Used synths Tuning mystery?????

jplavidfan · Post by **jplavidfan** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:33 pm

OK, so I bought an MS2000 in outrageous shape, a Nord Lead in almost outrageous shape, and an Alesis Ion in OK shape. Needed to really lube the buttons on the Ion to get them to work. With each one, I found that all 3 boards were detuned significantly off of A440!

In the case of the Ion, I had to struggle to figure out what to do, so I reloaded and dumped the original patches back into the board, and life was good. That was my first time doing anything MIDI and it was easier than I thought it would be.

On the MS2000 I had to go into every patch and retune each. Some were WAY off, and some not so bad. Learning how to retune a patch with multiple oscillators detuned to a 5th is STILL something I am figuring out.

And the Nord Lead was actually pegged at Aflat! I have 4 sources of A440 and all of them match. My Juno, MG1, AX60 all match my sources. Yes, the Juno, MG1 and AX60 all had to be cranked on the tuning peg a smidge. My DX7, Poly800MkII and Motif were right there from unpacking them.

So, longwinded as this post may be, HAS ANYONE seen anything like this before, or was I just the schmuck that was supposed to learn each of these VA's from the freakin' ground up?

This took weeks for each one, and it forced me bodily to read each damn book, look all over for advice, and finally get all my boards to sound like they are all on-key. I had to go through hand surgery recently, so for 5 weeks, all I could do was play lefty and dust them, but they remain in tune!

Is this typical with used VA's?

jpl

insky · Post by **insky** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:21 pm

Did you buy them all from the same guy? Did you check to see if the Master tuner was at A=440? If the master tuner was at A=440 and you bought them from the same guy. It might just be that the guy you bought them from could only play in the key of C so he tuned his patches for each song he was playing or each key change of each song.

The short answer: No I have never had all the patches detuned in my synths, and I've never heard of anybody who has.

Post by **WDW** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:45 pm

I have never heard of having all of the individual patches being tuned to a different key. I have heard of people changing the overall (master) tuning of a board to match that of other instruments.

I suspect that Inksy got it dead-on, when he asked about the master tuning of each VA. Or, alternatively, the keys were transposed. I had my youngest daughter do that to my master controller by random button pushes one time. Panicked me, when I fired up my studio and nothing that my master controller triggered matched the other instruments and took me a moment to realize what had happened.

WD

micahjonhughes · Post by **micahjonhughes** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 8:13 pm

Did you have to do something other than adjust the master tuning?

waveterm · Post by **waveterm** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 9:34 pm

Uhm.......Key Transpose ?

Really, was all oscillators in every patch set to a fifth above or did the start to sound in tune when you lowered the pitch on them ?

WT

jplavidfan · Post by **jplavidfan** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:39 pm

The Ion master tune was off, so reloading it was all it took, but that was 2 days of intense questions all over the place. Weird thing was that it thought it was at 440 and it was actually 424 according to my meters.

That was the wild one, or so I thought.........

The MS2k was one where 440 was only present on a couple of presets, all of them being all kinds of whacky. Set the master on 440, but still had to go to each preset and retune them up or down. Literally every white key, having 8 sounds under each, was wildly out of tune.

So the MS2K was the biach of them all.

The Nord Lead was a master tuning issue, but it was tough to find out how to correct it, but it was one setting for all the voices.

That one was the easiest of the 3, but again, none of them were just like they came out of the box.

And no, each one was from a different part of the country.

Ion - NYC
MS2K - Oregon
Nord lead - LA Area

Wish they all had those old pots like the Juno/Akai.

jpl[/i]

Post by **WDW** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 1:00 am

Well, that is plain weird.

WD

jplavidfan · Post by **jplavidfan** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 1:16 am

Really, what are the chances of 3 VA's all coming in detuned from 3 geographically diverse US locations?

As the Blue Rajah said in Mystery Men, VERRRRY MYSTERIOUS!

The MS2K was a ton of work to figure out, and then all that damn altering.

I finally got it down to where I would set the global button, pick the voice, check the tuning, then 5 or 12 half steps up or 5 or 13 down. Half steps!

Someone on this thread got it right, the prior owner could only sing in Aflat, or more like F#!!!

Talk about scattergun tuning!

Cattewampus, is the correct word, I believe!

Sounds like I am the lone gunman on this thread.

jpl

Used synths Tuning mystery?????

Used synths Tuning mystery?????

Mixed situations

Who'd have thunk it?