware is really cheap on Aliexpress, looks like you could get everything but the wood, nut and finishing supplies for under $50 total on there (bridge, control plate and mounting screws are under $15 as a set, A set of tuners is around $10, pickups are like $10-$30 depending on what you get - here's three alnico strat style pickups for $20 total).

 

So it's more down to whether building it would be fun or a chore.

[Taupe Beats]

A cheap and surprisingly fun alternative is Steel Guitar for iOS by the developer Yonac (who makes good stuff)

[modey]

Yeah I've wanted a lap steel ever since I heard one in a Mogwai song 10 years ago lol.. maybe I'm due another alt country phase

[Squee]

On 12/6/2019 at 10:13 AM, Squee said:

Don't wanna go into details but I just spoke to the nice people at Output and holy shit... excellent customer service! Highly recommended.

Well, now they didn’t live up to their promise. Actually, they didn’t live up to ANY of their promises and are not responding to my emails, so now I don’t know what to think?

[user]

What happened?

[sheatheman]

Holy moly I’m over here considering building a lap steel.