One interesting thing about restoring vintage synths is that almost every instrument that we work on has been worked on by another tech at least once before. And it seems that more often than not, those other techs were… not great. We see a lot of bad work, but my favorite examples also feature a very special element of absurdity. Here are some recent highlights:
Continue reading ““Don’t be that guy””
We are now halfway to having done 106 Juno 106es. One of our friends suggested that when we get to #106, we should just smash it. Don’t worry, we probably won’t.
Continue reading “Juno Heaven / Juno Hell”
This was Bell Tone’s first Polivoks job, though not my first Russian synth repair as I have a UDS MARSH drum synth of my own. My goals were basically to “assimilate” this Soviet-era Russian for life in the modern United States and correct a few issues with the keyboard.
NOW FOR SALE IN OUR REVERB SHOP: SOLD! another fully overhauled Roland Juno 106.
Remember when we used to do a blog post and try to think of something to say about every Juno 106 we worked on? It’s a good thing we stopped because this is the 31st Juno 106 that I (Alison) have personally restored, not to mention the ones that Darian has done.
One thing we find in almost every 1980s Roland we work on is crumbly, dirty “dust shields” or “dust protectors” on the sliders (aka faders) of the panel board. These gaskets were cut from thin black EVA foam sheets and were meant to protect the sliders from dust. However, 35 years later, they have dried out and are falling apart, their fragments actually falling into the sliders and making their crackly and intermittent behavior much worse.
Bell Tone Synth Works now offers laser-cut replacement gasket sets for the Roland Juno 106, SH-101, Juno 60 and Juno 6, Jupiter 8, and CompuRhythm CR-78, which you can purchase online here in our Shop. These slider gaskets are made to exact specifications on a professional laser cutter out of 1.5mm stiffened and resin-bonded black acrylic felt which does not shed fibers like other forms of felt. Continue reading “Now Available – Precision Cut Slider Gaskets / Dust Protectors for Juno 106, SH-101, Juno 60, Jupiter 8 and more!”
This Prophet 600 was brought in for a Gligli P600FW upgrade, which is a CPU/firmware upgrade using a Teensy ++ microcontroller board. It offers improved resolution for all parameters (128 values instead of like, 15 or 7!), a new LFO just for vibrato, arpeggiator MIDI sync and more, which you can read about here. The firmware is generously offered for free by the developer and in order to install it, we procure a Teensy 2++ board, do some modification to the Teensy, flash the firmware onto via USB, and install it in the Prophet 600 in place of the original Z80 CPU. We can do this mod for only about $100 including parts. Continue reading “Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 – Gligli Upgrade”
Should I be embarassed to admit I had never heard of the Multimoog until this one showed up on our doorstep? The Multimoog was a Moog monosynth made between 1978 and 1981 and I’m not sure I understand how it was intended to fit into the Moog product line, or what is “multi” about it. Continue reading “Moog Multimoog”
One of my main pieces of advice to anyone learning to fix vintage synths is to never underestimate the likelihood that whatever problem your synth has is just because of cold solder joints. Continue reading “Juno 60 (#4)”
This is a really good one. SIEL was an Italian company that always quite clearly had their own way of doing things. It is a 6-voice DCO polysynth with the ability to make just beautiful, delicate, lush tones. The square wave can go so low that it just sounds like a lawn mower in the distance. That’s not a very useful feature, but for some reason it always delights me when I encounter it. Continue reading “SIEL DK-600”
Here’s another article I wrote for Reverb.com, devised as a sort of year-end-list for 2017, profiling my favorite vintage polysynths I’ve worked on that can still be had for under $1000. This one’s for all of you who feel like you can’t afford to own a cool vintage synth. Some of these can be found for as little as $300!
