advice needed on modding an sh-101

[ni-cad]

hi, this is my first post here, cool forum btw.

I'm hoping to get my roland sh-101 modded, so far the plan is to fit it with midi out, extra led's above all the sliders - a clear back-lit modulation wheel and to give it a new colour scheem - black with orange graphics, it should be cool but I have little knowledge of electronics and the modifications are being done by a synth repaire company.

The main problem is the midi out, if any of you guys can pitch any ideas my way I would be very greatfull. I've been told a kit from doepfer could probably be used, it's a contact to midi out module - http://www.doepfer.de/home_e.htm and uses contact switches wich it then converts in to midi note on/off data, from here on I'm confused. no one seems to know if the contacts on the keys already in the sh-101 will be sufficiant or if new extra switches would be need to be fitted or if new switches are needed which switches would be appropriate.

I know sparkfun have some nice switches but don't really know enough about electronics to be able to figure out if any of them might work. . . . the problem is, the synth repair company have never modded a synth for midi out and they charge a lot, I can't afford to pay them for their time to figure it out, so I need advice.

hope thats cool and that someone here might be a little clued up on the ctm 64 or perhaps be able to offer some sugestions for a workaround.

ni-cad. 

[Gordonjcp]

Adding MIDI out to an SH-101 sounds like far more trouble than it's worth.  The keyboard is pretty nasty, anyway.  Why not just pick up one of the el-cheapo MIDI controllers and spray that instead?

[ni-cad]

So I can have the best of both worlds realy, I can already send midi in to the SH -101 using the doepfer mcv4, but having to use another keyboard just to send midi out back to my daw would be a waist of space for me. I already have a monome 256 and a maschine but I reallly like working with actual keys for sound design and writing hooks etc, it makes sence to me to be able to do all of that with one keyboard and the sh-101 is my favourite keyboard of all time, the other advantages would be things like layering, being able to layer an sh-101 arp with some nice vst based synth sounds or layering the 101's acid bass with something a little more exotic from a plugin sounds super fun, also I've wanted to mod a 101 for many years now, I need a controller keyboard at the moment and I realy hate modern controller keyboards, I know they're not all bad and I have looked but I couldn't find anything close enough to the 101.

I really didn't think it would be that difficult a job but it appears to be, I originally wanted a nova mod but I've had to strip back my plans, I am also a little concearned about how to acheive polyphonic midi out, I presume that anything utilzes cv and gate - midi is only going to be mono?

[Bogus Noise]

The 101 is a gorgeous little synth, and sounds amazing modified/circuit bent 

There's a MIDI In kit for it about, but don't think I've seen anything about adding a MIDI Out!

I'm currently looking into building one of the Fat Controllers from here -
http://burnit.co.uk/sdiy/index.php?page=home

I want to put patch points on mine and use it as the beginnings of a kind of ghetto modular synth 

[Gordonjcp]

I really didn't think it would be that difficult a job but it appears to be, I originally wanted a nova mod but I've had to strip back my plans, I am also a little concearned about how to acheive polyphonic midi out, I presume that anything utilzes cv and gate - midi is only going to be mono?

Correct.  You could get at the keyboard and somehow hook into the scan lines, and then "forward" that on to the CPU, or you could use an ADC to read the note voltage.  The first way would potentially give you polyphonic MIDI out but would be horribly complicated, the second would be incredibly easy but mono only.

[ni-cad]

I think the ctm64 interface will give me polyphonic output, I'm hoping that the synth maker I'm going to use can some how work with the contacts already inplace on the keys in the 101 but failing that I was wondering if new switches could be place under the keys, switches simular to the ones featured with it, here is the link what do you guys think?

http://www.doepfer.de/ctm.htm

I tried to post this link before, but it didn't work, so anyway that's the module, can it be done without to much compex work?