synth porn

Synth Porn Saturday: David at Auditory Canvas posted this shot of his custom white Akai APC40:

I’m not going to add any lettering etc as i like the minimal look, and it enables me to reassign some of the buttons and knobs without them then being labeled wrongly.

Image: Chris Randall

Audio Damage’s Chris Randall has posted a great story about restoring his Yamaha CS5 synthesizer:

For those not hip to the story, a couple years ago an AI reader in Seattle gave me this CS5.

To say it was broken is to do a gross injustice to the word “broken.” It was absolutely in throw-away condition. There were no end-pieces at all, everything was disconnected, several of the pots had failed, the metalwork (including the face panel) was bent all to hell, several of the ICs unique to the CS5 were burnt out, and worst of all, the main board, the actual synth itself, was broken, and many of the traces had failed.

But Stephen at Synthwood saw a challenge where others saw impossibilities.

I won’t go in to great detail on everything he had to do to get this thing in even barely working condition, never mind what it’s at now, because we just don’t have that kind of time. Highlights include dark walnut end-cheeks (and he had to fashion these en situ, as we didn’t have the originals to work from), fixing all the metalwork and the frame, full cleaning, replacement of all the busted parts, repairing the broken circuit board, replacing the power supply, swapping out the fixed power connector with an IEC jack, and giving it MIDI.

Do you have any synthesizer money pits, that you love anyway?

NIN: Survivalism live w/ Saul Williams, Atlanta 5.10.09

Saul Williams makes a surprise appearance on stage with Nine Inch Nails for a performance of Survivalism, live in Atlanta, GA, May 10th, 2009

There’s a lot of things that impressed me in this video, ranging from the performance, to the surprise visit from Saul Williams to the awesome array of electronic music gear.

Watch closely, though, and you’ll see that, despite the fact that the video looks fantastic – this is a basically a glorified home movie, one shot, filmed by Rob Sheridan with a Canon 5d Mark II.

Like a lot of things that NIN has been doing, it’s not immediately obvious how insanely innovative this is.

Put a guy on stage with a relatively cheap HD video cameo and let him interact with both the band and the audience, and you’ve changed concert videos forever. There’s no reason a band can’t have an HD concert video made for all their shows, now.

Let me know what you think of this video.

Meanwhile, I’m going back to watch it again and do some synth-spotting.

via ninofficial

Synth Porn Saturday: This video captures some of the extreme modular synth action at Happy Knobbing 2009, a modular synth meetup.

via Moogulator

Image: Analogue Haven

This is an shot of Macbeth Studio System’s new X-Series Dual Oscillator.

The unit is housed in a 42hp, 3u, Eurorack module. This unit has been designed to address the need for larger controls , ergonomics and panel space associated with a larger format but now within the 3u format.

The price is $1295 plus shipping, delivery time is approximately 5 weeks. The first module run will be small.

Details below. Read more…