Building a Roland 24 pin guitar synth cable
November 5, 2013The first generation of Roland guitar synthesisers used a totally unique 24 pin connector. This was apparently built specifically for Roland and was never used by any other manufacturer. Consequently, the connectors and cables are hard to find and tend to fetch crazy prices on Ebay. Wayne Joness site goes into the issue in depth.…
Setting up an Ibanez IMG-2010 Guitar Synth controller
October 30, 2013I have the joy of owning an Ibanez IMG-2010 Guitar Synth, which can be had quite cheap on Ebay, yet are excellent quality Steinberger style guitars, and originally sold for quite a princely sum. Wayne Joness’ very informative GR-300 site extolls the qualities of this beast in great detail. I’m yet to do the conversion…
Downgrading Apple Airport Express 802.11g (A1084) firmware
October 13, 2013I’ve had an Apple Airport Express 1st Generation, 802.11g model A1084 since new, c. 2004. This has long been superseded by newer versions, and for sometime it was just doing duty for me as a USB print server, not as a router. However, it seems that there is a bug introduced around v6.2 of the…
Fixing a Roland PC-200 MIDI keyboard controller
January 21, 2011Continuing in my series of keyboard repair blogs, I recently bailed an old Roland PC-200 keyboard out of storage. This old guy is just a 4 octave MIDI controller (no sound generator), but it fit the bill for having a reasonably sized polyphonic keyboard for a NYC apartment. Unfortunately it had long ago developed a…
Restoring a Micromoog
December 13, 2010Some time back, I acquired a Micromoog analog, monophonic synth. These little beasts are a single oscillator synth, but include a sub-oscillator, 24dB/Oct filter, good modulation, ribbon pitch bend and CV interfacing. The clincher was one appeared cheap on Ebay advertised as requiring “Tender Loving Care”: the wooden base needed replacing, but that it did…
Resurrecting a PowerMac G4
November 10, 2010A friend who has returned to studies, and therefore low on cash, had bought a second hand PowerMac G4 Mirror Drive Door model. After a good many years of service with the previous owner, and a year with him, the G4’s power supply died, as that model is inclined to do. Repairing the powersupply is…
A History of Preferential Voting in Australia
August 16, 2010With the Australian federal election impending, once again it’s time to ignore the personality contest and concentrate on reviewing the policies of the various contenders in your electorate. Reading some of the news comments by non-Australians reveals little is known about preferential voting and it’s value to creating Australia’s stable political system. While this article…
Panoramas
June 13, 2009I’ve been experimenting with panoramic photographs on and off for several years. I’ve now posted a set shot many years ago now, in NYC and India, using a Kiwi panoramic head and a Kodak DC240.
Axon Bends recordings
February 19, 2009Examples of pitch bend tracking on Axon guitar synths: Axon bends and Axon_detuned.
Ancient Ensoniq Mirage Samples and MS-DOS Utilities
December 21, 2008Many moons ago, I used to own an Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard. There are still a number of people using the Mirage, so here is a source of info for those souls still enjoying the 2 LED interface… These samples and downloads originally came from the Music Software Exchange, which retailed (for nominal shipping fee)…