Synths
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Groove Synthesis 3rd Wave
A few months back (about 3 if I recall) I got in touch with the people at Groove Synthesis about their 3rd wave, and I purchased one. Now I’m a huge fan of wavetable synths and this having 3 oscillators, lots of wavetables and a bunch of other cool features was a chance not to miss. Having owned a PPG Wave 2.2, PRK, EVU and Waveterm I was quite ready to be disappointed and frustrated with the 3rd wave. I was pleasantly proved wrong, very wrong. The third wave is just incredible, you can read up on the specs online, but it sounds amazing and the fact it has 24…
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The future of Dove-Audio
I think everyone is aware of the chip shortage that has been on going for a while now and it’s sadly showing very little sign of improving for the 12 to 18 months. It’s not just chips either, connectors, potentiometers, switches, everything has gone long lead time. Add in the growing rate of inflation, cost of living crises that’s happening in the UK as well as a number of personal changes in my life, I’m considering the future of Dove-Audio and synths. In my life, Suzi is keeping me very busy and I am really enjoying the morning walks, which take around an hour and we go through some beautiful…
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The “Industry”
I was watching several videos about Knobcon, a synthesiser event in Chicago) as I had friends there and I found it really quite enjoyable to see them talking about and showing their latest products. What was disappointing, but not entirely surprising, was to learn that my ex company are still using my old name, in person and online. Sure enough after a quick google there are videos online showing this, followed with multiple “corrections” in the same video. Now for those who don’t know I transitioned over 6 years ago, and it was something that had been in the works 2 years before that. My business partner at the time…
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Synth DIY UK
Finally, after a two year hiatus Synth DIY UK returned and it was a really great event.Lots of catching up with old friends and making of new friends. we had a turn out of around 40 people which is good and we even raised £200 for our chosen charity. Of course on the evening alcohol was consumed, good food eaten and lots of catching up. The event, and more correctly, the people really lifted my mood and made me remember what a wonderful community it is. Below are some of my pictures and you can find more on the Synth DIY UK gallery page The event is open to the…
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It’s ALIVE
After swapping the dead -12V 2A fuse, I powered it up and everything stayed on for about 30 minutes. So I decided to attach the monitor, keyboard and alpha-numeric keyboard and see what happened and sure enough, we have life! Super exciting! Keep in mind this Fairlight hasn’t been powered on for over 20 years!So next the big step, let’s insert a system disk, now I’ve no idea if the disks still work or if the drives have died (I can hear a motor but that’s all), and as I say, it is 20 years old. Yes! it booted much to my amazement, and what’s more I can even load…
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No longer blowing fuses, but….
Having swapped out the bridge rectifier for a high power one and used nice high grade thermal paste I was able to power up the PSU and sure enough, it worked, I can measure the voltages and the mains fuse does not blow. Awesome, I’m really chuffed with this. So I assembled everything (about 2 hours) and powered her on.Only to discover another fault… ARGH!!! Sadly, the -12V rail is dead… Now I’m imagining the worst, so I decide to check the -12V fuse and well, it’s blown. Upon checking someone has replaced the 2A anti surge fuse with a a 1.5A standard blow fuse. So I power off, quickly…
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We have a winner!
I finally decided I could no longer avoid removing the PSU from the case to check the capacitors, rectifiers and transformer.Now if you recall I had a problem with the scan of the service manual in that the colours of the wires were not clear. I asked on the facebook group and David Cilia kindly took a photo of the area I was interested in and it’s so nice to see the colours. David also sent me pictures of the full page (left hand side and right hand side), Peter Welik also sent me another picture of the page I needed, wonderful! So please give his web site some love,…
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Welcome
I thought I’d move away from so called “social media” due to the increase in far right extremism, bigotry and general hatred in the world. This is a shame as I’ll miss a lot of the people I follow on twatter, faceprat and so on, but for my own mental health it’s time to move on. So I’m here to talk about random tech things I find interesting, maybe update on some of the more tech points of my synthesiser projects and certainly share posts of the odd repair job I do. I’m also working with a friend, Jon, on building a CPU entirely out of TTL logic chips which…