Roland GR-33B

via this auction

Peter Forest's A-Z of Analogue Synthesisers

via this auction

This is just a glimpse of what's in there. An absolute must have for the synth enthusiast. My words, not the auction. Seriously the A-Z of Analogue Synthesizers is the desert island set of synth books. Highly recommended. Note they are listed in the Synth Books section.

"A complete two-volume set of the most comprehensive encyclopaedia of analogue synths and keyboards in the world - direct from the author.

The original A-M was produced in 1994, and then re-written and expanded in 1998. There are probably nearly twice as many words crammed in to the second edition as there were in the first. The second edition has 320 pages, 16 of which are full colour, while the original edition only had 240 pages. There's a whole lot of extra information about EMS, Moog, and many other manufacturers; a greatly improved index, and a new index to the musicians mentioned in the book. So if you're into, say, Tangerine Dream, you can find the 25 pages on which they're mentioned; Tim Blake, 8 pages; and even Tim Buckley on two.

The first edition was printed in a run of 2000, and 2000 copies of this revised edition were also printed. This second edition has been officially out of print for a year now, so is impossible to buy via any bookseller like Amazon. I thought I had run out of every single mint copy of the books, but today my wife was doing a bit of cleaning and pulled out a drawer, and discovered two packets of books underneath the drawer. We then looked in the other side of the chest of drawers and found two more packets, making 96 books in all. This particular book is one of the books that the printer printed as 'run-on' - when a printer is supposed to print 2000 they will always do a few more to be certain they have done enough, in case a few have blemishes. That means it has no official number in the limited edition, so I have numbered it out of 2096 and initialed the number. (But just to be more complicated.... we're disappointed to find that many of the books have some slight defects from their long time in non-perfect storage - mostly where one or two of the colour photo pages have stuck together in places - talk about synth porn..... - and you can see where they have had to be peeled apart. Usually on the page edges, not very serious, but there when you look for it. So this unblemished A-M is one of only very few still in existence - the rest will have to be sold as imperfect.)

The original N-Z was printed in 1996, in a run of 2000, and then the second revised edition (of 3000) was printed in 2003. It has 384 pages, including 16 in full colour. Please check the photos to see the sort of coverage you will get of rare, obscure instruments like the Syntons and Wavemakers or ultra-famous offerings like the Rolands and Yamahas.

The total number of words in these two books is probably over half a million. With hundreds of illustrations, charts, etc., the whole package provides a comprehensive guide to analogue synths, organs, electric pianos, theremins, etc., up to 1998 for ones beginning A-M, and 2003 for the N-Zs. The books have been well-reviewed in magazines all round the world, and enjoyed by some of the best-known names in electronic music, such as Fatboy Slim, Hans Zimmer, Herbie Hancock, and Adrian Utley of Portishead.

Who's selling: my name's Peter Forrest. I've been writing about synths, keyboards, effects and recording gear for nearly 20 years now, and I run an internet auction called VEMIA (Vintage Electric Musical Instrument Auctions) which specialises in synths, drum machines, effects, and so on. Please check my feedback to see that you can bid with confidence. Feel free to email me any questions."

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Korg EXB-MOSS Modeling Synth Expansion Board for Triton

via this auction

Toy KEYTAR Vintage Rhythm Guitar

via this auction

"It has the sound of a piano only, 23 inches long., black with strap. It has 8 buttons for rhythms on the neck., but I don't know how to turn them on! maybe that section is not working

You can choose a rhythm and speed, there is a demo mode, an a jack to plug in a microphone. runs on 3 AA batteries (not included) and includes the battery cover and a permanently attached black strap."

Roland Juno-106 HS-60 Audio Board

via this auction

the seller has some other parts here.

Art of Noise meets Roland D50

Listen to the track on
khoral's Cafe 80.

SCHIPPMAN Ebbe und Flut

flickr by unoq41

via the forum where it and a Cwejman S1 mkII is listed for sale.

Click on the bottom image and note how the letters on top are in reverse. You can view the labels when tilting the back of the unit up. Pretty nifty.

Acidlab Miami: All Boxed Up And Nowhere To Go....

via MaD:
http://acidlab.de
"The cases of the Acidlab Miami arrived and the prototype has now achieved his final look. The serial devices will become grey and white buttons instead of the red/yellow ones."

Be sure to click on the Acidlab label below for more including video. Click the image for the full size shot.

Oberheim Ob-1

via this auction

DIYing a Roland JX-8P DCO

This came in on the SDIY list via Tom Wiltshire. I thought it would be an interesting post on how these things get started and Tom gave me the ok to put it.

"Hi All,

I've been experimenting with a DCO design based on the Roland JX8P circuit

Broadly speaking, it works, in that I can get a ramp wave out of it if I adjust the 47K pot on the left. This pot and op-amp buffer will be replaced by a DAC when I get it working better. I've got reset pulses generated by a PIC being fed into the base of the transistor at 440Hz for the purposes of the test. That part is fine.

The problem is that the output goes from 0V down to -0.5V and then seems to saturate. What's going on? How can the op-amp output be saturated at only -0.5V when it's running on +/-15V rails? Everything I've read suggests that the output from an integrator ought to carry on as far as the op-amp output can take it, so I was expecting a ramp from 0V down to -15V or thereabouts. I'm sure there's something I'm missing here...

Thanks for any clues,
Tom"

Some clues did come in from members of the list including:
"Looks to me like base-collector parasitic diode starts conducting."
and
"The ramp is negative going, so Vcb is negative. That causes the base collector junction of your reset transistor to forward bias and limit the output voltage. You'll need to rethink the way you've got that reset transistor hooked up, or reverse the direction of the ramp so it's positive going (hint - invert the input to the integrator)."

followed by:
"Thanks both, that's sorted it. I simply swapped the polarity going into the integrator and as if by magic everything became hunkydory.

What I was missing was that Roland were evidently using a negative voltage. That isn't immediately clear from the schematic.

Instant solutions on this list...great suff!"

Why post this? Again, it's and interesting insight for those not involved in the SDIY community to see how some of this happens. Who knows, we might have a very nice Roland JX-8P VCO module or the like available one day. Pretty cool...
The Juno-106 replacement chips immediately come to mind.