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

Changing a backup battery on a Korg S3

So, you need to replace the backup battery of your Korg S3 because every time you start it up you have to do the INIT procedure ( hold 'Stop' and S1 when switching on the machine ) to hear the drums.

After managing to remove that backplate you're faced with this vision..

Now, don't do what I did and unscrew all the black screws - roughly 17 of and remove the entire board ( ok I got to clean the switches, so not an entire waste of time ) just unscrew those two brass screws, lift back the 'tin-foil' to reveal the battery ( D'oh! )

The battery just slides in and out - standard 3v coin battery.

It's easier putting it back together by the way :)

Just these two

Et Voila!

Korg DDD-5 joins the family

So, I've managed to get hold of a Korg DDD-5 drum machine to go along with my other Korg gear. Last time I used one of these was back in the late 80's. I't a great sounding little box ( love the bass slaps.) The previous owner's taken great care of this unit as it's in excellent condition, the only issue with it is a dead battery and a missing rubber foot, but it does come with the ofter lost presets facia panel. This fella is going to sit along his big brother the DDD-1 ( still my favourite drum machine in the studio. ) Might see if I can acquire some extra sound cards for it too.
DDD-5 Rear	DDD-5 Front	Presets Panel
DDD-1 - The 5's big brother

Akai S700 Sample Dumping

Motu Fastlane

I have an old Akai S700 with a faulty disk drive. I've been meaning to get round to replacing the damaged belt with a new one, but also wanted to be able to archive the samples to my Mac. I knew from reading an old article in Keyboard magazine back in the 80's that the only application that works reliably is Sound Designer.

I managed to find a copy of Sound Designer (1.5 Universal) a while back to use with my old trusty Apple Mac Performa 630 (running Mac OS 7.5.5) and hooked it up using another old bit of vintage kit - my Mark Of The Unicorn 'Fastlane' 1 in 3 out midi interface.

Success! The Akai and Mac swapped file seamlessly..

On the left is the Akai loading the sample dump from Sound Designer; below is the file being sent.

I was hoping to integrate it with my Opcode Studio 5LX's but it doesn't completely work. While the Akai can receive the files from the Mac, there seems to be an issue sending files via the Studio 5's through the MOTU interface. I might be missing something though..

But, at the end of the day I can use my Akai s700 and save the samples onto my old P630 and Zip drive. It just requires changing a midi cable when using the S700 with the rest of my OMS setup. Not much of a hardship. I could get a Midi Merger though? That would fix that problem :-)

Poly 61 Innards

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

Opcode Vision Tips - Keyboard Magazine

I'm a big fan of Opcode gear, especially their Vision DAW. I still use it today as it's a fantastic product and in my opinion better than most DAWS available now. Well, I dug out my old Keyboard Magazine's again and found this great article by Andy Widders-Ellis covering useful tips for using Vision and thought I'd might share it with all the other keen Opcode fans out there. The feature comes from Keyboard's November 1990 issue ( It still has the Tower Records price tag on it! ). Hope you enjoy it.

Lacie Drives are {BLEEP}ing {BLEEP}

Arrggh.. yet another dead LaCie external drive - That's the second one now! The first, a 500 gig firewire drive and now the USB one has died too. Nothing wrong with the actual drives mind, just the units - probably the boards inside the boxes. Are these things being built to die after a certain amount or time? I may sound paranoid, but It seems everything built within the last 5-10 years is a pile of crap that just won't last.

I'm a total Mac head - can't get on with PC's, but I have an old Dell with Window's 7 for checking websites ( I build websites for a living ) and it has been rock solid, never had a problem with it, where as my recent Macs have been a disaster. All my pre G5 Macs still work perfectly, turn on, work, behave - from a Performa 630CD (1986) to a G3 266 Desktop to a G4 Mirror-Door. Whereas my G5 Imac and G5 Mac Pro are both dead with bad processor boards and a MacBook that keeps crashing due to a useless 10.7.5 operating system. What the hell happened to Apple quality?

Anyway, rant over.

So... I had a look on the web for info on opening the case of a LaCie Neil Poulton case and only found a few words on how the case is fastened with plastic clips. I've managed to open mine and remove my terabyte drive (off to Maplin's to buy a new case tomorrow) and thought I'd share an image of the case and where the clips are for anyone else who needs to open their case up.

To open mine, I used a metal wall paper scraper or if you want, a putty knife - something thin and hard basically, Eased into the sides and gently eased apart. To stop the clips going back in I placed playing cards in it's place. Once the clips are out of the way the unit comes apart quite easily.

Three plastic clips - on both sides

Drive holder (drive removed) and the dead card

Here's the Firewire drive for good measure.

Next job, opening up a Western Digital External drive case....

Jean-Michel Jarre Interview from 1986

Thought I'd share this great vintage interview from Keyboard magazine with Jean-Michel Jarre.

Click on the images to enlarge.