Korg RK-100 Custom via The Packrat

images via this auction
"With the exception of one of those $3000 Zen Riffers, this is about the most unique keytar you're ever going to lay your eyes on, period. The overall shape of the Korg RK-100 is widely considered to be the most unique & attractive, and here's a fully functioning one in black, with a custom paint job by David C. Lovelace, animator & cartoonist extraordinaire.

OK fine, so it's just me typing this now & I'm playing it up just a tad. Sure, I made an animated Weird Al video for his latest album, and yeah, I made the Packrat comic strip which appeared in Keyboard Magazine a couple years ago. And then there was all of those fairly offensive-yet-popular "Retarded Animal Babies" movies seen by millions, some of which even featuring rampant keytar usage. But really, does any of this add to the value of this item? Does it even make up for the fact that I plastered a rainbow of words & symbols all over this otherwise fine contraption, rendering it somehow collectible despite its non-stock condition? I'd be a horrible salesman if I admitted otherwise. I should simply acknowledge here that there is at least a distinct possibility that these past doodleworks I have done somehow make me a public enough figure to have "fans" that might enjoy this one-of-a-kind bit of gear/artwork in their studio, collection, or attic, or just slung around their shoulder as they rokk out some Night Ranger in their local cover band. Especially if their name is also "Dave" since this moniker prominently appears on the unit's trapezoidal head.

There are a few scuffs on the back & very top of that head, by the way, but 1) no one will see them but you, and 2) they're not as bad as my high-contrast gallery image would indicate. The even better news is that there are practically no scratches anywhere else on the back (or front, not that you can tell with all the craziness going on); still as shiny as when I got the thing 15 years ago. All LED lights work fine. The battery cover is intact... so many other keytars are missing these, but not this one! Everything works great on it and is 100% functional as designed. Included is a purple guitar strap & a 9V battery (installed). I wish I had a nice, long MIDI cable to throw in (you'll need one, or better yet, a MidiJet Wireless box), but I don't have a spare, sorry! The factory 9V wall wart is not included either, not that you'd really want to be saddled with a power cable anyway! A standard 9V battery lasts a LONG time on these things; trust me. You will make it through several gigs without worrying about the power dying on you.

FUNCTIONALITY: This is a MIDI controller only, NOT a synthesizer! It does not make its own sounds! Most of you already know this, but a beginner might not. Plug a MIDI cable into it & connect with any other sound module or keyboard, and you're ready to go. You can control patch changes with a numeric keypad or program up/down buttons. There's a L/M/H octave switch, and (of course!) volume, pitch and mod wheels on the neck!"

The Packrat - Bad JU JU

I'm sad to say that this could be the last Packrat strip for some time. This is the last strip for Keyboard magazine and David C. Lovelace plans to put the rat on hold for a bit while he focuses on other projects. Title link takes you to the rest of the Packrat toons. Make sure to track up to the root of David's site for more of his brilliant work. Thanks for some great Packrat toons David. I will definitely miss the sneaky little rat. Click image below for full size.

MMTA Spring SYNTHFEST 2013 Event Details

MMTA SYNTHFEST on Facebook

Update: Mark Vail, author of Vintage Synthesizers and former Editor of Keyboard Magazine will be in attendance at the Mattson Mini Modular Booth.  If you have a copy of his book, bring it in to get it signed. Also I added London Bridge Studios to the list.

As announced on February 7th, the MMTA Spring Synth Fest is coming to Shoreline Community College just north of Seattle on March 16th! You can find a map of the campus here (building 800).  The event is completely free so if you are in the area, do drop by.  It's a great chance to see gear you might not otherwise and a chance to sync up and converse with others that share your interests.  Note you do not have to bring any gear to attend, so if you can only make an hour or two, drop by.  The festival runs from 10AM - 5PM PST, but if you plan to bring gear you can start setting up at 8AM. There will be four rooms this year.  The Petting Zoo Room will be where people can bring their gear and mingle.  For those who attended previous events at the PNW Synth Gatherings at Renton Technical college, this is your room.  Along with The Petting Zoo, there will be a Jam Session room where you can jam along with others,  a Presentation room where dedicated lectures and performances will be given throughout the day (see the schedule below for some interesting talks lined up), and finally there will be a "Tradeshow Room" where manufactures will showcase their latest gear.

CLICK FOR MORE »

$5 Synth Art From the Creator of The Packrat

David Lovelace of umop.com and creator of The Packrat is doing something really cool.  He came up with the idea of creating one off pieces of art on a bar napkin for 5 bucks!   The way it works is you Paypal $5 to dave at fark dot com with a description of what you want, and he comes up with the drawing.  That's right, you can have him create you your own personal, one of a kind bit of art for $5 on a napkin.  You can find some of what has come in so far on his Facebook page here.  BTW, it doesn't have to be a synth as you'll see in his other creations, but if you do get one with a synth, send it in!  I'll post it!

Pictured here:
"George C Mattson [Mattson Mini Modular] doubled down on his investment to get a more involved Bar Napkin Drawing of my Packrat character standing near his prized modular synthesizer. Would you like me to draw something for you? Paypal $5 to dave at fark dot com!"

BTW, people that have been following MATRIXSYNTH should immediately recognize the giant Mattson EML. See the label below if you haven't seen it in the flesh.

November 2013 Episode of the Packrat Shout Out to Italian Fans

via The Packrat on Facebook

"Packrat and Buddy discuss the nature of synth nerdiness for the November edition of Keyboard Magazine! A shout out to all the Italian Packrat fans!"

http://umop.com

Matrixsynth by The Packrat

The Packrat makes a short return from "The Matrix."
Whoah... Move over Keanu, he'll re-synthesize the shit out of you.
You can imagine my reaction when I saw this one sitting in my inbox.
Thank you Dave. BTW, if you don't know The Packrat, go here now, scroll and start with the thumbnail dated 2/23/05. Dave, did I say thanks? : )

Sci-Fi Guys

OK, first off I am stretching this one a little on synth content so consider yourself warned. Dave, creator of one of our favorite and only synth toons, The Packrat, sent me and a few others a link to an old toon he did called Sci-Fi Guys. I wanted to put up a post on it, so of course I asked if any of the toons featured any synths. Duh. Turns out they did for audio. The following are Dave's words on the toon followed by the synths. Note Randal of redshiftdigitalaudio and the On The Bench posts also worked on this.

"For about a year and a half, my old Sci-Fi Guys toons haven't been available online at all, after Camp Chaos shut down it's 'Other Shows' section. At a rate of about one per week, since May, I've uploaded them all to Newgrounds. The eleventh and final episode (the Christmas one) will get shoved up there in November sometime.

The title song for Sci-Fi Guys is called 'Ryu' off my Parallax CD 'visit the entropics.'

There are other very synthesized sound cues and transitions in the films also, taken directly from the album.

This music was sequenced by me at home, all on a rickety Korg 01/W, but the exported general MIDI files were painstakingly re-mapped & produced by Randel at redshiftdigitalaudio (the tech guy behind the "On the Bench" posts linked from your blog from time to time). A few overdubs, samples and leads were added later. Synths I definitely know that were used: Waldorf Pulse & Microwave, Clavia Nord rack, Korg MS2000R & Wavestation, a couple of Oberheim Matrix-6R's, Roland JD-800 & three JD-990's, and Yamaha VL1-m.

--D"

The Bob Moog Foundation Booth at NAMM 2022

via The Bob Moog Foundation

Don't miss Stevie Wonder and Corey Feldman below.

"The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show 2022: we came, we saw, we rocked out on three vintage synths from the Bob Moog Foundation Archives.

Our vintage special guests? The Moog Micromoog, our Minimoog Voyager (the last one Bob ever signed), and our fully restored Moog Liberation, shown here just before it was shipped west to join the Bob Moog Foundation team in California at NAMM."

CLICK FOR MORE »

AHNE 2013 - Saturday May 4 - Awesome Packrat Flyer

via The Packrat on Facebook

"Packrat Facebook fans get first dibs on the ANHE announcement for 2013... Analog Heaven Northeast on Saturday, "May the Fourth" at the 119 Gallery in Lowell, MA. Bring fun analog gear, a stand, headphones, a $10 donation for the gallery, and a bucket for all the drool. Or just bring the donation and bucket... your call! I'll be there with books!"

For those attending the MMTA SYNTHFEST in Seattle, there's a slight chance there will be a few copies for sale there as well.

And for those that can't make either event, you can find the book here.

The Packrat's Halloween Costume

via The Packrat

"The Halloweeny October edition!"

Catch up on The Packrat at Dave's umop.com.

October 2013 the Packrat

via The Packrat on Facebook

"The comic for Keyboard Mag's October edition digs deep into the Packrat's psyche. Maybe a little bit too deep."

The Packrat on Patreon

Published on Dec 1, 2014 hamsterdunce

"Now YOU can help support my comic strip 'The Packrat' by going to patreon.com/packrat and donating to keep it alive!

Thanks to all the loyal Packrat fans!!"

Trailer for "In the Air Tonight" synth / keytar JAM with Lee-Ann Lovelace!

YouTube Uploaded by hamsterdunce on Feb 15, 2012

"Subscribe to Lee-Ann's channel to watch the full video: LUCYZEKE12

More music on umop.com and lalovelace.com

Lee-Ann and Dave wallow in 1980s craziness in this super-colossal dual keytar jam session, covering "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins. New, different artists will be featured every single week on her channel. There are already a few other ones uploaded, so check out her channel and be sure to subscribe if you love original & tribute blues, rock, R&B, and everything else in between (even the occasional synthesizer)."

Note the custom "Tron" red keytar, previously featured here. Dave is of course the man behind The Packrat series amongst others and back in 2006 he created The Packrat Matrix on the right of the site. His art has also been featured on numerous Metasonix products.

The Packrat - June 2013

via The Packrat on Facebook

Be sure to check out The Packrat Sampler book!

the Packrat Comic for July, 2014

via The Packrat on Facebook

You can find more episodes of the Packrat on http://umop.com.

Knobs on The Packrat

January's strip of The Packrat is out. Title link takes you to The Packrat page.

PONG

Title link takes you gagmewithaspoon.com, the new website for Dave Lovelace's new band PONG. Note this is just a teaser site at the moment and the links do not yet work. Dave is the creator of The Packrat series and more.

"Here's a link to a teaser site I made for "PONG," the new '80s band that just got put together. It's basically like Plastica, but 100% New Wave hits (i.e. not as punk, nor anything too obscure), and possibly more in tune with the private party / wedding scene.

We're also going to stick with the original "cheese factor" of the originals as much as humanly possible to really make people feel like it's 20 years ago. It was very tempting in Plastica (as it is with other local bands that play an occasional oldie) to "rokk out" the wimpier hits (or just go for comedy), but this time around we're going to try to embrace the vintage sound and see what happens.

Should be an update in the next few months about gigs; for now we're dusting off our material. We only just completed auditions and got commitments from everyone within just this past week, actually..."

The Creator of The Packrat's Anything Comics #11 Featuring a Minimoog

This one in via Dave of umop.com, creator of the synth centric Packrat series.

"Got this new strip going where I chisel ideas from my faithful readers and incorporate them into comics within unexpected contexts. Someone wanted to see a Minimoog, so they got a Minimoog..."

Left: "All right, here's the eleventh ANYTHING COMICS! In honor of, uh, the last comic being the tenth one, this one's got a record-smashing TEN SUGGESTIONS hidden within! Here they all are:

Amy P. ("a dragon vying with a jellyfish for dominion"), Jay B. ("Prince vs. Jesus in a 1-on-1 basketball game"), Jayne P. ("a Herd of Umlauts"), Drew N. ("role-playing board games"), Xeth F. ("circles"), M.B. ("the creator of Anything Comics worshiping Puffed Rice cereal while watching Dexter in a Purple Rain shower"), Angelo S. ("I have an extensive project in mind, no budget but lots of exposure"), Scott Little ("wind"), Bill H. ("unemployment"), and Mike M. ("two white rats being caught by their owner in the act of paying his Minimoog").

Time to start thinking about what you want me to draw for #12!" You can chime in on the Anything Comics Facebook page here.

Love the Prince reference.

The Leper - live prog keyboard million-note performance

YouTube via hamsterdunce

"More music on umop.com/parallax.htm Here's another version of my original song "The Leper" from my album "umop apisdn." Performed live at the Downtown Cafe in quasi-beautiful Bristol, CT."

The white Roland JD-800 on the lose. Note hamsterdunce is David C. Lovelace of http://umop.com/. He is the man behind The Packrat (scroll and click on the images when you get there), and he does the artwork for Metasonix. He also did the Matrix Packrate drawing for me on the right of this site. :) Dave rocks. You can find more info on his music projects including videos here, man of which have been featured here on MATRIXSYNTH.

Kind Words on MATRIXSYNTH

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The Packrat by Dave

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