Vintage Synth Repair

i cant totally agree with this. sure its heartbreaking to see something nice get hosed up by mindless tinkering, but there some synths out there that should be disassembled forever (split-eight, jx-10) and re-engineered as something better. i remember totally modifying my mg-1 when i was a teenager without much knowledge about what i was doing. sure thats a great synth, and i ended up hosing up one of the oscillators in the end, but i've managed to come a long way since those days. just because someone thought it would be a great idea to market a synth based around "cheap" analog chips doesnt make the synth sacred, or rule out the possibility of doing something much more honorable with that chip. do you really use that pile of sequential maxs you are hoarding in your closet?? (answer is "yes, but im going to use the chips from at least one of them to do something better")... there are many commodity synths which are ripe for this kind of "remixing" and i love what michael hawk did with the venerable poly-800 to improve upon its features. search on youtube for poly61 and dw6000 for some other more admirable modifications. question: why do jx-3ps regularly sell for $200 on ebay? because they are also a commodity? because they are misunderstood or hated? because the pg-200 usually sells for much more? i love how they sound myself! -pc 

On Jul 28, 2010, at 9:04 AM, "GB" <grantbt@...> wrote:

> Lastly a situation that makes my blood boil are the people (mostly again 
> young) who through their upbringing in the "throw away society" take a 
> perfectly good piece of gear, hack it and bash it beyond recognition for the 
> sake of "circuit bending". Fine take a ten buck toy and thrash the guts out 
> of it, but not old analogue gear!! I've read up on most of the websites 
> relating to these endeavors and it's
> my point of view that the vast majority of ppl into it no zero about the 
> electronic's they are dealing with. They tend to use a poke it and see 
> mentality which may work some of the time. I shudder at the thought the 
> damage being done to some much good gear. Not only at the circuit level but 
> to the hardware (casing, front panel etc) as they hack away.
> 
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> 
> Totally agree with this. In some cases the "kids" may then take an interest 
> in electronics, but so much gear gets totally trashed this way.
> 
> GB 
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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