An ignoramus has some goodies to operate on....

[Walter_Odington]

Hi all, I am new 

Great site here, all these wonderful instruments! Looks like a great forum, I'm into music equipment and also getting into visual a bit too. I have a bit of elecronics background, but not very much practical application - I solder my own cables and thats about it! (curse those bastard MIDI ones)

I am also a synth freak. I seem to have pooled virtually all of my resources over the past 5 years into an almighty synth collection, and you may be pleased to hear there are some that I dont mind operating on (or is that  )

I've got a SH-101, and I am gonna try the mods suggested on the PDF here

http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,5.0.html

but I am a little incompitent, so I'm gonna try and learn a bit more first.


But I got a couple more that could be 'done'. Not really sure what I'm looking for, but there are a couple that I see could be improved by modding... but there has not been much experimentation, at least a site search shows nothing.

Ones that need surgery:

Kawai K1m, Alesis Quadraverb, Korg A2 digital effects.


Ones that I could be persuaded to mod if confidence is increased:

Alpha Juno, Korg MS-20 


What do you lot think? I am unskilled and icompitent, but willing to learn, and willing to experiment - even if a couple of my bits get butchered along the way (so long as it aint the ms-20). Perhapse somebody more compitent may be interested in using my toys to experiment on? I dunno, I'm open to suggestions!

[Circuitbenders]

This is a common misunderstanding with circuitbending or just generally modding kit. I could almost guarantee that atempting to mod your K1m, Quadraverb or A2 would just not work or more likely irrepairably fry them. These machines may seem a bit elderly and primative by todays standards but the is a whole lot of very sensitive and serious integrated technology inside this kit. On older kit like a TR505 drum machine you tend to have separate chips for the operating system and the sound ROM etc etc awhich means you can mess with the sounds without disrupting the rest of the circuit.The whole circuit of a 505 would probably be integrated into about 1mm square of modern chip so theres no way  of isolating the parts you need.
A lot of digital kit is going to be running from operating system software anyway. Unless you are planning to rewrite the operating system you'll probably be out of luck.

As an example, because the 101 is analogue you can just take a crocodile lead from the Control Voltage output of the VCA to any other point in the circuit that will accept a CV, such as filter resonance, and the VCA will control the resonance. Try that on a Nord Lead and you'd have a dead Nord lead.

Re the Juno, i could imagine that it might be possible to add a filter input but it would be tricky. i wouldn't go messing with it unless you had some pretty clear guidelines on possible mods.

Why would you want to mod an MS-20? Its pretty weird already

[Walter_Odington]

ah, thanks for the frank heads up


Well, perhapse I better attempt the 101 mods as a starting point - hope I dont butcher the thing! The guidlines are clear, so hopefully I shouldn't.

I dunno about the ms-20 or juno... I better have a think and do a little research. you got any crazy ideas?

[Walter_Odington]

Also, I got a oberheim matrix 1000... is that also an OS nightmare? How about a CZ-101?


Many thanks for advice!

Joe

[papaspank]

One thing about the older Alesis modules As far as I can recalll (I used to have one or two - long time ago) they didn't run on DC voltage - the transformer was just a voltage one, and didn't do anything to rectify the AC signal from the plug socket.

I have been told that this would mean a pretty much different set of components inside - and would mean a much more complex method of modding successfully.

I have to be honset though, it's been years since I had the units in question - so I could well be mistaken, but it's worth considering before going ahead.

[Walter_Odington]

ah, interesting 

[Circuitbenders]

hmmm, Alesis HR-16's run on 9V AC and they can be modded much the same way as any other drum machine from that era.
In fact just about every bit of Alesis kit i've ever seen apart from the bizarre PSU for the Datadisk runs off the same 9V AC power supply with different plugs, whic is handy in some ways but its not the sort of power supply you just have lying around unless you own a lot of Alesis gear.

Also, I got a oberheim matrix 1000... is that also an OS nightmare? How about a CZ-101?

I wouldn't want to go messing with a matrix1000 but i've seen bent CZ101's. They seemed to just produce a load of unusable random white noise but if thats your kind of thing then go for it.

[nochtanseenspecht]

About the kawai k1m,
would it be possible to only bent the digital waveforms, while there's still control over the parameters ?
i mean : i guess the waveforms come from one seperate ic . ?
maybe it's to risky....