200e

I was disappointed in the 260e.   It did some interesting things but 
it had some design choices which I didn't understand.   First why 
would the 260e have a pop everytime it made a cycle on continuous 
mode?  This killed the illusion for me.   I asked Don about it but 
didn't really follow his reasoning.   I mean the whole point of a 
sheppard tone generator should be to make a sheppard tone and a 
sheppard tone with a pop every cycle is not convincing.   Maybe it was 
a bug on mine?  Anyone else notice this?


The second thing I missed was a 1v/oct cv input.  The cv in with the 
attenuator set fully open and a 1v/oct source plugged into it only 
covered a small portion of 1 octave.  So it really needed something on 
the order of 3v/oct to play a full octave.  To me I thought this would 
be most interesting, playing something across that octave and having 
the notes appear to constantly rise.   Despite many efforts at gaining 
the 1v/oct source to match the voltage required by the 260e to do this 
I was not able to get a convincing tuning.   I think it could have 
been made simpler for the user by having the attenuated cv in at fully 
open respond to 1 v/oct (1.2v/oct to match the rest of the buchla 200e 
system).   I mean you could always attenuate the signal to cover less 
than 1 octave if you wanted that. 

On the plus side it did some nifty wierd things when you plugged the 
gate out into an envelope and the outputs into a vca or filter and 
used the pulses to do constantly rising falling bleeps.  The eq on it 
was very pleasing as well.

Anyway I found it a one trick pony that couldn't do its trick very 
well.  There is a review of the original 260 on the barberpole yahoo 
group which doesn't mention any of the troubles I had with mine. Maybe 
mine was broken or not calibrated correctly?   I don't know, I 
exchanged it for a second 292e.

> Hi All
> 
> How are people finding the duophonic pitch class generator?  In the 
> keyboard magazine review it was pretty much dismissed without any 
real 
> info "If the 260e wasn't included in the system few musicians would 
> miss it".  Anyone here disagree?