Serious Korg DSS-1 Mod!

[PolarAC]

Take a look at what they did to this old 12bity:

http://web.me.com/tomvirostek/DSS-1/DSS1.html

Some of the new features include:

-16M X 12-bit (24MB) of memory (64 banks)
-USB file storage with subdirectories (FAT file system for easy PC transfer)
-more comprehensive diagnostics
-ability to assign sliders to program parameters
-ability to have all 4 systems from floppy (A-D) in memory at once
-up to 64 multisounds at once (instead of 16)
-128 programs at once (instead of 32)
-samples stored on USB drive are in .WAV format

Good lord, thats a helluva mod fellas. And they are selling them too

[PolarAC]

Dude mods the old Korg sampler to have 16mb of ram, with usb.
As much talk that there is about love for old school samplers on this board, I thought this would generate some discussion. Oh well, I liked to have one.

[rockmanrock]

It's about the one vintage sampler I wouldn't consider owning cos it's bloody huge. Very impressive mod though.

[PolarAC]

True Indeed.
Now only if they can do a similair mod with some of the classic E-mu or Ensoniq samplers. "Drool"

[Sir Ruff]

Dude mods the old Korg sampler to have 16mb of ram, with usb.
As much talk that there is about love for old school samplers on this board, I thought this would generate some discussion. Oh well, I liked to have one.

There was another thread or two on this previously that did generate a lot of discussion!

[Hair]

Totally awesome, it really is a shame the DSS-1 is so ridiculously large and heavy, it kicks a*s and this mod looks ridiculously good. I wonder how much trouble it would be to repurpose the guts into a smaller enclosure and maybe making the keyboard section still usable as a controller, as I recall it has a pretty good one and aftertouch and all that, right?

[nathanscribe]

That's a fantastic mod - a real labour of love, by the looks of it. There are some brilliant people out there.

[PolarAC]

Dude mods the old Korg sampler to have 16mb of ram, with usb.
As much talk that there is about love for old school samplers on this board, I thought this would generate some discussion. Oh well, I liked to have one.

There was another thread or two on this previously that did generate a lot of discussion!

Ah! Didn't see that. Thanks

[c.circuits]

I haven't seen it on too many DSS-1s but, supposedly a filter mod can be done on them similar to the Poly-800 and DW8000. So they say over at Circuitbenders.co.uk

Can't remember which synth it shares filters with tho

[gs]

I haven't seen it on too many DSS-1s but, supposedly a filter mod can be done on them similar to the Poly-800 and DW8000. So they say over at Circuitbenders.co.uk

Can't remember which synth it shares filters with tho

DSS-1 shares the same filter (NJM2069) with DW6000/8000 and Poly800, and their rackmount equivalents.

However, the Poly800 only has 1 filter for the whole synth, while the DW's and the DSS have one filter per voice as a normal polysynth does.

Because the Poly800 has only 1 filter, it's possible to do that 'MoogSlayer' mod easily by bypassing the digital control of the single filter. You can't do that on a DW synth or the DSS1, because of the digital polyphonic voice allocation to the filters. You'd have to do a software mod as well as a hardware mod to attain it.

It's better on the DW or DSS to simply apply the joystick to filter cutoff and set joystick pitchbend to zero, and then use an external controller to send the pitchbend command to the synth. You get very smooth manual filter sweeps that way.

[c.circuits]

I haven't seen it on too many DSS-1s but, supposedly a filter mod can be done on them similar to the Poly-800 and DW8000. So they say over at Circuitbenders.co.uk

Can't remember which synth it shares filters with tho

DSS-1 shares the same filter (NJM2069) with DW6000/8000 and Poly800, and their rackmount equivalents.

However, the Poly800 only has 1 filter for the whole synth, while the DW's and the DSS have one filter per voice as a normal polysynth does.

Because the Poly800 has only 1 filter, it's possible to do that 'MoogSlayer' mod easily by bypassing the digital control of the single filter. You can't do that on a DW synth or the DSS1, because of the digital polyphonic voice allocation to the filters. You'd have to do a software mod as well as a hardware mod to attain it.

It's better on the DW or DSS to simply apply the joystick to filter cutoff and set joystick pitchbend to zero, and then use an external controller to send the pitchbend command to the synth. You get very smooth manual filter sweeps that way.

Yeah, I came across this and it does mention CPU control of the vcf, vca and delays. It had been suggested one might have to stick control voltage to pins 13 and 14. I dunno, I abandoned my pursuit of a DSS-1 so never bothered with any of this.

I had seen this DW filter and delay mod from ClassA Electronics and that kinda led me to believe it might be somewhat simple.

[plexicube]

I recently had this mod done by Tom in Santa Monica. I wish I had more time to play since I completed the install, but my initial reaction is that I'm pretty amazed at the facility this adds to the DSS-1. I keep thinking about all the loops and stuff I can now run through the lovely filter. I dunno, maybe I was attracted to the perverse nature of upgrading this board to such a modern spec, but now I want to make it the centerpiece of my studio. It's also nice to support such a niche cottage industry. I got board #004! Kudos to Tom and Jim. I see the price of DSS-1s going up already! (I got mine for $125 about 2 years ago).

[Cruel Hoax]

Man, I remember using a DSS-1 in my first job out of school. (Boss says "here, learn this so I don't have to!") Great sound, great feel.

Whaddya mean you can't fir a performance piano into 384kB?

Yeah, it's huge, but whaddya gonna do with 16 resonant analog filters in a box?

I currently own the DSM-1 rack unit (16 non-resonant analog filters. Too bad!) but a local DSS-1 would really tempt me now with this mod. Great choice of board to update!

-Hoax