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I wanted to share a playlist that has been growing ever longer of test recordings I've been making over the years of resurrected kit for private clients having landing on the bench often for major TLC. The figure makes me feel worn out just looking at it but its now totalling well over 500 including some very rare wonders including some of my own like the infamous Novachord 346 which is now 82 years old and still in the land of the living!:

https://soundcloud.com/hideaway-studio/ ... age-synths

There's some great stuff there, Dan. I could spend ages going through it!

Oh wow thanks D.A.!

Great music tracks! You are well done and doubly well done for deciding to share the fruits of your labors with the community!

You won't be surprised I went straight for the Novachord!

Beautiful tracks - thank you for sharing.

Very very cool.

so nice

awwh.. many thanks to all of you for your kind comments - there are a great deal more to follow - there is a never ending stream of beasts reaching my workshop bench and it only seems to be growing as all our beloved kit just gets older...

Been working very hard on undertaking major repairs resurrecting a burnt out 1983 Fairlight CMI Series IIx and after a great deal of fault finding and component replacement the beast is back up and running on all 8 of her channel cards.

I added the latest test recording to my Secret World of Vintage Synths playlist - the beast going through her paces whilst testing out the realtime controllers and delayed vibratos following major overhaul - in this case the foot controller is mapped to the filter cutoff...



The playlist itself is here now with well over 100 test recordings from my workshop from recent years:

https://soundcloud.com/hideaway-studio/ ... age-synths

Nice Dan! Must be great to bring these things back to life!

Sounds like a 1980s John Carpenter score...

We are lucky to have someone like you around to maintain these wonderful instruments Dani. Can I ask what effects processing was added to the CMI there?

madtheory wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:12 pm

We are lucky to have someone like you around to maintain these wonderful instruments Dani. Can I ask what effects processing was added to the CMI there?

Ah thanks, it is an obsession for sure - but then again, I'd never find the strength if it wasn't....

The number of times people have asked this question regarding several of my recordings now.. truth be known I am almost scared to divulge this one for fear of sending prices sky high but the stock "String Reverb" patch in the little Roland VM-3100 digital mixer has been my go-to reverb for live improvs and test recordings for many years now - there is something about it I find just works with a lot source material. I just set the decay time to what I require and pretty much leave the plethora of other parameters alone.

It would actually be interesting to know what the roots of the reverb section are - I think they may be derived from the Roland RSS (COSM?) era but its hard to know if the FX subsystem has been lifted out of another product (they often are in similar products). Whatever.. I like the sound of it and TBH my interest in pre-IR based digital reverb technology has very much been rekindled in recent years - in fact, I have a QuadraVerb on the bench at the moment I'm revisiting for the first time in 20 years!

Ah, the Roland reverbs are great. Even the very restricted one in the D-50 does some interesting things.

HideawayStudio wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:38 pm

I have a QuadraVerb on the bench at the moment I'm revisiting for the first time in 20 years!

Me too! It's getting a new display. Such a well thought out box with a great sounding reverb all its own style. I had it in the rack for the resonator. I must confess though, that I made and purchased IRs of it so it doesn't get plumbed in to the system any more. It's too noisy and recall in a plugin is way more convenient. The main reason though, was the new Resonator in Ableton. Finally, playable with a keyboard!