Saturday, 15 November 2014

Roland TR-77 (Bentley Rhythm Ace) drum with Buchla & Euro

A record of last weeks jam with Paul A (Cobramatic).



Playing around with lots of Buchla, Euro modular stuff and attempting to sync with old drum machines. Mainly Roland. The CR 68 has a very nice & useful trigger out which is handy for sync/clocking purposes.
The machine below is called the "Bentley Rhythm Ace FR8L"
 It is actually the model that precedes the Roland TR77. The TR77 is almost identical but has a slightly different layout and features.The TR 77 is a bit older and doesn't have any triggers out or in.

 

Still its a beauty. Incredible lush warmth from the kick. It uses all discrete components & analogue voice circuits to produce its drum sounds. "TR" stands for "transistor rhythm" It was produced in 1972. It was I believe Roland's first drum machine.



 It was one of a trio of drum machines released by Roland that year: the 33,55 & the 77.
 
 The Bentley has what must be one of the sexiest start/stop switches around ..... esp as its from 1972.
Its a touch sensitive metal plate.


We had to pass this through a Buchla 230 to enable clocking. Seems to work OK.

 The Buchla 230 is mounted on its side in this case to save room.


a Short video:
Sorry about the audio quality











Tuesday, 11 November 2014

A Roland CR 68 with a Buchla 200 (and a bit of Euro)

I love these old drum machines. The Roland CR 68 is one of my favourites.




It's sending a trigger out to a Buchla 230 envelope follower.


The 230 is mounted on its side.


A 208r


Monday, 10 November 2014

Buchla Music Easel - The Program Card Evolution

In 1973 The Buchla Music Easel featured a revolutionary method to store patches: the Program Card.

 This is a vintage easel program card from the 70s

With the release of the New BEMI Easel in 2013 came a new program card:

 The 2013 Buchla (BEMI) Easel program card

Finally in 2014 came the iProgram card.
It's another revolution. Buchla in the 21st century


The BEMI Easel iProgram Card


 Front view of the Buchla Easel Program Cards

 Rear of the Buchla Easel Program Cards

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Thursday, 6 November 2014

Citadel of Salah Ed-Din - Syria


The Citadel of Salah Ed-Din (Arabic: قلعة صلاح الدين‎, Qal'at Salah al-Din) are the remains of a castle in Syria. I visited the site in 2000. It's inaccessible now due to the current war
I wonder what it looks like now? Probably still a ruin.

 This lonely pillar was carved out of the surrounding bedrock in the 11th century.
It's the support for the drawbridge.

I visited it from the city of Latakia, (30 km east).

It's a crusader castle ruin. In 1188 it fell to the forces of Saladin after a three-day siege.
What's left are these ruins.

The site is beautiful. Situated in a deep ravine, it's surrounded by forest.
Built on a ridge some 700 metres (2,300 ft) long between two deep gorges.[2] It guarded the route between Latakia and the city of Antioch


In 2006, the castles of Qal'at Salah El-Din and Krak des Chevaliers was recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The spur on which the castle is built is connected to a plateau in the east.


It was part of the Principality of Antioch, one of the four states founded by the Crusaders after the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099.

 My taxi driver & his trusty Peugot. 
The car is parked in the man made trench build by the crusaders which surrounds the site.

The internal ruins.

On 27 July 1188 Saladin and his son, Az-Zahir Ghazi, arrived at Saône with an army and laid siege to the castle. The Muslim forces adopted two positions outside the castle: 


Saladin was positioned on the plateau opposite the castle's east side.  His son faced the north of the castle's lower enclosure.


It is told that the seige engines hurled stones weighing between 50 and 300 kilograms (110 and 660 lb) This onslaught lasted two days, causing significant damage. 



The stone "needle" is 28 metres tall

The 28 m deep ditch, cut into the living rock





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For more travel postcards click here
 

Wednesday, 5 November 2014

ARP 2500 - Envelope Generators

A bit of experimentation with the 1046 Module - The Quad Envelope Generator.


This is a 1046 which is basically a 1003 + 1033.
Used to produce repeatable CVs of  0 to +10V & 0 to -10V.


ARP 2500 EGs have both Gate & Trig inputs (G & T).
The G & T inputs can be found at both the top & bottom of the module.
The Gate is an on/off signal with duration.
The Trigger is more of an sharp impulse with no duration.

This is a really cool feature. If you apply another trigger signal while the gate is still present the cycle
will restart. ..a good way for creating multi-peak envelopes.

There are 4 main adjustable parameters : Attack Time, Initial Decay, Sustain, Final Decay (Release).
and  two Delay time pots that are used when in multiple mode (arranged in four vertical rows
of 4 pots, 5 pots, 4 pots, 5 pots).
The Delay time feature permits the user to delay the attack of an envelope (3 milliseconds to 3 seconds).

When the Trigger Mode switch is in the Multiple setting you need both gates & triggers to activate an envelope. In the single mode, only a gate is required (T not needed).

If  the gate is suddenly removed in the middle of a cycle the voltage returns to 0V

patch pic 1

patch pic 2

 1047 Multimode filter & 1006 FiltAmp Module


The VCOs : 1004-T & 1023

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Tuesday, 4 November 2014

Roland mixer - power supply replacement (Part2)

This is part two of the search for a replacement power supply for my old  Roland M-240 mixer.
It's morphed into a discussion about the nature of power supplies with one of my good friends who is also a excellent synthesizer technician.

By chance  I have another Roland mixer (Boss BX-16) that also uses a DC +/- 21.5V psu. It's however 300ma .... not the 500ma that the M240 needs.



I opened it up yesterday:

So simple. The PSU is made up of a stepdown transformer, 4 diodes & two capacitors.


The caps are 2200uf, 35V

How simple !!!!!

The incoming AC power is first stepped down by the transformer (120 - 21.5V). 
Then it's converted from AC to DC by the 4 bridge rectifying diodes & finally filtered with the capacitors. (There don't appear to be any voltage regulators in this PSU).


This circuit uses a centre-tapped transformer.
Most of the circuits like this seem to use 4004 diodes. (I only have 4001s handy).
It's highly likely that the PSU for the 240 mixer uses a similar circuit.
I'll breadboard this when the correct diodes arrive.

If you wish to be really safe add some regulators.
 

Monday, 3 November 2014

iProgram Card for the Buchla Music Easel

Successful installation of the ipad app for the Easel.



And the ipad and app do talk :-)
I'm running iOS 7



I gather there are probs with iOS 8 so don't upgrade your operating system
if you'd like to run this app.

I'm running a fairly old ipad (I think it's a ipad 2).
We will see how this goes.


The manual says it's also possible to communicate to the easel via USB (using the camera connector).
.... in situations where WiFi isn't available.

Muffs has a good post care of Todd B

Easel iProgram Card -- Programming in Both mode