Tuesday, September 16, 2008

the daily grind

Business as usual for the time being. Tying up some loose ends before students show up in the middle of next week and all hell breaks loose; an ounce of prevention, as they say!

Trying to get Buchla #3 up and running, it's a mess as you can see. At some point it seems this unit became the dumping ground for any and all random synth modules that might have been floating around, and as such the wiring is total chaos. None of the power supply stuff is really documented, so it's just a matter of testing things until I'm sure I'm not going to fry some priceless 40 year old electronics by turning them on...

By the way, in case there's ever any question about it, always avoid buying the following; switched microphones, switched mic cables (the switches on both will eventually die and the latter will require new connectors, the former will require the switch to be replaced or removed), anything made by Behringer or Planet Waves (rubbish), and any cables at all with jacks that have plastic molded over them - if anything goes wrong with the cable, the whole thing will need to be tossed in the trash. Normally, you could save the jacks to live on in another cable...

Gotta run... pic is of Buchla #3 spilling its guts!

2 comments:

Jason Countryman said...

wait....planet waves? you mean electronics-wise, right? don't they sell various small accessories, like the string winder/cutter/etc that are quite useful?

j

Matt Payne said...

J, you're totally right; what I meant in the post is anything electronic (such as cables) made by planet waves. Lots of shiny and pretty, not a lot of quality. Unlike Monster (who I don't exactly endorse either), they don't even make their own cable!