A quick note about solid ground connections and clean potentiometers

It's amazing how much better things work when you actually provide solid grounding for all of your jacks, and you use either nice new potentiometers or cleaned up old ones.

I re-potted my VCA and re-wired the "output" module to be a generic attenuator, with the input normalled to my VCA's output. (It's actually normalled to the VCA's normalled output, so if I insert a cable in the VCA's output OR the attenuator's input, it breaks the connection. Maybe overkill, but what the heck.) The attenuator is currently linear taper pot, which doesn't work well for audio, so I may wind up replacing with an audio taper if I can score one. It still works fine for audio output as it is, and linear will be better for its other potential uses.

I also changed 1/2 of my A/R EG's pots from 5MOhm to 1MOhm. This means the total envelope time is much shorter, but I can actually dial in reasonable short times. So now I can either do the long, slow sweeps in the 5-10 seconds range, or a more manageable <2sec sweep. I found that the Microbrute's trigger isn't strong enough to run both A/Rs at the same time. Bummer, but I don't feel like buffering the trigger inputs at the moment.

The only module I have left with the old pots in it is my LFO, and it's still a little dodgy. I'll swap out those when my fingers are less tired. :)

But Wally's renovations are just about complete now, and I can start worrying about new stuff. The last truly wonky module is my "interface" module, and I can probably just gut that and re-solder it to be a multiples panel.

... in which Wally gets a new outfit

Over the weekend, I did one of those "Ikea Hacks" to convert their unfinished pine end table into a studio rack mount unit. I wound up getting two of them and inverting one to get a 6-4-6 space unit.

Because I suck at blogging, I didn't take pictures along the way, but here's how everything turned out:

Here's my new Microbrute and my monitor speaker on top of the case. I used two cases, turned upside down and glued together, and then outiftted with Raxxess brand Rack mounting rails. I got the rails from Guitar Center because they (oddly) had the best price, though I did have to order the sizes I wanted.

The 4-space area in the center was about 1/8" too short though, and I had to sandwich a thin piece of wood between the two parts. I happened to have some suitable basswood around (don't ask), so a few minutes with a straight-edge, x-acto knife, and some wood glue fixed things right up.

I have everything connected to a "juice goose" in the bottom part so that  I can turn the entire rig on/off from one switch.

I think things turned out pretty well. It's HEAVY, but sturdy, and easier to deal with.

Here is a better view that shows how things are from the "working end". Sorry about the glare. The top 6 spaces has my VCO, VCF, A/R EG, a Ring Modulator and a blank panel. The middle 4 spaces has the "interface panel" and my FracRack. The bottom 6 spaces has the juice goose, a patchbay and my two analog Tama drums (analog drum voice modules.) The patch bay is currently there to expose the Tama rear-mounted jacks to the front so I can get to them. I had been planning to sell the Tamas, but I figured what the heck, they're the other pure-analog gear I have, so why not put them in Wally?

I need to find a decent solution for holding cables. I'm thinking about maybe putting either a container or some hooks on one side of the cabinet.

In the near-ish future, I'm moving into a bigger place, so I'll be able to set up a proper workspace where Wally doesn't have to sit on the ground. I may wind up re-allocating what goes where when that day comes.

But for now, I've been able to drive Wally from the Microbrute, and use both machines to cross-modulate each other. I even discovered that the MB's gate out CAN drive my A/R EG, just not both halves at the same time. So that's been pretty cool. I definitely need to do something about not having enough multis, but I can probably find a way to cross-wire that patch panel to act as a multi, if I can find enough patch cables to dedicate to the problem. If only this stuff were free....

I also tried hooking up my old PAiA Fingerdrum to the MB's gate in, which works as expected. I can manually advance the sequencer by banging on a key pad. Of course, I can also drive the Tamas with it, which was why I dug it out. I'm absolutely pants as a drummer though, so I'm seriously considering trying to make some sort of drum sequencing box, It would be relatively easy to make something like that with an Arduino, though I'd probably over-design it.

Once I get my "studio" into some shape, I'll find a way of recording some Wally sounds and post them.