I really wasn’t sure what to think when I saw the mincingly lame Guitar Center ad come in my mailbox with this weird cover artwork, quasi-patriotic, somewhat propaganda-like attack squadron ala 1940′s poster art, with guys in long hair and mohawks attacking with guitars rather than guns. Further in, I see a spread on the new Roland Jupiter 80.

Everyone knows I’m famous for reviewing synths without actually playing them, because I haven’t had the time to go to a proper music store and play one, nor the cash to faithfully plop down almost $4,000 for something to really whisper sweet nothings into its ear in my own home.  Synthesizers are a unique musical instrument for at least one reason:  sitting down and playing one in a store is not always the best way to really get to know something about them.   Largely, the staff won’t know a damn thing about them, and if you have to figure them out yourself, are you going to read a 300 page manual and jump right in?  Not unless they start charging you rent.  Nope, synths are not like a guitar, bass or drums:  they are not all intrinsically the same, and no, you can’t just sit around playing five minutes of Sammy Hagar licks and nod at the store, buy the thing, go fire up your bong at home, and continue playing Sammy Hagar licks.

After some research on the trusty World Wide Web,  people are pissed at this here Roland Jupiter 80.  Why?  Well, let’s check out this promo video and I’ll go into further detail as to why:

Besides the narrator’s voice making me want to hollow out my ears with an icepick (synth ad narrators are notoriously bad), it’s quite obvious to me why this machine, as cool as it could be, is making other people upset.  Let’s have a proposed list:

A)  Using the “Jupiter” name.   Old Jupiter 8 (6,4)’s are big, impressive, expensive and rare.  Those out there with them are very proud of them, proud of themselves, and a poseur coming along, Roland or not, cheapening their image or their ego, will not sit well.  Then there’s the issue of everything on the planet being a re-run or a re-make of something in the past, because we’re in the End Times and have finally run out of real ideas—-okay, that was a bit dramatic, but really.

B)  The thing is almost $4,000.  What did I say about the Kronos?  Korg was there, did that, and as much as I bitch about the fact with our current technology we can certainly make a reasonably affordable synthesizer that isn’t a toy for $800 or less, here Roland is flopping its synth-dick on the table next to Korg with a proud grin.  Meanwhile, you could get an original Jupiter,  mint, for about this much money.

C)  It looks super cool.   Don’t get me wrong, it really does look cool.  Why would anyone hate something that looks cool?  Because they styled it after the old one.  The old one also looked pretty cool.  A rainbow of synthy fun!  See “A” above if this isn’t making any sense.

D)  It is a lot of things, but it ain’t analog.  Referring back to “A” again, and I have to kind of side with the naysayers on this one, the old Jupiter line was a tour-de-force of what made synthesizers cool.   Now, this new one could easily do the same thing—-from what I can see, there’s literally options for everyone.  Presets to complex programming.   It has something reminiscent of a virtual-analog programming structure.  It still ain’t analog.

This is the main list of what I can tell is irritating people, and things I myself was wondering finding information on this beast.  Here’s what I think:

*  Roland, as well as other companies, are desperate to reinvent themselves, but are refusing, like other companies, to listen to the public.  They are used to being worshiped on any pedestal they lay down, and the public isn’t buying it.

*  The Jupiter 80 looks fucking awesome.  Potentially, with all the specs I’ve looked up on it, it should SOUND awesome.

*  The Jupiter 80 has a screen:  a screen that IS NOT dedicated to being a workstation, and we all know how I feel about workstations:  I don’t like them.

*  Contrary to “A” above, people kind of did want a new Jupiter—-or at least to bring back the old one the right way.   This attempt pleases me, even if it may be misguided.

*  This “superNatural,” thing is perplexing me, and I hope spirits and phantoms burst out of it like the failed storage machine in the fire station in the original “Ghostbusters” movie.

*  Everyone’s brash hate will cause them to fall out of favor.  Which means I can get one,  because everyone is too worried about soiling their precious image.  That, and they’ll hopefully bottom out in price.

*  It’s just too fucking big—-but I shall forgive it.

* I finally hope it is more like a V-Synth than anything.  The V-Synth was cool.  Real cool.

See?  I don’t hate everything synth that’s new and coming out now.  I also think this thing is a future flop and synth buyers are going to cross their arms, pout, bitch and moan about it all the live long day.  It isn’t exactly what people want.  It is, however, closer to a synthesizer and the thing that I, Kyle Weiss, wants in an instrument, and am willing to go give it a more serious look.

Our PS3 just died.  It ate our Netflix, and we were pissed.  We tried the ghetto hair dryer technique, and it didn’t work.  This, however, did:

My only variation on this fix was the use of a hair dryer rather than an expensive heat gun. Use 1/4″ inch from each area for 80 seconds on each area — that will make sense if you watch the video.

Keep in mind that even if you do this fix, it isn’t a 100% fix or solution to the problem.  “Reflowing” (re-heating) an overheated chip is a safeguard to fire and to protect other components.  Others that have used this technique have noted it can work for a day or for a year.  It is the death call of your PS3 one way or the other.

Use at your own risk, and as I always say, don’t lose your screws. It made our PS3 work, and for how long, who knows, but considering a post-warranty fix is $150, and usually for a refurbished model that won’t last long either, this is a method you could try.

If it’s just enough to get the disc out, so be it:  otherwise, you’re tearing into the Blu-Ray drive.

Good luck!

Well, as luck would have it, our local Guitar Center had a parking lot swap meet, and while I was attempting to make some cash getting rid of things I didn’t use a.k.a. taking up space, I ended up trading a bunch of my in-the-way stuff for a Novation Xiosynth in need of some TLC. I give to you the short-and-skinny of what I did.

Before, though, I’ll give you a brief rundown of what the Xiosynth actually is. Prior to the Xio, there was the X-Station. Prior to that, there was the K-Station. Prior to that there was the A-Station. Many of these little Brit microsynths were referred to as the “K-synths,” or “K-series,” I’ve noticed. Though I think the A-Station runs on something a little different than the later three. I’m not really sure—-I’m not a Novation nut or anything. All I knew is I wanted to try one. Boasting smaller size (if that’s something one can boast about) and a more portable interface, the Xiosynth 25 has much in common with the X-Station 25 (they also have a 49-key version). The X-Station, having a few more sliders, MIDI interface, control and sure, a bigger overall footprint, I would have chosen either: I have a thing for powerful battery powered little synthesizers. I also am a fan of Virtual Analogs, for one, because everyone hates them and I don’t have to get into “…MY Jupiter 8 is a 14-bit DAC and YOURS is a PALTRY, WORTHLESS 12-BIT…” type conversations, and I like the way they sound. Any time I can avoid a how-big-is-my-synthgeek-penis contest the better.

So my new-to-me little Xiosynth 25 had a few problems. One, it was dirty. Two, the mod/pitch boob (I can’t for the life of me think of any other way to describe it… it’s a very round X/Y control with a big nipple in the center—-thus, a boob) was out of whack, especially regarding the pitch bending. It would trigger inappropriate pitches, and required a total detune in the patch parameters to even sort of get the thing to genuinely play in tune.. No, the calibration function in the Global Settings didn’t work either. Apart it came.

I have to give credit to the Novation folks for simplicity and robustness. One of the common gripes about this particular model was how flimsy/cheap/wonky it felt. To me, sure it gave that vibe, but the way they put it together was just right. Even if it did break, it’s a cinch to get into and fix.  The other major gripe about most things Novation was the interaction with the touch pad.  Yeah, if you’re used to Korg pads, this thing requires a real heavy hand to function.  Nothing I could do about that right now.  Maybe I’ll rig an old Atari joystick up to the thing later?

The mod/pitch boob in question wasn’t unseated, that was my first trick. Everything mechanically seemed just fine. This was a good news/bad news thing. Novation parts are notoriously hard to find, and then if you do, hard to acquire. Could be months, years and all that. Fortunately, I noticed the small potentiometers controlling the X and Y planes on the boob were exactly the same. Some kind of thin, Spanish-origin deal. My thought, modulation can be triggered if the pot is off, and probably wouldn’t be noticed, and why not try and swap them? Solder/desolder, reseat, a quick DeoxIt flush, and poof. Now, to recalibrate on the global menu, yep, it works. Something occurred to me, though.

I hate the snap-back modulation feature on the mod/pitch boob. I have an Alesis Ion, and I have not one but TWO mod wheels that when I turn them up to “11,” both stay put. They do not snap back on a spring. Perhaps I wanted a particular sound, but wanted to use both hands. Oh sure, it’s a 25 key, what’s the point? Well, I’ll tell you the point: I have 10 fingers, and there’s 25 keys, sometimes I use both hands with 25 keys. That’s the point. Easy enough, I deconstructed the guts of the mod/pitch boob (again), and popped off the clothespin-style spring on the mod side, but left the pitch bend spring. That’s much, much better.

Now when I’m destroying people’s ears with the aliasing in the upper regiments of the frequency range I can spike a little LFO or panning delay on the suckers… much to the chagrin of little silver-eared analog-only pedigree musicians. It’s another thing I don’t have to physically control on the little unit to get some solid sound.

While the Xiosynth isn’t the most control-heavy VA out there, it’s easy to program, apparently easy to fix, and with six AA batteries, you’re rockin’ off the grid. If you are having trouble with your mod/pitch boob, try removing the spring on the mod side, and if you’re not sure why it’s constantly detuning itself, there’s a quick, easy and possible fix built right inside. I imagine this approach can be used for any similar Novation setup, not just the Xiosynth.

Have fun, don’t lose your screws.

(image courtesy musicradar.com)

Ubuntu Natty Narwhal showing Workspaces

If you haven’t heard, there’s a new version of Ubuntu Linux out:  11.04 Natty Narwhal.  They have such cute animal names.  Natty Narwhal brings a new desktop user interface named Unity and connectivity with the Ubuntu One online service.  For people who are looking for a change in their computing experience, or someone that has a slow chuggy computer without the Windows hookup, is Ubuntu a usable alternative?

The answer is “not really” and it’s also “sure, I guess.”  Linux has come a long way, Ubuntu in particular.  But just getting your computer up and running might be a huge headache, and the system isn’t terribly stable if you push it too hard.  Still, there are a lot of interesting things you can do with your computer with Linux on it – for free – that you’d have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars in pro software to do with Windows or Mac.  And it’s always good to have options.

Read the whole insanely long review here.

Sohaib Athar's Twitter feed of the attack on Bin Laden. Taken from twitter.com/reallyvirtual

A man in Abbottabad (an interesting place itself, named after a Major Abbot of the British Army, and still a military “city” today), twittered the attack by Navy SEALS on Osama Bin Laden’s compound. Here’s a story from Mashable about the man, and what he did.  The man, Sohaib Athar, a.k.a. @ReallyVirtual, on Twitter seems really humble about it: “I am JUST a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash. Not many twitter users in Abbottabad, these guys are more into facebook. That’s all.”

Like I said in  comments elsewhere, Emmanuel Goldstein is dead.  Now what? I just hope nothing worse will come from this.  I think, and most people in the world hopefully agree that Bin Laden was a really, really terrible guy: a criminal, a murderer, and terrorist.  One man’s criminal or terrorist is another man’s patriot as everyone’s tastes are slightly different.

It’s amazing how information has been coming and going through Twitter, Facebook, and all the new websites that have sprung up the last five years or so. I just wonder how long this freedom will last?  After all, what if Osama’s men had had internet (they didn’t in his nice million dollar mansion in a slum), knew this guy was Twittering and found out about this? People in high and powerful places are taking notes on this and probably having meetings about this, along with all the fallout from the attack.

ThinkGeek has taken an April Fool’s joke from last year and made a product out of it, the iCade. $99 gets you an enclosure for your iPad that turns it into something resembling a classic arcade machine, complete with retro joystick and buttons.

The iCade works with Atari’s Greatest Hits to seal the deal and deliver that true retro gaming effect.

Living in the future sure looks and feels a lot like living in the past sometimes.

According to this article, Michigan police have been using devices that can extract a disturbing amount of information from your cell phone, including but not limited to:  GPS tracking, phone call/text history, files, images, applications, use of those applications, frequency of use, even potentially finding deleted information to recover.

The technology is called Cellebrite  using  “UFED.” This is not necessarily an exclusive police/law enforcement/forensics tool, either–it might just be illegal if you use it rather than them.

Now, the scenario was presented to me in a “…so a cop pulls you over for speeding, and asks for your cell phone.”  I imagine it isn’t quite that simple, nor fast.  I’m assuming this will not be normal traffic cop investigation procedure, but who is to say left unchecked, that it wouldn’t be?  Cell phones are amazing devices these days, capable of tons of information gathering and processing.  Like all data gathering and processing, to get to that data, it would require equally as powerful equipment, and depending on the hardware/software constraints of that equipment, would mean how fast a cop could get your phone, tap into it, download data, amass some kind of “reasonable cause,” and proceed to infringe your 4th Amendment rights.

It doesn’t sound like a terribly efficient use of our tax dollars, but again, these days, tax dollars are both shirking economically and being spent at an alarming rate.   It is something we have to keep in mind with potential freedom-damaging instances like this–especially when the Michigan department being accused of running rampant with this new technology offered to divulge the program for the sum of $544,680–why the exact amount, I’m not sure.

This could be a tinfoil-hat-wearing-scare, or a legitimate concern, but from my angle, nothing has happened yet.  We live in a world where politically, government-wise and especially police power, we don’t trust one another.  The Internet also makes it quite easy to spin yarns around “what if” scenarios from the earth broiling to a crisp because we club baby seals to Robocop becoming an oppressive reality.  Regardless, there will be some future instances of this becoming a bone of contention for some folks, notably right now the ACLU is going after them (probably one of the better things the ACLU is managing to look into) and they won’t be the last.

(photo courtesy yourdaddy.net)

Our gadgety lives sure are neat.  Today lots of us are carrying around little devices that gives us all kinds of fascinating powers.  But at what cost are these powers granted to us, and on whom do those costs fall?  Monologist Mike Daisey, an avid technology enthusiast and Apple fan, decided to find out.  He went undercover pretending to be a businessman in need of getting some devices manufactured and checked out the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, China.

It turns out the costs mostly fall on people in China.  Those people get what in China is considered a good job, and they also get to work double shifts standing the whole time, and sleep in factory dormitories when they aren’t working.  The standing causes their spines to fuse and the constant manipulation with their digits causes serious repetitive stress injury.  Not to mention the fact that many of these Chinese people I’m referring to are 12 years old…

“So what,” you might say.  “The people suffering here are the Chinese, and they are also making what for them is good money.  And they’re making something we want, at a price we can afford.”  And you’d be right.  Plus, hey, it’s illegal for them to form a union, but then again, they’re already part of the union.  The Communist Party sanctioned union!

Back to the headline of this post however, I have concluded that we do make things in this country.  We make miserable Chinese factory workers.

Also, it’s news in the US when McDonald’s announces it’s going to hire 50,000 people nationwide.  Know how many people work at the Foxconn plant in the one Chinese city of Shenzhen?  400,000.  Welcome to the 21st century!

You probably didn’t believe me when I said how excited I was about this project.  Well, the Synth Gods smiled upon me and I was able to acquire a kit much sooner than expected (…thanks, Murray!)– which means, all I had to do was sit and wait for the 3P Upgrade kit and Chorus Speed Mod kit to get to here to Reno!  As promised from my original post on this, here’s the second part of the tale.

There is a lot of backstory to my Roland JX3P than meets the eye.  I got a great trade deal on the thing from a local guy here who didn’t really know how to use it, nor did he want to learn.  He was much more interested in a preset-only, learning-compatible keyboard rather than a synth, so between my friend Tom and myself, we got him something he was happy with that was about the same value.  The JX3P I got was in pretty rough shape.  Some keys didn’t sound, the Sequencer and Sens/Edit sliders were both shot, and from the interesting collection of screws holding the thing together, it must have tales to tell.

I got to work cleaning the key contacts, stripping out the old Sequencer and Sens/Edit sliders, noticing someone did a horrible repair job on the volume potentiometer recently, but overall, the unit worked pretty well.  I was surprised, for the condition, the pitch bender was in remarkable shape.  Roland units are notorious at having breaking or broken pitch benders.

Needless to say, any treatment for this synth was going to be in its best interest–this was not a museum-quality piece of gear.

A great guy named Isak was finally found via the magic of the Internet when I discovered how hard it was to find the slider potentiometers for the Sequencer and Sens/Edit functions.   Because I discovered the Roland SH-101 shares a lot of parts with the JX3P, at least I had a few options as where to try and find them.   It took MONTHS of searching.  Isak and I haggled a bit, but I ended up making a new friend in Israel and getting a whole set of used SH-101 parts from him.  They ended up hitting my door about the same time as my JX3P kit from KiwiTechnics.com in New Zealand!  Fancy that!

Some images of my excitement-inducing parcel:

I got to work right away on the 3P Upgrade Kit and the Chorus Speed Mod kit.  As Murray suggests in the online instructions, I went out and got a good desoldering iron/bulb combo (Radio Shack provided me with this one), some new solder wick/braid, and began the project.  The desoldering and cleaning of both kits was the hardest part, I’ll be honest with you.   You just can’t heat up this stuff too much, or you risk ruining the printed circuits on the board, damaging any chips that you may want to save, leaving behind solder on circuits that should NOT be bridged, or just frustrating the heck out of yourself.   Did I mention to handle your chips properly?   Ground yourself.  STATIC KILLS ELECTRONICS!  If any of this frightens or confuses you, call a qualified technician for your upgrade.  Okay?

Here’s what it looks like before you start–you can’t really go back too easily:

Overall, you just have to be observant and thorough, and find not only the right equipment, but the right equipment that works for you.   Though the Radio Shack desoldering iron/bulb combo worked good for me, that’s not saying much.  I’m experienced with things like this.

Here’s some of my cleanup jobs:

Applying the chip-bed socket for the actual 3P Upgrade chip assembly is a breeze if your cleanup was thorough.   The little guy will pop right into the pre-existing JX3P main board, and with a little solder flux, some soldering skill, permanently affixing the socket is pretty straightforward.   One tip not mentioned (because this kit really is for technicians and/or experienced folk) is to match up the little half-circle divot in the chip-bed socket with that printed on the board, which incidentally, matches a similar marking on the chip itself:  nothing good comes from installing chips upside-down!  Pin 1 is always pin 1, and attempting to match the shapes/features in general helps.

Oh yeah, don’t forget to clip the W5 link on the MIDI panel.  That is, if you want your MIDI and programs to write correctly.  Soon, there’ll be a way to run a wire to the main board for your PG-200 programmer to work, too!  That’s still being developed by KiwiTechnics… I’ll revise this post for that later.

After the socket was installed, I popped in the 3P upgrade assembly.  It was a snap.  Literally.  I applied even pressure at all times, and since the bits that go into the socket are a bit off-canter, just be careful  (Note–didn’t put my main board back on yet… I’ll explain why):

Next up, the Chorus Speed Mod.  Again, same deal, I desoldered the IC2 chip from the panel board (see cleanup pictures above; different from the JX3P’s main board–it’s the one with the buttons you press and the sliders), cleaned it up from old solder, and I stuck it on the board with the double-sided tape (already affixed).  One problem:  it wasn’t too clear to me how to connect the ribbon cable coming off the Chorus Speed Mod board that sticks between the buttons:

Turns out, you match the pattern of wires of the ribbon cable (four in all) from the source of the daughter board to the IC2′s vacant connection holes.  There’s eight holes once IC2 is gone, and eight on the daughter board you stuck to the panel:  only four are used.  Match those up identically from the daughter board to the panel board, and that’s the way to do it.  I admit, I screwed it up, and Murry helped me correct it.  The picture on the instructions isn’t too clear.  No worry, though, Murray is designing a different and foolproof (Kyleproof) way to install this, so all of that may be moot, anyway.

The Chorus Speed Mod needs one more thing:  the lead wire going to the IC28 pin on the main board.   This is why I didn’t install the main board yet!  Kind of a control umbilical cord of sorts, and must be done.  I chose to solder the wire from the top of the board, rather than the bottom, in case it came loose.  The particle board Roland chose to use to mount the main board does NOT like unscrewing and rescrewing of the hardware.  Do this at your own discretion, it was just my choice.  I have experience with circuit bending and non-standard soldering to go by.

Next to last, I replaced the stock 100R resistors to the 220R  resistors on the front panel board.  Eight in all comes with the kit, and they help the LEDs glow a little more steady and brightly.  R84 resistor just needs a link to replace it to complete the circuit (tip:  use one of your leftover “legs” from the new resistors you installed).  This upgrade works well, too:  don’t consider this an option.  It comes with the kit anyway, so why not?

The last thing I did to the main board:  a small  0.1uF capacitor that also comes with the kit, that stabilizes the usability of the Sens slider and cuts the noisiness. Soldering this as such bridges a circuit between R95 (resistor) and the ground of the Sens slide potentiometer. (I had to do this later because I had to install a new Sens slide pot…but here you go, a picture is worth 1,000 continuities):

Now MY upgrade wasn’t complete, as I mentioned, I had to still install my slider pots from Isak… a 100KB (Sens/Edit) and a 1MA (Sequencer Rate)… with the desoldering iron/bulb, a cinch.  I won’t show pictures of that, it really isn’t that exciting–just very necessary as I didn’t have them to begin with. Finally! Install done!

I keep old fabric mouse pads (static-free, non-conductive, free) just for live testing boards that are free of a unit, but have all of their cables connected.  It keeps them from grounding out and from electrocuting me–all better than installing everything and discovering problems.    It was this point I discovered I wired up the Chorus Speed Mod incorrectly.  Easy fix, stupidity on my part.  I’m glad I didn’t fry anything.   After that, all was good.

Did I mention now nice and well laid-out Roland circuit boards are?  Everything is labeled top AND bottom, even some minor circuit diagrams printed right on the boards–just wonderful to work with.

I put everything back together officially.   New screws, some almost-stock looking chrome knobs for the sliders,  a super-cool new non-standard volume knob (red, black and chrome just for the JX3p!!!), and last, the provided KiwiTechnics sticker boasting my success.  I needed to do a chip update via MIDI to the kit once installed, as it was released the same time I was installing.  I used SendSX 1.22, (download–click here) a cheap MIDI/USB cable from eBay, power on the JX3P with “Tape” button held, send with SendSX with the updated SYX file loaded, and poof, update.  Be careful with this, though, if you screw up, you’ll need a new chip.   MIDI is also terribly slow as a data transfer method.  Just don’t do this on a laptop with a battery ready to konk out halfway through the update!

There were a few software bugs in the 3P Upgrade that were unavoidable.  Being a producing business person, you often have a choice:  make everyone wait for perfection, or go for “good enough,” and wait for the helpful kind (like me!) to give you bug reports for your efforts.  It happens a lot in the tech world.  Sure, we’re used to solid perfection, but it doesn’t get there easily for a small company… and believe me, being it only Murry at KiwiTechnics is quite small for a company!   I sent in a few things I found problematic with the current version (v1.3  was upgraded to my 3P Upgrade as of this writing) and Murray’s already tracking down and fixing the issues.   This is a good sign:  If the creator of your product supports you and corresponds, you are in GOOD hands… it’s a proper kind of business/customer relationship I HIGHLY enjoy.

So all in all, that’s been my experience with my JX3P upgrade.  Overall, I’m ELATED with it, it is delivering on all the promised features.  The ones that need some work will be fixed soon.  My JX3P is already much more fun, and if you’re familiar with the JX3P editing map and how it is laid out, Murray did a great job mapping and coding the chip’s new features to be right in line with this familiar editing process.

That’s all there is to it, really.   I did a lot of explaining, but it’s not that difficult.  I think an intermediate to expert electronics enthusiast with a little experience could handle this in an afternoon like I did.  I don’t suggest (and neither does Murray) that someone of little experience, or the wrong equipment, try this.  Find someone who is willing,  a friend or paid technician.  Also keep in mind this is MY experience, and  not a how-to.   I’m no more responsible for anyone screwing anything up than Murray is for providing you with the kit to do so.  From upgrading the physical parts to the update via MIDI and equipment I used, it’s all opinion–do all of this at your own risk, please.  Learn first, do later.   Or find someone else to hold responsible that you pay.

I will update any further happenings here, so feel free to bookmark this article someplace (…you really ought to be checking on Burncards.com more often, anyway, hint hint…)  and I’ll keep you all informed!

Meanwhile, I’m going to go back and mess around with my upgraded Jx3P, if you don’t mind.

I follow Matrixsynth’s articles a lot, usually someone uncovers something fun and I pick up on it.  So here I am going on about yet another Korg product!

Lo, the Monotribe.  After my somewhat scathing criticism on the Korg Kronos, and from what I could see no mention of this little gem at NAMM this year, Korg may have indeed read my article and said, “Calm down, Kyle, we have other things coming–don’t you worry!”

Does this mean I have to take back what I said about Korg not really paying attention to the masses?

I may have to.  As a current owner of three Electribe models (…the venerable EA-1, and ER-1 and an ESX-1…) and a former owner of one other (ES-1…got rid of it to make way for the ESX) I had to wonder what Korg was doing when it re-released the ESX-1 SD model recently.  It is identical to the original ESX-1 except it had an SD memory card interface rather than the janky “SmartMedia” card.  This was a good move.  Not improving damn near anything else, like increased memory, memory reading direct from the SD card, no USB interactivity for editing/backup etc., I wondered if Korg was just floundering around.

Sure, the Monotron came out recently.  A $60 pocket toy that would have been a lot more interesting along side the $15 – $30 “Stylophone” toys from ThinkGeek.com.   I got pretty bored with it, wannabe MS-10 filters or no MS-10 filters.  It just wasn’t playable or viable besides a simple music curiosity, at least for my needs.

This new “Analog Ribbon Station,” is a unique one.  I like the knobs.  I like the size.  I like the fact it’s neo-analog.  It’s battery powered.  It has an internal speaker.  It has some method of  electribe-like beat creation.  It must have the same or very similar circuitry as the Monotron, which means the MS-10/MS-20 filters at your fingertips.  But what gives with the ribbon controller?  When I played around with the Monotron, I felt like I had a touch-Theremin of sorts more than anything.  Sort of cool, sort of meh.  I like buttons, and I LOVE keys.  I’m a keyboard/synth player, after all.  With all of the LFO/VCA/VCO pleasantries aboard, I’m sure it can be somewhat forgiven.

There’s a bevy of hookups in the back (no, no MIDI it seems…) and it looks like mayhaps you can input an external source via 3.5mm jacks and get hold of those filters in some fashion.  Live performers and knob tweakers are going to enjoy this if I’m right. The “Sync Jacks” apparently do some kind of voodoo by hooking up sound or signal and having them respond to your setup–sounds like old tech from the past, internal gate triggers? Interesting.

I have this fascination with battery-powered music gear, too. There’s something fun about taking my Crate Taxi 15 out and chaining up Casios, circuit-bent crap and other effects and doing some sidewalk show for no reason. This unit would add another fun soldier to the phalanx of off-the-grid musical weird, for me.

Price?  Speculative.  If the cheaply-made stuff Korg has come out with recently (Monotron, MicroKorg XL, Microstation) is any indication, Korg isn’t afraid to ask for solid money for their stuff.  All of the newest Korg products I’ve felt thus far (besides the Kronos) have felt WORSE than Casio’s best attempts at calculators and synthesizers.  I recently played around with a Microstation, and I’ve felt better key engineering quality in the “Techno Beat” toy keyboards at Savers.   I’m going to guess $200–and I won’t be rushing out to pay that, either.

A cool toy, Korg, one I’ll be looking forward to getting my hands on soon so I can either eat my words and take one home like the weak slut for cool noisemakers that I am, or rage back with more hatred for the weak-ass gear everyone seems to be lapping up out of desperation.  By all means, please, make me a believer and not a hater.

I’m open-minded.

UPDATE: Here’s the Jexus-ripoff promo video:

(image courtesy gear4music.com/Korg)