FOUND IT! Oberheim DMX Cowbell voice card

[DesolationBlvd]

Found it!

[madtheory]

Have you seen electrongate? You can roll your own from these:
http://www.electrongate.com/dmxfiles/eproms.html

Here's how:
http://www.electrongate.com/dmxfiles/dmxfiles_faq.html

[DesolationBlvd]

I saw those links, but I would gladly pay for an extra voice card as it would be easier (and less of a chance to screw something up) for me to just pull the entire card out than just one chip when I want to switch back and forth.

I wish I had extra (empty) voice cards for the toms, too.

[logix]

I realize this thread is almost 2 years old, but in case the OP hasn't gotten hold of the mentioned voice card: replacement voice cards have been re-designed and are available at the DMX files website for US$ 98 each.
As for the cowbell, having studied the documentation for modifying 1554 voice cards, it can be configured to have two pitches (as opposed to just having two sound levels) if I recall correctly. I've heard the two-pitched DMX cowbell in many recording, so you might want this instead of just a single pitched one. An example is "Let it all blow" by The Dazz band (listen from around 3:10)

I've got a DMX myself which I haven't used for years and there are many sounds I'd like to have, but getting hold of dedicated sound cards for each sound will add up in cost. Ultimately I'd have each card to be configurable for various sounds, but I'm not sure if that can be done simply with switches or if each card needs to have specific components for the particular sounds (I need to re-read that modification document linked above). It would be great if an EPROM expansion board (taking multiple voice EPROMs) could be used, and an internal switch could be used to choose between say a DMX bass drum, Linn Bass drum (boy do I regret selling my Linndrum back in the 90s!, but I digress), Electronic bass drum etc. and similarly for the snare, toms etc. instead of pulling out the EPROMs each time.


EDIT: look what I found: Someone selling the voice card you're looking for priced at US$ 99.

[DesolationBlvd]

EDIT: look what I found: Someone selling the voice card you're looking for priced at US$ 99.

Thanks! Just ordered it.

Using the spare card to put another EPROM on in the future (the card contains a stock voice).

[logix]

Glad I could be of help
Does your DMX have the old style/short toms (e.g. "Blue monday" by New order and "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock) or the new style/long toms? Mine's a later DMX with factory fitted MIDI and the newer sounds (i.e. the toms are marked "DX toms" on the EPROMs) but I'd like the older style toms. I read that my (2x EPROM sockets) voice board (1675C) can take both 2732 and 2764 chips, but I'm not sure if that means I have to change components etc or just replace the EPROMs. Any ideas?

If you have the old style toms I'd also like to know if the two tom boards contain two different EPROMs (the electrongate.com site has one tom EPROM named "DMX large toms" and another named "DMX small toms" while both my tom voice cards are identical with the same "DX toms" EPROMs), or just one of the EPROMs?

[DesolationBlvd]

Glad I could be of help
Does your DMX have the old style/short toms (e.g. "Blue monday" by New order and "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock) or the new style/long toms? Mine's a later DMX with factory fitted MIDI and the newer sounds (i.e. the toms are marked "DX toms" on the EPROMs) but I'd like the older style toms.

"Unfortunately" (because one of the three reasons I bought my DMX was "Blue Monday"), mine is also a factory MIDI / "DX Tom" version.

[logix]

I wish I had those old style toms as well, and a better bass drum (could probably swap the existing one with a Linndrum or Linn LM-1 bassdrum) but don't want to put that much money into it right now.
From what I understand you need to use a 1554 voice card for the old style (Blue monday, Rockit etc.) toms. I believe you need to configure it as explained in Oberheim DMX Type 1554 Voice Card Configuration and furthermore by going to Oberheim Tom 1/Tom 2 Voice Card Configuration. At least I think that's the toms we're talking about as I know my "new" style toms occupy a pair of 1675c voice cards. In addition to the voice card (not sure if the existing tom cards can be used with the old style toms as well. That would be great! Perhaps someone else reading knows?) you would need to "burn" (program) EPROM chips with the sounds you want. The old style tom sounds and other sounds can be downloaded for free from here (standard DMX/DX sounds). There are also sounds for DMX EPROMs available here (Sequential Drumtraks sounds), here (Drumware), and here (Digidrum). They used to have Linn LM-1, Linndrum and Linn-9000 EPROM files as well but the copyright holders asked to have them removed unfortunately.

Do you have an EPROM programmer? I use a Mac and am out of luck (one of the reasons I haven't replaced any of my DMX sounds yet) but if you use a PC an EPROM programmer can be bought for little money at eBay. If you want to re-use an EPROM by replacing its existing sound (or have made a mistake programming one) you'd also need a UV eraser (Ultraviolet light) made specifically for erasing EPROMs. This and the EPROMs themselves are likely available at eBay as well.

Getting back to the voice cards: there's a lot of reading in the above links and I don't know if I've understood all the details, but it seems that although some sounds can be exchanged with the existing ones as a matter of just changing an EPROM chip, other sounds demand that you modify the actual voice board in question by moving jumpers and replacing diodes and resistors with other values in addition to exchanging the EPROM, so since this isn't something you'd be doing every day you would need several voice card (hence more $$$$).
I guess we need to do some planning, figuring out which sounds we want and which type of cards they fit. Reading about the replacement voice cards (1554e) for US$ 98 they seem to be very versatile for this. Apparently you can use either 2732, 2764 or 27128 EPROM chips, where the latter allows for 4 different sounds selectable with switches! Sounds like a great deal to me if you can use multiple EPROMs, all without having to change jumpers, resistors or other components as well.
Sorry for rambling

[logix]

DesolationBlvd: how did it work out with that new cowbell/claps voice card?
I've just gotten into replacing some of the sounds in my DMX! So far I've replaced the "long" toms with the original ones (used in New order's Blue Monday" and Herbie Hancock's "Rockit"), so that sounds great! I also replaced the bass drum with another one. Very cool!
All sounds have different uses I guess, but having a bunch of EPROMs with different sounds is great.

Here's some more details in case the above was of interest: I ended up getting a TL-866 USB EPROM programmer from eBay and installed Windows on my Mac so I could use the supplied software. I had an EPROM-eraser (a special UV-light) from before, so that was good.

The sounds themselves were downloaded from the DMX files's DMX/DX sounds section, and for the toms I downloaded "DMX small toms" (STOM5.BIN) and put them on one of the tom cards (withotu any sort of modification), and "DMX large toms" (SFLTOM2.BIN) on the other tom voice card. The sound files were made to fit a 2732 (4 Kbytes) EPROM each, but the result of "burning" ("programming" an EPROM) them into 2732 chips resulted in double triggering so I assume I would have to move some of the jumpers around or something for that to work.
So next I took some erased 2764 chips (same type as already used on those tom cards ("DX toms") as factory installed in my "late" version DMX), burnt them with the 2732 files and filling in empty room left over with zeroes. Worked great!

As mentioned above, the voice cards weren't modified in any way to get the new sounds, but some sounds need to have jumpers changed and so on (for instance, toms have one sample which is pitched 3 ways while say a bass drum or snare card is configured to keep the pitch the same along 3 buttons but at different levels). Your cowbell/claves card is, I assume (as I don't have it myself) is configured to pitch the cowbell two ways along two buttons and the third button has the clap. If you want to look into the different voice card configurations it's all documented in the download section of the DMX files. I'm going to see if I can remove the soldered jumpers with jumpers I can reconfigure without all the hassle, because these voice cards are hard to come by and expensive when they show up.

The problem I have now is that for the bass/snare drums I only have 1554B cards, and they only take 2732 EPROMs, so I can't have the electronic bass drum and electronic snare drum as they demand 2764 EPROMs, and they're only usable with 1675C cards or the new and more versatile 1554E which is a newly designed voice card by Electrongate (DMX files).
So if someone has a couple of 1675 voice cards for sale at reasonable cost I'm interested!