photos from the favorite room.
yeah its true these are my favorites.
most of the stuff not all of the stuff but most of the stuff.
its a tight room and well its a magical room . all kinds of music is possible here. lately tho i have been really nostalgic for early ambeints so the gear is set up for mostly live improv stuff. i still use the beat boxes and the closet is filled with old casios .
this is the main corner there on the left is a stack of three subtractive analog synths. the top is a juno 60 the middle is a kawai sx240 and the bottom is a jupiter six. i love the names roland used to use for there old synths .
on the right side is a kawai k3 a korg dw8000 and a alesis quadra synth.
the kawai and the korg are digital wave table synths with analog filters and envelopes. they both are really cool .
the quadra synth was a megaflop i dont use its sounds much but some of the ones i program are pretty awesome.
i use it a lot to control other synths primarily the rack mounts (the synths without keyboards)
such a cool name this synth was used by many artists over the years.
all those sliders and knobs and leds . i think there is forty eight leds on this synth and when its on stage in the dark it looks awesome. it does not like heat not many of them do but its a really great synth to place live.
there is a lot of patchcords in the studio but i dont have everything plummed into the mixers anymore. i like being able to hook things up and i dont really like using effects loops much. i like the sound source to go direct to the effects unit rather than a return send loop.
still tho the cords involved with doing this get pretty overwhelming at times and sometimes it can get so crazy it is like you are caught in a spiders web.
this is my favorite stack of synths. you will never find a better example of either the top or middle. the top juno60 came from a blues muso named wailing walker super nice guy and he sold it to me for next to nothing. the sx240 came to me with no sounds in it from lack of love but i have reprogrammed it all now.
the jupiter6 on the bottom is most likely my favorite synth. it was seriously expensive back when it was new and it is still work a huge chunk of change.
in its flight case it clocks in at about ninety pounds. try carrying that for a few blocks with one hand.
trust me i have and its not fun but its a amazing synth.
this juno60 is a really well known synth too. its funny tho when people come over to jam i can always tell the pretenders from the honest ones because the pretenders will comment on the juno first it is such a well known synth that people with even a basic knowledge of vintage synths can talk about it.
one of the best synth bass sounds of them all and really nice pad sounds. tons of sliders and also a great build quality. mine is beyond cherry for the most part i mean most of the sliders are as if it was made this year.
lots of people seem to love this synth its pretty cool it can run on batteries you can even put a guitar strap on it and rock out with it. really tho its a pretty limited synth good for blips bleeps the odd pad is ok you can get out of it. you need to program these synths i mean using the stock sounds is pretty boring for me and i do not like to use any kind of presets for anything no matter what kind of music i am doing.
this is one of my few thrift store synths.
this is my original emax that fritz out a while back she is pretty good now. this is what five thousand dollars bought you at the tail end of the eighties and it sounds excellent. very close in sound to the legendary sp1200 and well i doubt most people would be able to tell the two apart. used for many many many classic electro and hip hop tracks also a favorite of depeche mode and others. i have a pretty big sample library. its analog filters and envelopes make samples sound like old vinyl records. its just a really amazing peice of electronic music history. i am glad to have mine these have been heating up in price lately. as with most of my gear there is nothing that can replicate the sound of this synth.
some newer beat boxes allthough the mc 505 is getting pretty old now was it really twelve years ago that it was released. its not analog but you know these boxes are going to be the future classics its already happening. the korgs are also pretty cool. tucked off in a corner of that wagon is a boss reverb.
not a boss reverb pedal but a mintomatic boss spring reverb .
this next one is a really rare synth. it is a german synth called the micro wave.
alot of people dont get it why this synth is called a micro wave.
it was designed by the original guy who worked on the impossible to find ppg wave. it offers most of its sounds plus more in a rack mounted design. this is analog digital hybrid technology and this unit was massively expensive back in the day.
it is a very rare beast and the unit underneath is called a wave slaves. this was one of my all time steals. i got it from a guy in a massively huge mansion . its extremely powerful and very complex you cant really use this synth unless you know what you are doing its capable of destroying your speakers and ears if you are not careful.
next up is a vector synth wich was pretty cheap again not the easiest to program but it can sound fantastic.
below it is a dbx single band expander that is really a fun unit to abuse in iteresting ways.
underneath that is a emu audity 2000 .
original released this unit was sold for 2000 bucks man i feel sorry for the people who paid that much for it.
what makes it cool is it can sync sixteen appegiated patterns at the same time by itself. its a really awesome synth for making drum loops or crazy poly rythmic multi timbral sound scapes.
i love that synth and its fairly easy to use .
you can sort of see the lights on the jupiter.
its a really awesome synth sounds like no other. reminds me of jimi hendrixes crazy tones he would use at times. it can go from sounding all pretty and lush like a chorus of violins to out of control and screaming with tones that would wake the dead in the next province. its a amazing synth and grows in value .
devo used this board and i believe the chemical brothers have several of them . i also think that this is the one of the all time most versitale synths going from being really ambient to hard and driving in a flick of a few of its many sliders and buttons.
some of the many effects in the studio. the moog delay closest to me is a really expensive delay designed by robert moog. it cost a thousand dollars and well its just really special. next to it is one of the first moog pedals ever produced by the reformed moog music . mine is signed by bob moog. most of the ones out there wear moogs silk screened signature but this one is actually signed by moog.
off a bit further is some of the locally produced electrix effects units i was lucky enough to buy before that company decided to make karoke gear.
some of the dozens of effects boxes. including a adrenalinn one of the first made i got from the actual programmer of the unit along with a hand made clone of the korg ms20 filter. another piece of gear that can seriously decimate a set of speakers in a flash if you are not careful. if i was to plug this unit into any boombox i have while it was self ossilating it would tear the woofers apart in about ten seconds.
you dont know subsonic until you have felt the power of this filter or the moog low pass i have also is potent.
one of the scores of old mini keyboards i have kicking around. this one is a really neat yamaha vs30 sampler. it is often refered to as a toy but back in the day this little sampler was a really great little device. no midi hampers a lot of these units on some levels but on many others a unit like this through a couple of the stomp boxes can rock as good as you make it.
its not the gear it is what you do with it.
in the future this unit could end up being as lauded as the tb303 there really isnt much to not like about the esx1 . its capable of some of the best acid sounds produced in the last decade and ultra fun to play. it has some really decent drum sounds too and can process in coming audio and automatically beat match its tempo to your input.
it can be funky it can be punky or just flat out nasty.
the last great hardware beatbox. maybe i dont know for sure but i do know its a hella lot of fun. also becoming more and more desirable in fact korg just reissued these with more memory. lets hope they issue a retrofit for the people who still use the original issues. much like the previous box in function but you can load your own sounds into this. you can slice up a beat like a mpc and pound it out manually or sequence it with the onboard sequencer.
all the beat matching stuff applies here too.
once you got a beat going you can resample it and chop it up fast making remixes super fun and fast.
i dont give it enough love but it sure is a great beat box.
the fasted route to forbidden planet territory a dx7 and someone who does not fully grasp fm.
i hate and love this synth at the same time.
the end of everything the beginning of everything and absolutely as much fun to program as getting the spoon lady at summer camp to make you cough.
some of the job panel of the emax surprisingly easy to use this sampler. too bad nothing like this exists today. its the most intuitive sampler i have every used well almost lol.
old old akai sampler
the dw8000 control panel
juno 60
death filter
Can't really show 'em off 'cause I don't have a proper display for 'em and half of 'em are still boxed up. 
