Vintage Ads 5 (Keyboard Magazine 78-79)

Korg VC-10	Korg MS-20	Korg MS-10
Korg Sigma	Moog Polymoog	Moog Signal Effects
Oberheim 4-Voice	Oberheim OB-1	Oberheim OB-X & OB-1A
Roland Jupiter 4	Roland Jupiter 4	Roland RS-505
Yamaha CS-80

Poly 61 Innards

Must get a better way of attaching the battery to the board...

Vintage Ads - Part 3

Fairlight CMI Series 3 - Herbie Hancock	Roland Juno 6
Linn 9000	Ensoniq Mirage
Korg Mono/Poly	Sequential Max
Sequential Circuits (SCI) Prophets 1, 5 & 10	Sequential Max, Tom and Multi-Trak

Korg SQD-8

Some pictures of my first sequencer, the Korg SQD-8. A great bit of kit (shame about the quick Disc format). I pretty much used this to death, in fact I probably did more with this than I have with any DAW so far with only a Akai X7000, Kawai K1r, Roland MKS-70 and TR-505. Coming up with ideas seems more intuitive when you're using hardware or something physical to interact with other than a mouse and a screen.  - well in my opinion anyway, I'm sure there are people that will disagree.

It wasn't short of features either - certainly comparable to most DAWS of the time - Logic 4 I think? and it was great for gigging with. One disk could hold up to 16 tracks of midi drum files, more than enough for a pub gig :-)

Enjoy the pics..

Korg M3r Battery Replacement

Today I had to replace the battery in my Korg M3r. All the patches had been wiped and all I could play was the eponymous 90's house piano. Luckily, it's an easy fix and I thought i'd share it with you nice people. First thing you need is a new battery - a CR2032 (flat disc type) which I purchased from Maplin (£3.99) - I had to get two as my PC needed a new battery too ( an odd coincidence?).
Anyway, pictures are easier than words so I'll let the camera tell the story...

First, remove your M3r from the rack and unplug it - no need to kill yourself over a battery.

1. Remove all the screws either side of the synth

Rack ears

Repeat on other side

2. Now remove the two screws at the back. Then the three on the case top.

Case top - three screws

Case Rear - two screws

3. Now you can slide the case back to reveal the innards.

Slide back

Inside of the M3r

The battery is in the top right corner and is a doddle to change - it simple pops out and you can slip a new one in - no screws required.

Slide in and push down to complete

simple pressure removes the battery

Now, resetting the internal sounds. Click the "Edit" button. Then the "Global" Button. Then press "Combi" five times to get to "5A Load". Click "Prog"  Three times to get to page "5D Preset Data".
Press "Yes" to load the default presets. Hopefully you would have backed your precious home made patches into a librarian or sys-ex file so that you can reload those instead.

Results of a wiped battery

Edit-->Global-->Combi(x5)-->Prog (x3)

Hit "Yes" and...

..Success!

Hope that was of help to any other M3r owners, or just of interest to anyone else.

Mini Keys

A while ago I bought a Korg Micro Key on E-Bay. It was a 25 key version and was going for a very reasonable price (£25) and I was looking for a small keyboard to go on my desk as my main large (76 key) board - a CMI UF7 was now positioned right behind me ( I know.. bad studio Feng Shui).

Sausages to keys ratio

To be honest I wasn't expecting much as I have fingers like sausages (i.e fat) and pretty much expected to try the keys out once and then resell them on back E-bay. Well, I was pleasantly surprised; the keys aren't to small at all and I can quite easily use it for chords and runs with no problem at all. In fact I've been so happy with it I managed to grab a full 61 key version recently - my daughters happy too as she now has the 25 key model to use on the Ipad with Garageband. 

Sorting Out

Had a clean up the other day - I'm a bit of a hoarder and keep all my music magazines and I found my old stash of Synth leaflets.

Ah, fond memories, dreaming of owning the gear in these leaflets... Never got the Jupe 8, but certainly got a bunch of the others..

Click on the pages to view the large versions

Found an old friend

Had a rummage around some old boxes yesterday just to pass the time and came across my old Korg SQD-8 Midi Sequencer.

It was a pain in the butt to write with and it only stored data on 2.8" 'Quick Discs' but I came up with more tunes on it than any computer based DAW that I own now, whether the restrictions it placed made you more creative or I just had more ideas then is up to discussion - but I did enjoy using it, that's for sure. Shame the crummy disk drive gave up the ghost, I'm sure I'd probably still be using it now otherwise.

Here's the sales brochure

Here's the very chap...

Korg Poly-61 back from the dead!

Well, I am well and truly chuffed to bits... my first synth - a Korg Poly-61 that I bought for £400 back in 1986 is working again.

It's been dead for over 7 years due to a battery leak eating the CPU board. I tried cleaning the damage but to no avail. So it's been sitting in the corner of my studio collecting dust since the

n as I couldn't bear to get rid of it, hoping that someday I might find a spare CPU board to replace it.

So... just last week I decided to have a look on E-bay for some synth bargains and surprise.. a guy was selling just the board I needed for £40 - got my bid in and won - superb!!!

So today I've put the board in, stripped the keyboard as the contacts were caked in dirt and dust and now it's working as good as it did back in '86. - fan-bloody-tastic!!!