Roland TB-303 Devil Fish in a red aluminium case

via this auction

more pics at the auction

"Serial #158, Version v.2.1D I bought this Devilfish from a guy in Germany sometime in the Spring of 2004 and shortly thereafter, I managed to persuade Martin Rothlisberger from Switzerland to custom make me one of his amazing machined anodised aluminium cases! As you’ll see from the various pics below, it is custom machined with this TBs serial number on the back. It took A LOT of persuading to get this case! For the past few years Martin has not been making any more cases. I did get an email recently from him where he suggested he was making more, but they won’t look like this because Martin no longer has access to a 4D capable CNC machine. So basically it’s no longer possible to have that lovely slanting area by the tactile pushbuttons, which also means no ‘TB-303’ lettering can be engraved there.

The fitment of the TB-303’s delicate electronic innards into the case is a very tricky affair, they are carved from solid blocks of aluminium by a computer, and thus super accurate; the problem lies in the TB itself, which hailing from the 80’s is not so accurate. Some of the potentiometer positions can subtly vary, and there are other pitfalls, for example the wires can get pinched in different places. Thankfully Robin Whittle himself took on the task of fitting the electronics into the case! Subsequently, this TB has been fitted to the highest standards possible.

OTT ? You bet!:
Robin strikes me as the classic genius engineer and in implementing the modification, I guess his priority is in making sure everything works, not necessarily whether it looks beautiful. When I got the machine back, there were a few (admittedly) minor things that I wasn’t so happy with; things like knobs scraping against the case metalwork and LED’s not being quite high enough to poke through the case metalwork. I have a lot of experience doing fiddly solder work, thus went about putting things right myself. Amidst this endeavour, I installed 2 by 2 carbon fibre washers (I had a specialist firm make them to my specifications), the latest sealed tactile switches (from Analogue Renaissance – see this link), an even larger capacity lithium battery than the one Robin uses as stock for the bank memory back up and the rear of the case attaches via precision machined titanium bolts. It’s a functioning piece of design / art.

Obsessive? Um, yeah… probably :-)
I was actually really obsessive… Unhappy with the use of cut pieces of leather to increase the height for the set of the six uppermost knobs, I acquired some super expensive 3mm PTFE sheet and machined my own knob shaft inserts from it. Plus rather than use Blutack to ‘glue’ the knobs on to the shafts, I used what plumbers do – a small piece of flexible PTFE tape which works really beautifully for this purpose. Perhaps most practically, I have implemented a delightfully simple but important idea that buffers the main PCB board, in the event that the machine ever falls face flat, which due to the design by Roland, does leave the machine quite susceptible to a cracked PCB. Some of the ideas I have shared with Robin (to his interest!), others I have not as yet, but I suspect he and other TB enthusiasts would find them interesting, if not a touch obsessive :-)

I almost forgot – WHITE LED’s!
It is worth me mentioning that along with the ‘works’ fee to have the TB-303 fitted into the alu case, Robin charged me separately for fitting some special LEDs to this machine. With great care, I had tracked down some lovely diffused white LED’s. Most white LED’s are hyperbright and not diffused, these were, but were still a touch too bright and so Robin had to reengineer the TB-303 drive electronics to power them correctly. I feel this was really worth it though, the white on red looks absolutely stunning in pictures and more so in person."