Synthesizing Nightmares

In 1983, a young college student plundered his student loan money to buy an analog synthesizer. That young man was me, of course, and the synthesizer was the amazing  Sequencial Circuits Pro One. Sadly, the instrument is long gone from my studio. Surprisingly, one creation I squeezed from it left a lasting impression on a generation of innocent youth.

Back the day my dad was in advertising and promotion and one of his firm's clients was Children's Television Workshop, of Sesame Street and Muppets fame. Papa threw me a bone, hired me to create a three-second sound track for the CTW video sign-on above. I was paid $50.

Every sound came from the Sequential Circuits Pro One that was recorded on a TASCAM 144 4-track cassette recorder, the original Portastudio. The synth had a 16-step programmable sequencer, which I employed at hyper speed for the cascading effect. I layered more sounds on top of that and ran it through an analog delay pedal. Bingo.

I scarcely gave it a thought for years, but recently, when, on a lark, I searched for it YouTube for it, I found that multiple users had posted the sign-on, and it was getting views. I did some quick math and found our ancient video logo had received, easily, over half a million hits.

That was delightful to discover, but it was the comments that were really unexpected. I was astounded to learn that a  more than a few children had been traumatized by the spot. Here are a few YouTube comments from children that found my soundtrack and the visuals truly frightening:

"This version of the CTW logo should've been one of the scariest logos in television history."— danucciguzman

"yay i'm not the only one who was freaked out by this!!!"— girlintheflesh78

"omg! i thought i was the only one who this scared, lol."— bluebeary07

"That always scared the hell out of me when I was little."— chrisz71

"Oh...My...Gosh... Scared me SO bad when I was little. I hid under my covers when it would come on!! :O"— LuckyPup551

It scared me too. I wouldn't watch my sesame street tape because of it"— Colleen Perisutti

But there were also these:

"Pretty sweet soundtrack."— OmniInc

"i love this it was my childhood i will never forget it"— daminmancejin

Garbage Hammond Organ

The Hammond J-522 came out in 1971.

Curbside, late one November night, this lonely organ called out to me. It was drizzling, so I knew it was at least a little wet, but seemed pretty much intact. Could it possibly work?

I gave it a nudge to see if I could maybe lug it up the street to my house. No way. This sucker was heavy. I trotted home and five minutes later I was back with one of my son's old skateboards. Barely averting a hernia, I tipped the instrument onto it and rolled the organ up the street to my garage. Wiping it down I hoped for the best.

A few days later I went back for a closer look. I plugged it in and bingo! It worked.

But wait, was that the classic rotating Leslie speaker sound I was hearing? And look, a little brass "H" nameplate on the front! I had found myself a Hammond organ.

Sure, it's a living room, church lady model (J-522, circa 1971), but this was a genuine Hammond. Cool. I dragged it to the cellar.

The top register was a little rough, some of the keys did not sound all the tones available from the rocker style drawbars switches, but it mostly worked. The built in rhythms, the bass pedals, volume pedal, the Leslie, the spring reverb and the entire lower register were all in good shape. O.K., the knobs drove crackling potentiometers, but they were functional.  It had what looked like a 12-15" speaker in there, and it was pretty loud. I flipped through the cheesy beats. Very analog and vintage sounding. These where getting looped into Ableton, for sure.

Vintage dust balls.

I decided to open it up.  Inside: 40 years of dust balls. Now, I'm not too experienced with this stuff, but what the hell, it was free, so I dug deeper, removing set of screws after set of screws, and finally, the keys off of the top register.

This was a well built instrument. Everything was holding together snugly after 40 years. And the details were interesting: Every white key was held in with two tiny black screws and every black key by two tiny silver screws. Each key was molded with a number and letter on the underside to identify its place in the musical scale and on the physical keyboard. I applied some contact spray here and there, did a little vacuuming, cleaned up the keys and other surfaces.

Open Sesame

I couldn't fix everything. The keys that didn't fire every tone must have had bad contacts somewhere I couldn't access, I figured. After trying to tunnel into one bad key I lost the tiny spring that worked its action. An hour later I found it perched on a transistor, only to have it boing away 3 more times. I finally got it back in place and called it a day.

All and all it did help. I got a few keys to work better on top, all the knobs now sound clean. The reverb was crisper with that layer of dust removed from the spring and chamber.

So now I'm having fun trying the combinations of tones you can get. Attempting bass lines with my feet. Quite exciting.  I look forward to recording this beast.

Cool fisheye shot.

But what's going on here? Why would someone throw something like this out? I suppose there's little market for it. This wasn't the first time I'd seen this kind of thing either. In addition to this beautiful Hammond, I've found a nice guitar, a banjo, a vintage Ampeg tube amplifier and tons of drums  in the trash. All usable.

I'd like to think they were left there by people knowing they would be rescued by someone like me. Someone who'd appreciate them.

The thought that this was tossed to be ultimately crushed under a heap of disposable diapers in a landfill makes me oh, so very sad.

Ye Olde 5.25 Inch Floppy Disks

Here they are, Ye Olde Voyetra Sequencer Plus mkIII 5.25" Floppy Disks

A few years ago I fondly remembered my first midi sequencer, Voyetra Sequencer Plus, which I ran on the PC XT way back in the mid 1980s. Well, I finally crawled up into the attic in my mother-in-law's house where I thought the disks were. And alas, I found them, along with DOS boot disks!

The next step will be to go back up there and retrieve the PCXT computer that is still sitting up there, find a DOS command crib sheet and hope the thing fires up.

On the hunt now for a vintage midi interface from that era. I hope to recreate a semblance of the midi studio I had at home back then. Should be interesting.

Watch for updates.

MKB300 Redux

Back in the 1980s, midi was young, and so was I. It was then that I fell in love with the Roland MKB-300 controller keyboard. You can read Chapter One elsewhere on this blog.

I'd used it for years, but other synths and controllers eventually took its place. I'd tried, and failed, to sell it on Craig's list and Ebay. Shipping and packing seemed daunting anyway, so eventually the MKB-300 was just sitting in a closet gathering dust.

Chapter Two for the MKB-300 began when someone else fell in love with it. A Gearchild reader named Anonymous.

Anonymous, it turned out, had an actual name, Peter Ehrlich, and it turned out he was looking for one. He rocked a mellow techno groove, was into vintage synths and it seemed he really took a shine to the controller keyboard. Emails ensued, I posted the video, above, to show him the keyboard in action, we settled on a price. He was game.

 From Mr. Ehrlich:

"The Roland MKB represents to me the pinnacle of midi controller design because it sits at such a transitional period in the history of midi.  It is an instrument in its own right and, as such, is geared towards players rather than producer/engineers, where I fall. I enjoy the idea that I may be able to assist this instrument in continuing its musical journey.  At least I intend to give it my best shot.

But I was still wary about shipping the hulking monster keyboard.  Its hugeness was one of the main reasons I'd resisted putting up on ebay. It would likely be expensive to ship and be a huge hassle as well.

But Peter's enthusiasm won out and his shipping tips convinced me it would be possible: Hit your local bike shop trash for huge sized cartons, use a lot of bubble wrap, tape and ship it via the post office. The post office? Yes. He said he once even got a stove shipped through the post office.

Low and behold, the U.S.P.S. web site seemed to suggest they'd take a package of this size and weight. Unfortunately my local post office EMPLOYEE would NOT take it. The clerk with the tape measure said it was too big. I sensed ineptitude and my instinct was right—the post office two miles down the road had no issues with it. I heaved the coffin-sized box over the counter, and off it went.

After a a week and 3000 miles on mail trucks, it arrived without a hitch. The MKB-300 was home again.

Garbage Banjo

Once again my instrument finding Karma has surfaced. I spotted this banjo at the curb on bulky-waste trash day in my New Jersey hamlet. I don't know what it is with this town, but they sure throw a lot of musical gear away. I've previously found a vintage Ampeg tube amp, a replica of a Gibson Dove acoustic guitar, and many, many drum set parts equaling more than a full set.

Banjo has always been cool to me, way beyond bluegrass, which I do enjoy. Check out Bela Fleck, who takes it to another level. Of course there's the Steve Martin thing that's brought the instrument into the spotlight now, his banjoism gone "serious" with his collaborative album that pulled in tons of high profile musicians.

I hear the instrument as koto-like Asian, as African, of course, and in it's chime-like twang there is also a celtic flavor. It's got a  raw worldliness that, with this particular banjo, extends the instrument's history to the midwestern U.S.A.

I wonder what adventures this instrument has known. Unknown U. of Wisconsin student who at one time cared enough to proudly and carefully letter their school's name this instrument's case: I don't know why you threw this out. I don't even know if you're alive. Perhaps you peered from the window as I plucked this treasure from the curb? Perhaps you knew someone would grab this?

In any case, thanks. To me, this is treasure.

What's So Great About Non-Destructive Editing?

Ok, I'm in a rut. I just can't get anything finished.

It started with MIDI in the 80s, and got worse with Cubase VST in the 90s, and now that I'm into Pro Tools and Albeton LIVE, now that my hard disk is huge, now that I have the processing power to fill a hundred tracks, and redo, reprocess, repitch, auto harmonize, quantize to audio or MIDI, stretch time, reverse, reprocess, mimic any instrument, any aural environment and now that I have a library of a million loops. . . now it's possible I'll never leave my insane musical playground with a finished recording. I'm all lost in the supermarket!

I love my computer DAWs, but sometimes they offer too many choices.

All this technology has made things easier, and endless with possibility, but too many choices also confound, confuse and make it easy to fiddle forever. As technology has gotten better, I've finished fewer songs, fewer compositions, and spent a lot more time noodling around to no end. And I don't think I'm alone.

In the simpler times of linear analog tape recording you didn't have infinite choices. If you were a regular guy, you had 4 tracks, maybe 8, that's it.

You had to record your masterpiece from the beginning to the end. Sure, you could re-take or punch in a correction, but once you started building on that, you weren't really going back. The movement was forward, onward and upward.

Or downward. Yes, it was easier to fail, but you were also more likely to finish, where as now, living in a world where you never have to commit, you may just never, ever do it.

So what's a thoroughly modern man to do? Well I've thought about this a lot, and I've talked about this with friends. There are many approaches that one can put to use.

Deadlines: For those of us for whom this is not bread and butter, deadlines don't really exist. So give yourself a fixed period of time to finish your personal projects. Or seek to work with or for others, maybe even for money. You don't finish, you don't get paid. In the absence of cash, a collaborator is a good motivator.

Limit your toolbox: Set up a template. Say, 8 tracks, and stop there. A vocal track, a guitar track a synth track, a drum track and 4 more something else tracks. If you can't get it cooking within those, maybe there's really no idea there. You can stop wasting time and start fresh.

Keep Your Studio Simple and Wired to Go: That way you don't waste time getting ready to waste time.

Write It First: Focus on recording performances from beginning to end rather than piecing things together. In other words, plan it and write it AWAY from the computer, on your piano or guitar or tuba. On paper. Then sit down and play it, embellish it. And maybe after letting it sit a while, go in and chop it a little.

Shut Down the Computer All Together: One songwriter friend, like me, is on a computer for 8 to 10 hours at the day job, and finds being on one all night makes life seem an endless grind. She got herself a hard disk based Roland multitrack and uses that to make music. Sure, you could do some editing on that, or export your audio and mess with it. You have non destructive effects, and multiple takes to swap in. But somehow it isn't the same as the massive ease of doing and undoing on a computer based DAW. You instrument becomes your (musical) instrument, you guitar, your piano – not the mouse and quad core processor. It's more like playing, less like work, she said, and proceeded to record her first album that way.

Go Back to Tape: Lots of folks record on old tape machines for the sound, they'd say, but the vibe and creative process is very different when you work linearly. It's more like music, less like dicing data. It's more about performances, and requires more though and planning, which in turn makes for a smarter and better composition. John Vanderslice is a great example of this process, a favorite of mine, a very creative analog recording artist who does it on tape.

Lyrics First: This way song structure is largely finished before you begin recording. Make your music to fit. You run out of lyrics, you are done.

Me? A Drummer?

Young me practicing my paradiddles.
Note the jazz grip and my trusty cassette deck, at left.

I wasn't the guy who pounded rhythms on his desk or cafeteria tray, geez, I barely tapped my foot. But rock and roll is a powerful magnet. The idea of playing in a band was loaded with all the potential cool a freshly minted teenager could imagine and some friends happened to be forming one. They needed a drummer, so I got me some lessons at the local music shop.

My teacher, a jazz guy, was delighted that I could read music. I'd taken 5 years of classical piano lessons, and the drum charts he put in front of me were a piece of cake. I had a good ear and it turned out I was coordinated too. I started on a practice pad and soon I was begging for drums of my own.

Before you knew it I had my nose in the want ads looking for used kits – I found one across town. To me they were amazing: $125 of chrome, twinkle and marble-look laminate. In reality they were a little 4 piece kit with crappy, dull sounding pie tin cymbals, some no-name cheapo brand. Excitedly, I took them home.

Within a few months my buds and I had recorded a noisy cassette (I still have it) of "Sympathy for the Devil," "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Woman." I wasn't that great, but I was keeping tempo and singing at the same time, to boot. I had taken to it. I was becoming a drummer.

I carried on practicing and jamming. I got better cymbals, added cowbells and blocks, experimented with tuning and muffling heads. I took my lessons but really learned by playing along with the greats on my trusty cassette deck. I broke sticks as I dueled with Moon and Bonham and absorbed Ringo and Charlies Watts' patient competence.

Those drums played exactly one paid gig: I was hired for the pit orchestra for an 8th grade catholic school production of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes." But playing rock with my friends was much more satisfying.

I became known in my little circle as a pretty good drummer. I felt cool and got some needed teenage cred. But drumming did more than that. Drumming is humbling. One must support and be never waver. I learned I could be dependable.

Sure, there was room for powerful showboating. Being a drummer was decidedly macho — important for a guy growing up in the estrogen bath our home had become with the departure of my father (two sisters a mother and me, the male minority). The emotional turmoil and angst every teenager feels was given a primal voice though rock and roll.

More importantly, I learned how to improvise and go with the flow. Something my classical music training did not teach me. A useful skill in life.

Soon I felt limited by those drums and after a summer toiling as a messenger in Manhattan, I'd saved enough to purchase a a beautiful cherry red Premier kit.

I ran my own classified ad and the first looker took them away for a paltry $75. I was sick with a fever and too weak to bargain. But that was fine. In the exchange they only cost me $50. And what I gained from those drums can't be measured in dollars and cents.

More Cowbell

More Cowbell! - watch more funny videos

National Public Radio recently aired a segment on the chirps of prairie dogs. Through controlled experiments and analysis, the scientists found that the prairie dogs could "talk" to each other. Different sounds, identifiable by us humans only with computer analysis, identify a particular predators and even communicate information about the predator's size and color. Knowing about a potential threat is important stuff, and though we can't hear it in their calls, the animals have evolved to be sensitive to the frequencies that communicated this important information.

Now, cows, for example, are important to humans. You don't want to loose your cow and the valuable milk, cheese and meat she represents. So naturally the cowbell was developed with a frequency the human ear is particularly sensitive to, making those valuable lost heifers easy to locate.

"More Cowbell!" sounds silly, but it's a call directly from our DNA. We want it. We need it. Cowbell speaks to us on at a deep level.

The while the classic Christopher Walken SNL video makes fun of the staple percussive "Konk," let's face it, it's ubiquitous in dance, Latin, rock and jazz music. We all want more cowbell.I've had a few, but the one tucked into this post is Latin Percussion branded cowbell about 10-12 inches long. It's held up well considering I've had it for 30 years or so. It's been mounted on my drum kit between my toms and I've recorded and sampled it many, many times. On this I pounded out the Honky Tonk Woman beat and practiced along with Tito Puente recordings.

Organizing my possessions and purging the unwanted is something I do periodically. I've gone through three drum sets (Read about it: 1,2,3). So though I decided I didn't need a drum kit twice in my life, somehow this cowbell always landed in the "keep" pile.

I love my cowbell, I can't get enough of it.

I gotta agree with Christopher Walken's character, "The Bruce Dickenson."

"I got a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell!"

Papa Super Chromonica

Honer Super Chromonica

It was Christmas 1981, and all I got was this stupid harmonica. I almost thought it was a joke gift and I poked around under the tree for something else with my name on it.

I don't know what I was expecting, I wasn't a kid anymore, I was 20. But somehow I was still hoping for that wonderful, perfect present from my dad. He'd just spent the last 7 years divorced and apart from the rest of us, and I hadn't really worked through my broken home issues. I was seeking confirmation that he cared.

But fancy presents just weren't his thing.

My father isn't a musician, but part of him wants to be. Every time he passes a piano he rips into the one song he knows, the one he called "Karaum-bal-tai." In Russian that comes off as a funny sounding onomonopia of the tune known as “Los Paticos” — The Ducklings. He could play harmonica a little too, some slavic jags and campfire type things.

He never studied music but he's very physically adept. He can draw and paint, spin pots out of clay, do carpentry, juggle. He's always been athletic, in fact, at 78 he's doing mini triathalons. He has good musical taste and appreciation, and combined with all that coordination, I think that if he'd had the chance, he could have learned to play more than just that one tune.

I've had my gripes with him. Who hasn't had some with their folks? And he had his faults. I mentioned the divorce, which caused some emotional trauma. He has always been embarrassingly flirtatious, he tends to get angrier than necessary and he's a little childish sometimes, even in his advanced age. I'm not trying to me judgmental, just attempting to check myself in these same areas, because you know, the past tends to repeat itself.

And like I mentioned above, he was always a little stingy with presents.

But I have made a degree of peace with the past. We've both matured. Some of his faults now seem like charming character defining quirks, now that he's getting up there and I've come to realize that I inherited many of his genetic gifts, which I'm grateful for. I share much of my father's dexterity which has helped me in countless ways, including music and I've made good use of my aesthetic sense and appreciation.

I realize now that he also gave me other presents along the way. He showed me how to fix flats, where the north side of a tree was, how to fish, build a fire, throw pots and how to handle knives and cameras. He showed me by example how important it is to be creative and have fun.

And I'm grateful. Let's face it, these gifts are the important kinds in life, not the ones wrapped in ribbons and tied in bows. Those, as I've mentioned, he's always been kind of cheap with.

He liked harmonicas, so he grabbed one for me and wrapped it up that Christmas. That's what I figured. I took the thing home and threw it in a drawer.

Many years later I noticed the identical Honer Chromatica at the music store. Much to my surprise, it cost about $150 — even adjusted for inflation, it was perhaps the most my father had ever spent on me at once.

Sometimes it just takes a while to realize the value of things.

Boss DR 770 Redux

10/16/2010 Update: My laptop is on the fritz and I'm unable to do music on it. So I've been just playing through an amp and practicing. I needed a beat, so I traded in my Behringer midi controller for another Boss DR-770, yes the same one I'd already written about.

I headed down to Rogue Music on 30th Street in Manhattan. At first I was looking at a Zoom 323, which has an interesting setup, 3 tracks of music, bass lines included. But either it wasn't working right or I was too dumb to pick it up. So I tried the 770 and found that it was pretty cool. I'm liking it this time around and it's amazing how much I actually remember about how to run the thing. Not as complex as I remember.

Only problem: after the first hour it began to smell like smoke. Not like it was burning up, but like a pipe. Clearly the previous owner was a smoker.

I'm hoping that the smell fades. I'm considering putting it in a sealed box with some activated charcoal. Any other ideas?

I'm going to program a bunch of songs into there so that I can rehearse my keyboard playing.

Kind of fun to get away from the computer.

Yamaha P22 Upright Piano

YAMAHA P22

About ten years ago, after we bought a house and had some spare room, my wife and I brought over what was once my piano. I'd been this particular instrument’s main champion through childhood. My mom gave it to me years earlier when moving from our childhood home.

It was a crappy, impossible to tune, wobbly Jansen console from the 1960s, seen here in my father's photo. Yes, that's me and my sister smoking something (it was the 60s). Despite its shortcomings, I was fond of the piano. After all, I had its every crooked harmony burned deep into my auditory cortex.

But we had toddlers and the piano was so unstable that we soon thought it might fall and kill one of them. After only a short while I lugged it back to my dad's house, where it sits today.

We did think our children should have the chance to take lessons and make some noise and, of course, I liked to play. Somehow we had a bit of money and decided to get a new piano. I couldn't have been more thrilled.

If you've ever done it, you know that buying a piano is not like buying a washing machine or even a Fender Strat. There are few prices clearly advertised anywhere. At least I couldn't seem to dig them up online, and found the dealers didn't like to quote them on the phone either. It seemed a huge industry-wide conspiracy designed to keep me, the buyer, in the dark, even worse than buying a car. This was about ten years ago. Nowdays there are a good number of forums and user discussions where you can get a better idea of what you should be paying.

We'd gotten a notice in the mail about an amazing program in which universities were getting rid of pianos which had been gently used for only a year or so — at an incredible discount. Supposedly you got a wonderful deal on a slightly used instrument, and were helping out a school in the process.

Soon we found ourselves on the campus of a well known New Jersey state university looking at a room full of pianos — and getting the hard sell.

Somehow we settled on the Yamaha U22 Upright. It was cleanly designed, not frilly. It had a solid feeling, a huge warm sound and a beautiful finish. Aside from a tiny scratch that had been touched up very well, the piano was perfect.

I don't remember exact cost, but It was over four thousand dollars. The dealer — and it was a dealer, not the university that was selling these — explained that the piano was sold as "new" because it had never been sold before. It was on loan to the school as an instructional instrument, but had never registered a sales receipt. This was good for me, he continued. I'd still get all the benefits of the warranty and a "like new" piano for a great price. They wanted to deliver it THAT DAY. We settled on the next.

Once home I went back online and researched that exact model. The Yamaha U22 was described as super sturdy in build, on heavy casters, and designed for and often chosen by schools and rehearsal halls. Ok, satisfying research. Maybe our new piano had survived university use better than most, since it was a model build for that kind of thing. It wasn't a music school, so I doubted it had been played more than a few hours a day, tops. My own kid's school had one. All good, we could pound on this one.

But after some detective work I found document in the public record of a local school district: It was a bid [accepted] for a piano identical to the one I'd bought — for about $1000 less, and that one was new!

I suddenly felt like a sucker. I called the guy who'd sold it to us up and told him I thought I was being over-changed. Was he going to let me out of this deal? No wonder they wanted me to take delivery so soon... before I got wise!

Much to my surprise the guy calmly asked what I wanted to pay, and dramatically lowered our cost. I was calmed, but the experience left a bad taste in mouth.

To drop the price as much as they did, and so quickly, made me realize these guys were making way too much on these instruments. Essentially the pianos were being sold twice. They probably got that tax break in the school deal, or maybe some kind of slippery lease payment, made their money, then made it again selling to people like me.

In the end the piano did not disappoint. It has held up to my heavy hands. It sounds great, looks great.

The moral?

Nothing is new: Buyer beware. Especially on a big ticket once in a lifetime purchase like a family piano.

Update::

Saturday, March 14, 2026

Here’s the postscript. 

I move the piano out of a suburban home and into storage about a decade ago. I kept it in storage for a year, at about $100 a month. After a year, though, I ended up loaning it to a colleague who has had it in his home since. 

By “loaning it” I mean I gave it away with the open understanding that I would take it back if it wasn’t wanted anymore — but that I was not going to be asking for it. It has been part of another family now for years and I’m happy about that.

At some point I would like to have another piano, and I would consider this model. I play hard and this model is rugged and designed to be rolled around. It’s also pretty tall, so the strings stretch a little longer than some console pianos and the sound is fuller. It’s not as tall as true uprights, so it doesn’t take over a smaller room quite the same way, yet it still is loud and full..

But I could like a lot of pianos.

Phonic Helix Firewire Mixer/Audio Interface

Phonic Helix Firewire mixer/audio interface.

The shiny Phonic vaguely brought to mind a 1969 U.K. club awash with mini-skirts and wafting clouds of pot smoke. I didn't actually get into that club, I wasn't of age, and also on the wrong continent.

My imaginings were way off. Phonic was founded in 1977, and I'm not even sure they are British. But I guess it just looked sexy to me. Silver and all with all those knobs.

The Phonic Helix 12 is more than an analog mixer, it's also a digital audio interface. All those channels feed into a stereo out which brought music into my computer via firewire.

There's a bunch of similar products around now, mixer/audio interfaces in the under $500 range, like the ones made by Alesis and Behringer.

At the time this one was the only one I'd ever seen in that price bracket that utilized firewire. I had a notion that firewire was faster than usb. In addition, I figured I'd be sharing my usb bandwidth with my keyboard, mouse and midi in and out. Having a dedicated bus for audio and another for midi made sense to me.

The Phonic had built in reverb, delays and chorus effects too, but it was convoluted to route them to the computer. You had to physically patch a cable back into a mixer channel and be careful of your sends so as not to have any feedback loops. The digital bus just didn't include what came back from the effects return. Almost seemed like the audio interface was tacked on to an already designed mixer schematic, which is probably the case.

But it was pretty good sounding. Once I got my software set up with the right buffer sizes and latency settings I got consistently good audio. Sometimes I'd get some digital crackle. A restart would usually fix that. Cranking the trim did bring forth a transistor sounding hum.

I've read quite a few shaky reviews of this piece of metal, but mine was fine for about 2 and a half years. I had a drum machine, a midi module or two, and a guitar coming through a Pod Line 6, all in stereo. Then a condenser mic (yes, it had phantom power). That's 9 inputs right there. I liked having everything plugged in and ready to go.

Soon I needed to purchase Protools to use with my work projects, and of course it came with its own audio interface, an M-box. It was usb, but it use it seemed just as fast to me as the firewire the Phonic served up.

Eventually I trimmed down my setup and was using mostly virtual instruments and one keyboard only. When I had so little left to plug into my Helix, I sold it for the sake of keeping things simple.

Paid: $299. Sold: $150. When it sold very quickly I thought that I could have gotten a bit more.

But do the math: My Helix cost me like $0.15 a day. Totally worth it.

Ibanez Tube Screamer

Wahhhh!

What can I say. This was my first guitar pedal and my best guitar pedal. And I got mine before they became collector's items and classics. It was actually pretty cheap when I picked it up, maybe $40-$50.

Never had an A.C. adapter and I can't tell you how many batteries I went through by leaving my guitar plugged in and walking away for a beer or 2, then forgetting about it overnight.

It kicked ass, nothing subtle about it. It was very aggressive and made everything sound loud, in your face and good.

I had particular success routing my Sequential Circuits Pro One through it to produce raunchy distorted lead lines from hell.

I traded it in at Rogue Music for God knows what.

El Straticastor Mexicano

No actual photographic record of mine exists.

But his one is identical, I believe. (Aren't they all?)
I love guitars, more than a non-guitarist should. Eventually, though I remind myself that I don't really play that well and I sell them to get something else. But the allure remains.

Oh, to own an "American" Strat! That would be a sweet thing.

Guitars, guitars, guitars... Let's see: There was a white Univox strat style guitar on semi-permanent loan in the 1980s, a few junky acoustics, a black Chinese-made Strat, an Ovation acoustic-electric with the plastic bowl back, both in the 90s, a Washburn acoustic, my beautiful "garbage guitar," the Cortley Gibson Humingbird clone, and a $200 Fernandez exact clone of a '58 Sunburst Strat.

And then there was the one that looked what you see to the left.

The gunmetal strat was Mexican, or assembled in Mexico and sported a techy-0ut fine sparkle-gray finish. And yes, it was Mexican, but I couldn't tell the difference between it and the American ones that cost 10 times more. I sounded pretty much the same on all of them, and I couldn't justify the cost of an "American" model. So this is the one I got.

But let's face it, the specs used to engineer these things are pretty universally copied and basically the shape of these guitars is identical. Sure, the costly ones use better materials, electronics, have better quality control, finishes and perhaps more consistency out of the box. Ok, that is something. But the shape of a Strat is the shape of a Strat.

I'll always remember a time when a friend of mine, a pretty good bass player who played a Fender Jazz, picked up a Hondo clone of the the Jazz at the music store. He was amazed at how identical the feel was. He loved it. It was $150 or something. He sounded great on it. I'm pretty sure 80% of the sound comes from the fingers, from technique, the remainder might be a tighter coil, a denser wood, your amp or whatever.

Clapton would still sound awesome on my Mexican strat.

My guitar, similar to the one above, was a particular winner. I wasn't crazy about the finish, a little too Vegas for me, but it felt good in my hands. The neck was nice and smooth and the action was the way I liked it right off the rack. It had a locking nut, which was all the rage at the time, (this was the Eddie Van Halen days), but I wasn't so much dive-bomb crazy and happy the guitar stayed in tune forever.

How much? I don't exactly recall, but it couldn't have been more than somewhere in the $200 -$350 range at the time (mid 1990s). I almost didn't buy it because once at the counter they discovered didn't have a Fender case available for it. They ended up throwing in an oddball Ibanez case with a loud purple lining for like $20, which I reluctantly accepted.

I played it for a year or two. I sampled it, recorded some demos, etc. I discovered one unpleasant detail, a sharp edge at the nut. It wasn't a Floyd Rose.

Eventually the syndrome I began this post with kicked in and it went up for sale. This was pre-Ebay, but a Fender is a Fender, even if it is a Mexican one, and someone hopped on the classified ad the very first day. It sold by 4 p.m. that Saturday and ridiculously it fetched about what I paid for it, or maybe a bit more.

The guy who took it home played much, much better than I could and he didn't even try to bargain. I was so happy to see him walk away with it because I knew it was going to be used to make actual music.

Alesis NanoPiano

Alesis makes a lot of small, inexpensive music gear with a lot packed inside. Buy something Alesis and you'll get what you expected, once home you will likely find a whole bunch more functionality, sounds or something under the hood.

That it's almost a shame, as lots of potential customers may have passed this up, not realizing how much it could do.

Yes, it was "nano," that is, small. But the sounds were huge sounding, high quality (16 bit 48k) and it had 64 full notes of polyphony all packed into its tiny 1/3 rack space.

The name is also not right. Yes, there were amazing acoustic and electric pianos in there, all you'd need, but also bass, organs, mallet percussion, synths, sound effects and all manner of splits and layers.

They kept it simple and hands on, two knobs got you to all 256 sounds manually, and I never got so far as to try and use program change messages to switch between them remotely do any editing as you could with an external editor, apparently.

I, like most, I suspect, who got this, did so for the cheap and available sounds, the immediate gratification of the front panel. It was fun, but if you like to tweak, forget it.

It was not multi-timbral either, one patch at a time, kids. That was the ultimate downside for me, and I moved on looking for a rack unit that had performance set ups I could program per composition in my sequencer. A pallet of sound I could use AT THE SAME TIME.

I guess I just wanted more. I had plenty though, I just wasn't appreciating it. I've seen these on ebay for like nothing, and I've just set up an alert to tell me when one comes up.

I want my NanoPiano back.

20 Inch Zildjian Ping Ride

This is a stock photo, but you can see mine in the kit pictured here.

In some basic ways, a drum is a drum. As a kid, I figured anyone could buy the same drum head heads as Bonham used with Zeppelin and get the same basic sound, maybe fill in for him once in a while. Well, maybe not quite, but I do still believe you can get a decent boom out almost any drum if you tune it right.

Case in point: my first kit. It was a four-piece, $125, no name, purchased used from a newspaper ad. After some tuning, it sound fine. The cymbals it came with were another story. They were stamped out pieces of junk. They basically sound like ka-ka.

There's a lot of centuries old alchemy in the making of a good cymbal, and even an idiot can tell the difference between crap and the sustained ring, rich with overtones, of a nice forged and hammered Zildjian, Paiste, or even Sabian.

The year I got that first drum kit, cymbals were on my Christmas list. My dad went to Manny's and got me some high hats that were pretty good. They an identifying stamp that said "MANNYS," and the guy behind the counter told Papa they were Zildjian seconds. I don't know about that, but at least they were cast and hammered. They had that CHICK! sound, and when closed down, that PSHTT! that you wanted. They were decent.

Eventually I saved enough money and went shopping for a real Zildjian ride cymbal. A fresh faced kid, 14 or 15-years-old, I approached the counter. The guy asked me what kind of music I played. "Rock," said I. His face lit up. That was apparently enough unique information for him to immediately produce a recommendation. "I have a really nice one in here," he said, and pulled out a 20" Zildjian Ping ride, second from the top in a stack behind him. He played a few strokes on it, gave me a knowing nod and a wink. "Nice, right?" It sounded so different than the junk I had at home. Who was I to argue?

I wouldn't think of buying a cymbal now without auditioning at least a couple of dozen and even then I had the sense that I should have. On the subway, heavy cymbal in tow, I chided myself, "I acted so young, so dumb and shy in there!" I was sure I had a lemon under my arm. "That jerk was just waiting to for a sucker like me to pawn this thing off on."

Once at home, I played my way through a Doors tape. A warm feeling of contentment slowly washed over me as I floated through "Riders on the Storm." I'd been wrong. People weren't bad. The guy was an angel and this cymbal rocked. I loved it.

I was also an instant hit with my buddies in the garage. The signature "Ping" tone cut through the guitars with it's namesake sound. It was super thick and produced a great gong sound when hit with a mallet neat the edge or with a stick on the edge itself.

As I could afford it I purchased a 16" crash, then an 18" crash. After comparing my no name high hats with those in the store costing hundreds, I realized they were pretty good too.

I used the ride for about 10 years. My Ping never cracked, it never failed me. Today, when someone IMs me, "I'll Ping you later," I hear a sound effect in my head. It's my cymbal.

Before I sold it with the rest of my kit, I sampled the thing on my TX16W for posterity.

Good cymbals are essential to a kit and they are what really can help give you your signature as a player. Choose carefully.

Or maybe just get lucky like I did.

Ludwig Ghost Bass Drum Pedal

Back in the 8th grade, when I first started playing the drums, I sat in with a friend's band practice when their drummer didn't show. I broke his pedal in about 30 seconds. That's when I realized I had a heavy foot.

I broke through my own first pedal, which had a leather strap connecting the footbed and the the beater. A few flimsy chain drive pedals later and I invested in the Ludwig Ghost.

It had a radical design, seen at left. No chain drive, nylon or leather straps, but a metal mechanism. Those large cylindrical shapes on the sides contained enclosed spiral spring mechanisms (0r maybe there was one on only one side). The idea was to minimize moving parts and avoid squeaks and rinkatink chain noise, but rather provide silent movement, like a ghost.

It took some getting used to. The footbed didn't have a hinge above the heal, but rather was one piece. Different action but I liked it well enough. I kicked this sucker pretty hard and it never gave way. It lasted me through a decade or so.

Later it did start to squeak some and after trying some higher end chain-drrive pedals in the store I realized I was missing a lot of speed and fluidity. I moved on to a Tama or Pearl or some such new treasure.

Boss ME-33

For someone who isn't a guitarist (ok I "play" a little, but take heavy note of the large scale quotes) I certainly have owned a number of guitar related gear. Maybe it's because these devices make creating the recognizable sounds of electric guitar so easy. A little strat piped through a Vox Amp (actual or virtual) puts you right on the beach with the Ventures, and a splash of distortion covers a multitude of technical sins (especially in the studio where you can always do a retake).

Previous posts have included the tale of finding a vintage Ampeg Reverberocket tube amp in the garbage and my experiences with the Pod Line 6 multi-effects unit and the Roland PW-10 Wah pedal. And oh how I loved the guitar effects on the Roland VS-880. Let's not forget the MXR Phase-90 pedal. I've had tons of others, and I'll eventually get to them all.

This post, however, is about the ME-33, a Boss multi-effect pedal, complete with wah style expression for volume, wah and controlling other aspects of the effect. To have it all in one, no more multiple cords daisychaining a bunch of pedals.

And it worked pretty well. Honestly, I don't know if it stacked up to the individual effect pedals it supposedly included, I never had them all there to do some scientific A-B testing. All in all it was pretty sweet. It cost me about $179 and I think it was well worth it.

Downside: an overall smallness to the sound, somehow, lack of travel of the expression pedal, and limited parameters. Sure you could chain a whole bunch of effects, but you could only turn on and off three of those with the footswitches. In the end I came to the conclusion that I always seem to with guitar gear that's worth even a little something: "Hey, I'm not really a guitarist, I could use the money for some other gear." So I sold it.

Importantly, this pedal introduced me to ebay.com. I put it on there, my very first item up for sale, over ten years ago. There it sat, without bids, into the evening the sale was to end. I went to bed early, but in the morning someone had bid it up to about $400 bucks. Crazy, really, considering I paid less than half that. But the postal money order arrived in a week and I was hooked on ebay for good. (I still have perfect feedback).

Dr. Rhythm DR-770

Hot and in the pocket?

I owned the 770 around 2002 and it's been since discontinued. Called "the most advanced compact rhythm machine ever" when it came out, this drum box was packed with features, patterns and samples. Goodness, it held 10,000 patterns! You could apply effects, the buttons had extreme sensitivity, you could trigger patterns on the fly right off the front panel, it had tons of samples — 52 kick drums alone! The first sample based drum machine I owned, the Roland 707 had 2, and a dozen or so samples in total!

Ok, ok, I'm bridging decades with the two machines, but am I the only gear geek who thinks Boss/Roland was referencing its drum machine heritage by naming the 770 so similarly to the vintage 707? I don't think so. When they introduced the 770, they were most definitely making a point that the new unit was a milestone model, like the 707 was.

Back when it was introduced in the 80s the 707 was the first affordable sample based machine with professional features like individual outs, memory cards and high quality sample resolution (12 bit, high for then, in any case). It had groove-box style, front panel, bar/measure based visual LED programming. It even had a hands-on front panel mixer with a dedicated slider per drum sound! It was easy to get in there and get musical. Who knew how limited it was back in the 80s?

Years later, the 770 obviously blows the old piece away in terms of what it could do, if you could only figure out how: pattern memory, samples, dynamics, effects, you name it. The problem was I couldn't figure out how without sticking my head constantly in the manual. What happened with the 770 can be explained using everyday math. Observe the following formula:

1000 x the capability
-------------------------- = Serious interruption of your flow.
a tiny front panel

A lot of user friendliness and musicality was lost along the long path that led from the 707 to the 770, and drum machines have become charming retro devices because of this trend in overly complex user interfaces. Computer based instruments make life at least somewhat easier with their infinite recall and generally more complete visual representations of parameters. I doubt most owners of the 770 learn how to use even to 10% of what it was capable of.

A bit of added drama surfaced online around this machine too. Complaints bubbled up about it getting extremely hot, possibly dangerously so, and possibly to the point of damaging the unit, burning the D.J. or even starting a fire. Probably unfounded, but enough to put a scare in me. And for the cost, close to $400, as I recall, it soon seemed like overkill. I sampled my favorite patterns and use those sounds in Ableton Live to this day.

But hey:

• if you want an over-the-top traditional style drum machine
  
• if you're willing to climb a steep learning curve
• if you have an ebay account

Log in and get one of these for about $159. But make sure it comes with a manual.

Alesis SR-16

Elegant, Modern Slab

Nobody is raving about it, it is not coveted or collected, yet it has been in production for like 20 years. This is possibly the best selling drum machine ever, if only because of its super-long market life. I had it once, got rid of it and bought another one a few years later.

What's the secret? Well, the thing just plain works. It's got a 200+ samples, it uses dynamic articulation to change up samples as you play/program louder or softer, making for an unusually realistic sound to the ear, in my opinion. You have all your techno sounds, all big rock sounds, percussion sounds, basically every drum sound you'd need.

The programming is easy too, and it makes for a really good playback module. With midi you get an enormous amount of sounds mapped across the range of midi key numbers.

It also looks very simple and streamlined, it's design an elegant, simple, unobtrusive modern slab.

At least that's my theory why it's still selling. Hey I just may get another one tomorrow. I'm having some serious nostalgia for the thing right now.