Elektor Formant Modular

Hi, I'm new to the group and never expected for such a group to 
exist anyway!...
I just took my old Formant out of the 'mothballs', cleaned the 
spiderwebs off and connected it to my midi-setup using the old 
Roland MPU-101 interface that I have...

..and voila... it still works!!!!! I built it with a friend of mine in 1979 
and it still works!!!!!!!

And I must say that the warm analog sounds can't be beaten - 
neither can the possibilities of just plugging whatever module's 
output into whatever input.....  no-one who has made a preset for 
you... DIY in any way...

My formant has
4 VCO's
4 ADSR's
2 VCF's 12dB
2 VCF's 24dB
2 RFM's
2 LFO's 
2 VCA's
1 COM
1 Noise
1 RingModulator
1 Staircase generator (own design)
1 Frequency counter built-in for tuning

Only thing is that the pots and switches might crack or don't 
really works as they should
Anyone of you guys know of a way to clean them properly without 
using ContactSpray, 'cause that can do more damage after a 
while.....

cheers
Hans

Hi hans,

This seems an impressive setup with 4 vco's and 4 vca's.

WE WANT PICS !!!

Old pots: have you tried blowing the dust out with compressed air ?

greetings

anthony









--- In ElektorFormant@yahoogroups.com, "Hans Holema" <h.holema@w...> 
wrote:
> Hi, I'm new to the group and never expected for such a group to 
> exist anyway!...
> I just took my old Formant out of the 'mothballs', cleaned the 
> spiderwebs off and connected it to my midi-setup using the old 
> Roland MPU-101 interface that I have...
> 
> ..and voila... it still works!!!!! I built it with a friend of mine 
in 1979 

> and it still works!!!!!!!
> 
> And I must say that the warm analog sounds can't be beaten - 
> neither can the possibilities of just plugging whatever module's 
> output into whatever input.....  no-one who has made a preset for 
> you... DIY in any way...
> 
> My formant has
> 4 VCO's
> 4 ADSR's
> 2 VCF's 12dB
> 2 VCF's 24dB
> 2 RFM's
> 2 LFO's 
> 2 VCA's
> 1 COM
> 1 Noise
> 1 RingModulator
> 1 Staircase generator (own design)
> 1 Frequency counter built-in for tuning
> 
> Only thing is that the pots and switches might crack or don't 
> really works as they should
> Anyone of you guys know of a way to clean them properly without 
> using ContactSpray, 'cause that can do more damage after a 
> while.....
> 
> cheers
> Hans

--- In ElektorFormant@yahoogroups.com, "Anthony Quintelier" 
<anthony.quintelier@h...> wrote:
> Hi hans,
> 
> This seems an impressive setup with 4 vco's and 4 vca's.
> 
> WE WANT PICS !!!
> 
> Old pots: have you tried blowing the dust out with compressed 
air ?

Hi Anthony 

I will try to make some pictures - hopefully later today
- it's 2 VCA' s by the way - 4 VCF's....
No haven't tried that yet...do you think a compressed air spraycan 
would be enough to handle that???? 
And it's actually not so strange - those pots and everything else 
is 24 years old!!!! Surprising that it even still works.
I do have to adjust the tuning though... I tried yesterday to run all 
4 VCO's from my (also old) DX7 and they were pretty much out of 
tune - that is to say 2 are reasonably ok but the others.. phew.
Only problem seems to be that the gate that I get from the 
MPU101 works fine on the external gates that I made on 2 
ADSR's but not when I connect it to the gate-input where 
normally my keyboard would have been...  will dive into that 
later...

cheers
Hans