#soundcraft

March 2022 JAPAN 

© KOJI ARAKI Art Works

So here's the current incarnation of The Lair of Nefarious Machinery. The only things not in the photo are the VT-4 I recently hot-rodded and a controller keyboard to go with it, the HS-80 I chop-shopped, a second EP-11 (trying to get one working unit out of two semi-broken ones, then mod it), and an effects processor or three. Oh and the Alisa. I don't know what to do with that one. I need shitloads more time than I already don't have to properly deal with bringing that one back to life. Oh and an HR-16B I'm not sure what to do with.

Recent fun is as follows. First, this guy joined the family.

Ok how can you not like a synth that has a preset patch called Death? Hehehe. It does live up to its name, it's a bona-fide fuckin' freak. I've only explored two of the oscillator engines and already I'm really impressed. I've got it run through a BOSS DD-3 delay then a Digitech Polara reverb and wow do those put the icing on the cake. Understandably, for a synth you can pick up for less than $300, you won't be getting any built-in effects. Pedals to the rescue! In any case, I wanna spend more time with this thing. One little irk I have with it is that in the manual it says you can power it over USB, even with one of those portable power brick thingies I see all the chinese tourists powering their phones with, but they recommend you always use the supplied DC adapter, as it's a 3-prong, earthed deal, and the capacitive touch stuff can get wonky if the unit is not grounded. I did use the supplied adapter, and earthed it, and holy shit the NOISE that came through!? High-pitched digital whine from bog knows what part of this condo building, on top of the 60Hz hum that was going on. Jeez! Yanked that fucker right out and back in the box it went. Using a 10,000 mAh USB power brick now and guess what, NO noise or hum or anything, and the capacitive touch works fucking fine. No idea what the hell is up with that. Whatever works.

I put a lot of stuff up for sale on the auction, and am slowly getting bites. Gotta pay some shit off, and send $ back to the old man to help out with his caregiver lady thing. I may even reluctantly part with one of the Big Hitters in the setup (Virus, Polivox, ION) but that will be the end-of-the-line, last-ditch-effort, no-other-option scenario, and I hope it doesn't go that far. I had both MFBs listed, then had second thoughts about the 503. I think there's no drum machine as small as the 503 with as big of a sound, and as fully featured. The Drumbrute Impact caught my eye for a minute, then I saw that it doesn't store knob positions (or save the sounds you made for any particular pattern) with the pattern and that was a deal breaker. The 503 DOES this. And there are so many editable parameters per sound, it's more like a drum synth than a simple 909 clone. I do wish it had a rimshot though. Anyway.

I spent half an hour yesterday in full Sherlock Holmes mode, trying to hunt down the source of the 60Hz hum I could hear with everything turned on but nothing playing (turned the noise gate on the Compounder off for this). Oh speaking of the Compounder, for whatever reason, the channel one limiter LED stays lit all the time even when there's no signal present. Fuuuuck. I noticed that some weird shit was going on with the mix too, so I looked for a replacement and someone had one listed with a buy-it-now of about $100 so out of necessity I bought it. It works fine. I sent an email to Focusrite support asking for any advice on where to look to fix the problem. I had an issue with this Compounder a few years ago, and asked if schematics were available, so I had to sign an NDA and they sent them, and they pointed me in the right direction as to what I should look at and possibly replace to fix the issue I was having, and that did it. Fixed. Quite helpful, so hopefully I'll get the same this time.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Noise sleuthing. I'm using a Soundcraft Spirit Folio Lite as a sub-mixer for drum machines, with the main bus insert going to a BOSS NS-50 stereo noise suppressor, then into the Radius 3 Fat Man. When I dropped the channels on the main mixer that this mixer is being sent to, the noise went away. Ok, let's have a look. I undid then redid all the audio and power wiring for everything going into the mixer, then reset everything on every channel to zero and PFL'd the works. Looks like I was getting carried away with EQ and Gain settings there as time went by. MORE BASS!! LOUDER!! Heh. Anyway, zeroing out everything and starting over is probably a good thing to do every now and then.

And now for the Ludicrousness. I had the MC-505 stood up on its side, on the floor, just so it was out of the way and I could move shit around. I bumped into it and it fell over, so I tried to catch it and in the process the EFX knob, with the pot shaft in it, broke completely off. AAAARGH!!!! Same shit as the volume knob when I got the thing. Pain in the ass but a solderless fix. Took half and hour and I was swearing up such a foul storm my wife came in and was like "You ok? What happened?" I was so goddam pissed off. Silly, I know, but AAAAAAARGH already! In any case, the fucker works so that's all that's important.

And now for something completely different.