EMS Synthi Boards

Title link takes you to a post on EMS Synthi with a bigger image of the EMS Synthi boards over the years. He is also looking for a hi res of the 1969-72 boards. If you know where to find one leave a comment in his post.

Synth Monger's SN-Voice

Two shots of Synth Monger's Thomas Henry SN-Voice. You might recognize it from this video.

"It's an SN-Voice synth I made. I combined it with a cut-down version of Ray Wilson's single buss keyboard controller."

E-mu Modular

No title link. Just the shots and details pulled via this auction. This is the E-mu modular referenced in this previous post.

Details:
"You are bidding on an E-mu Systems analog synthesizer main cabinet. It contains 11 filters, three oscillators, 6 VCAs, four transient generators, two preamps and a filter controller. This sale is contingent on sale of the whole system as that sale takes precedence over the items listed separately. If someone buys the whole system, and you win the bid on this piece, you don't get this piece, it goes with the whole system.

I bought this E-mu in 1976. If you don't know about these, they are the finest analog synthesizer components ever made, except for the keyboard (sorry Dave and Scott). NASA buys these oscillators for use in the space program. I have never had to re-tune the oscillators ever, as they are rock solid. By comparison, I had to re-tune my minimoog about every 6 months. There are a couple of modifications to this. I replaced the output op-amps in the VCAs with 5534 types to lower the noise level. At one time, this cabinet powered the keyboard (see other listing) but I moved the keyboard power supply to the Oberheim main cabinet.

There's not much else to say, I replaced one of the little switches on one of the VCAs. It's all stock otherwise. At 80 lbs, you will have to get this shipped by DHL, and you can calculate those charges yourself by going to DHL online and get the quote from Albany CA. You might be better off picking up the cabinet between the end of the auction and Feb 19. After that I am leaving the country, so this sale has to be AS IS.

I hate to part with my baby (I named this keyboard 'Sarah' after an old girlfriend), but I have accepted a call from the lord to go to teach music for a church school in the Kingdom of Tonga. I have taught there before and I really like it down there, so I am looking forward to this experience, but I have to fund this myself as the church has very little money to pay me. So please bid generously! Malo e lelei!"

Andrew Gadow /Techne - Auxons

For those of you near Surry Hills, Sydney, title link takes you to an art showing featuring Andrew Gadow /Techne - Auxons at Firstdraft Gallery. The show runs Wednesday January 31 to Saturday February 17, 2007.

philT sent me a link to an interesting commentary on Signal To Noise where I read about the showing. The commentary is on breaking things down to it's essence. The following are a couple of excerpts.

"One guy whose name has been lost to us was approaching the whole video-sculpture nexus in a very literal way – he was breaking down VCRs, cameras and video projectors into their constituent parts while trying to keep the machines operating even when they were in pieces.. A video feed from a still working video camera relayed a jittery image to projector that threw an image on to a wall. Asked what he was doing with his ‘project’, the artist – surrounded by the gizzards of machines - fumbled for words eventually stating “What I’m trying to do is… I’m… taking it all back to signal.”

"The work of Andrew Gadow at Firstdraft and his show Techne – Auxons deals with similar territory. Like that long forgotten artist, Gadow is working with feed as the essential element of his project, creating a three gallery daisy chain that begins with a vintage Fairlight CVI - an 80s era video synthesizer that creates patterns and distorts images – producing an image which then feeds the audio output of the CVI into an audio synth in the next gallery which in turn creates audio that in turn is fed into another CVI before going through another iteration into the final gallery space."

Don't miss the rest on Signal To Noise.

Access Virus C

Title link takes you to shots pulled via this auction.

Question: Should this have been a MATRIXSYNTH-B post? I was on the fence with this one.

ARTON ME-01

Click here for shots pulled via this auction.

Details:
"ARTON ME-01 is the floor guitar synthesizer. A little brother of the famous soviet analog guitar synths like LIDER-1 and Lider-2. A REALLY NICE ANALOG GUITAR SYNTHS AND MULTI FX PROCESSORS - LOOKS LIKE ROLAND GR-300 ANALOG GUITAR SYNTH BUT THE LIDER AND ARTON ME-01 IS MUCH MORE RARE. YOU CAN USE IT WITH SYNTHS AND GUITARS! IT WAS MANUFACTURED IN 1981 by FORMANTA, A SOVIET MILLITARY RADIO PLANT AT KACHKANAR CITY, NEAR SVERDLOVSK CITY. The same one wich manufactured now legendary POLIVOKS synth. It is built like a rock, pure military technology. The body is solid and the knobs feel nice."

ELKA SGP 150

Title link takes you to shots pulled via this auction.

Meat Beat Manifesto "Helter Skelter '97"

YouTube via gavin. Roland System 100m and grey ARP 2600 come in at 1:24.

via sequencer.de

Bleep Machine vs. Trusty my 10 step DIY sequencer

YouTube via synthmonger. Title link takes you to more. Synth Monger's MySpace Page.

E-mu Keyboard

This appears to be the other have of the previous post's auction. According to this auction, this is "the world's first commercially produced electronic musical instrument that contains a microprocessor"

Details
"the world's first commercially produced electronic musical instrument that contains a microprocessor. If you're interested, it is a ceramic Zilog Z80 microprocessor. This system is the one Gary Hall wrote about in an editorial in Electronic Musician magazine in 1991. You are bidding on the whole system, and this sale takes precedence over the pieces listed separately here on eBay. The four pieces are: the E-mu 4060 keyboard serial number # 1, the E-mu main cabinet including 11 filters, three oscillators, 6 VCAs, 4 envelope generators, two preamps and filter controller, the Oberheim main cabinet including 5 SEM synthesizer modules and an 8-voice programmer, and the one Oberheim SEM in a separate single cabinet.

The keyboard does not work. It is merely a historical oddity at this point. All the rest do work last time I tried them. I'll focus on the keyboard here and you can search for the other items and read about them separately. I decided to buy an E-mu in 1976. At the time they told me (Scott and Dave) they were coming out with this new keyboard that contained a microprocessor. That's how I ended up with serial number # 1. If you look at the picture, you can see the guts of the keyboard: there's a main circuit board and a large memory board. The memory board is 128K - that's 128 1K memory chips!! This board doubled as a space heater!! In between you can see a little memory board. In 1991 I replaced the 128K board with a 256K chip - one chip replaced the 128 chips and doubled the capacity! The main board is a terrible example of design-for-manufacture (sorry Dave). It would be difficult to repair, all I know at this point is that the negative power supply is very unhappy, but it could be simply a bad tantalum capacitor. Since the keyboard does not have any kind of touch sensitivity (and never did) I think it is not really about using as a musical instrument, strictly a museum piece at this point.

The total shipping weight is 170 lbs in four pieces, but since the main cabinet is 80 lbs, it would have to go DHL."

via Kaden