Exploring X1L3 SHARD w/ Elektron Machine Drum

Published on Jan 1, 2019 Nostalgic Ruckus

"This is SHARD. Oh my… I’m using a kick from the Machine Drum and plugging it into Shard’s input. The creator Shane Williams aka X1L3 is known for his rather crazy circuit bent devices. I’m sure a lot of his past circuit bent work has inspired this. You get a very similar vibe when messing around with a circuit bent Casio or opening up some old 80s toy and diving into the unknown’s of it’s circuitry to create a box of wonder or mangled horror. The setup is Elektron’s Machine Drum output into Hexinverter’s Mutant Bassdrum’s distortion input then into Shard. The Machine drum’s kick was used instead of the Hexinverter due to needing a longer decay on the kick. The distortion output from the Mutant Bassdrum is then multiplied 3 times. One clean signal so you can hear the kick clean over Shard, one into Shard’s input, and one into Shard’s Atrophy input. The Atrophy input is more for control voltage but I have found plugging other sound sources into the cv inputs create some very interesting layers. There is some reverb then added at the end of the chain. If you are into noise or beat mangling Shard is one of those hidden gems."

Alpha Products VS-100 Voice Synthesizer For TRS-80

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"comes with the instructions and paperwork as shown"

Some pics including some of the inside, the ribbon cable and paperwork via this new listing.

The only one other was featured here back in 2011. That was also the only other Alpha Products post. Curious if they made anything else.

CLICK FOR MORE »

Access Virus TI2 Whiteout 61-Key Keyboard Synthesizer

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"Only 150 exists in the world. Original Owner. Excellent Condition. Everything Works. Comes with Keyboard and Power Cable." Matching white at that!

CLICK FOR MORE »

Elka Synthex 1981 Black/Wood Panel Finish with Midi

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"This Synthex has been in used fairly regularly in an Air conditioned studio but Plays beautifully, Has midi.

There are a few cosmetic issues IE. Some chipped wood on the paneling and missing caps from 1 or two filter, but its all very minor stuff and par the course when dealing with a vintage synth of this age."

CLICK FOR MORE »

Sequential Circuits Prophet-600

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

CLICK FOR MORE »

Roland Juno 106 Vintage Polyphonic Analogue Synthesiser

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

CLICK FOR MORE »

Akai AX60 Professional Polyphonic Synthesizer w/ Original Box

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

CLICK FOR MORE »

Modded Roland EF-303 Groove Effects Processor / Synthesizer SN ZN70621

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"Interesting vintage effects processor which was released by Roland back with their early MC-x0x series boxes. For various effects you can use a 16 step series of linear potentiometers to specify modulation sequence. I used it mainly for Filter and the Low Fi effect. Also has a very basic drum machine and bass synth. Receives and sends midi sync. Enjoy!

One thing to note in the pics - the play/continue and reset buttons were relocated to tactile physical momentary switches on this unit. Works fine, maybe even somewhat improved actually from the original switch type. Anyway, just something to keep in mind in case you are looking for a completely ‘stock’ unit."

CLICK FOR MORE »

'73 Rare PAIA SyntheSpin MKII TREMOLO Rotary LESLIE PEDAL

Note: links to listings are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

Check out the old school brown appliance plug.

"Components appear to be original and date to '73, everything works well with no issues...no noise problems, but does have some wear. No volume/exp pedal at the moment, so unable to test the remote center/speed jacks, but the bypass jack is working. Missing a piece of the left side panel but otherwise complete, original and working. Kinda rare for these early 70's home builds."

CLICK FOR MORE »

HKA Design Roland TR-626 ROM expansion

Published on Jan 1, 2019 dothkoi

"refer to the following pages
http://harryaxten.altervista.org/tr62..."

Be sure to check out HKA Design's other DIY projects. HKA Design is run by Harry Axten whose work has been featured here on MATRIXSYNTH.

"My TR-505 ROM Expansion has proven itself to be a popular kit, but I was regularly asked if it would work with the TR-505’s big brother, the Roland TR-626. The answer was no, as even though the two machines look and sound quite similar, the electronics inside are incompatible. Eventually, somebody very generously offered to send me a TR-626 to keep if I could produce an expansion kit for it. Naturally I accepted.

Sample ROM address map / encoding

The TR-626, although it has more sounds than the TR-505, fundamentally works in exactly the same way. Samples are played back at 25.0 kHz, and once again some are stored in sequential order, while others are interleaved in pairs. Cymbals are stored in 8K blocks, with a byte being read from each block in cyclical order.

The TR-626 even uses a standard JEDEC-type ROM pinout for its sound ROM; unlike the 505’s which had a horrible custom pinout, requiring a complicated adapter board. The kit I designed for the TR-626 does still use a board, but this time it’s to allow for two ROM chips to be switched. The only real catch with the TR-626 sound ROM is that address lines 6 & 8 are swapped (in the data). It’s easy enough to swap them back using an EPROM pin swapper utility.

For the new sounds, I reused all of the classic sounds from my TR-505 version, although there’s also some TR-707 sounds in there as well, thanks to the TR-626’s larger ROM size. The new sounds are spread across two banks, with LM-1 and LinnDrum sounds in one, and DMX and TR-707 sounds in the other. There's also a socket to install the TR-626's original sound ROM, so you can keep using those sounds as well.

The TR-626 has several strange quirks. One is the way polyphony is assigned across the 8 drum voices. Despite the fact that some sounds share the same key, they don’t necessarily share the same voice. For this reason, some of the key assignments for my new sounds may seem a bit odd, but the reasoning is so that you can play certain sounds together - i.e. the LM-1 hi-hats and snare drum. A full list of the sounds can be found in the manual (see below). As the TR-626 lacks an individual output for claps, I duplicated these sounds into the china cymbal and cup memory locations, so they can come out of the crash / ride cymbal outputs."

See HKA Design for additional details.