Analogue-sequencer

>>Duncan had/has one.
> 
> C'mon Dunc, spill the beans. ;)<<

it'll be a cold day in the underworld when my mk1 notron is finally prised out of my possession. to be honest, I did sort of semi-abandon it for a few years (actually from about april 2003 until april 2008) when, after a lot of travelling & perhaps one gig too many, it started acting mysteriously. I was prompted to revive it by a resurgence of my mend-stuff instincts & the need to compare it with my octopus for another discussion such as this.

so guess which won? answer c) both. but see elsewhere for my views on the octopus.... 
(briefly, then- it's slightly intimidating but enormous fun.)

I have, as some of you may know, a number of other hardware sequencers with nicely tactile interfaces, & there are one or two I wish I'd never seen or bought. the schaltwerk springs to mind.

but back to the bionic bog-seat.

the case is it's weakest point, in both incarnations.
 
the "award winning" plastic blob of the original is unquestionably distinctive, but offers no reasonable means of supporting the "instrument" (we'll come back to that in a moment) other than as one might an old-fashioned artist's pallette, or perhaps one of those proto-tablet-PC things from "star trek T.O.S."

I needed to have the thing perched somehow so that I could fend off groupies & wrestle with bass/keyboards, & also so that it could be photographed (like the rest of our stuff) by people who regard live electronica as an extension of the arms race, & need to document every new blinkenlicht on show. I mean no disrespect. just sayin'.
 
I tried a snare stand for a while (too horizontal, since you ask, & not actually all that secure), then adapted the rear face of the notron to take a tripod mount, which eventually tore a big hole in the casing after that one gig too many. 
this is still to be repaired. 
I think you were supposed to sit with it, sort of like a techno-autoharp, which is how I described it to bemused workmates the day it arrived at mtv in camden. 
later that summer I demo'd it at the expo in islington, to some kiddies who really wanted roland to hurry up & re-release the tb303. assholes. 
I had bought mine direct from spowage & co, minutes after reading mr nagle's review, so once again it's his fault. 
(he reviewed the p3 right into my face after a gig somewhere & bade me order it right away so I did. leicester, was it?)

ahem.

the biscuit tin mk2 was prone, I'm told, to electrocuting it's contents into non-func. tom m knows more.

but you want to hear about what it's like to use, not the build quality. actually it's quite good, with one or two weak areas besides the case- the chromed-steel switch tops have gone a bit rusty here & there (they're NOT ball-bearings all the way through like the ones on the genoqs), & my mk1's mysterious behaviour was due to a stiff-wire multiway assembly 'twixt top & bottom PCBs, causing an entire row (note, not column) of switches to fail. on-stage, as it happens.
in leicester. maybe the same night even.

but you want to hear what it's like to use, not the still-unique & quite idiosyncratic feature-set which I'm afraid I have ignored rather a lot of. 
supersteps.... tom can tell you about those too.

colin's right to mention that note-ons & note-offs are handled in such a way that you can easily trash your speakers, & they warn you about that in one of the cutesy little books, which will be worth millions one day, along with the BC8 & BC16.... but I digress, as lemmy would say. 

all I'm going to say is that I stand by my earlier remark- this thing is an instrument. 
in the way that the octopus isn't, because it's too big to fit in your lap. 
in the way that the nemo isn't because it's a daft shape. 
in the way that the p3 isn't because however cool & deep it is, you still know you're *programming* something.

ymmv, of course.
but for me, the notron is still as exciting to use as the day it was new, over 12 years ago.

now, as to "blows the p3 away".... how, exactly? this is like saying that my 1974 rickenbacker 4001 (a bass guitar) is blown away by my 1973 m400 (a mellotron). 
fatuous. 
the sort of meaningless guff one sees on ebay where- frankly- sellers will say almost anything within the elastic bounds of legality in order to part the unwary from their hard-earned, & where- frankly- one would hope that transactions of an item of this sort would involve a higher calibre of both seller & buyer. as the recent near-victim of a phishing exercise (as I believe they're called) involving a pristine AKS offered very credibly on craigslist, I am sad to note the increasing incidence of more specialised baiting within online markets. caveat emptor. if you can't go & see it for yourself, & you don't know the seller, try to get a third-party involved.

d.