A week or so back, I picked up a Blacet Miniwave and eurorack conversion kit. I’d heard nothing but good things said about it, so it was one of those modules on my “get it at some point”. It’s funny how the right price can drive an impulse buy.

The instructions on noisebug’s site made it sound like a pretty simple project. Nothing is ever simple in life.

I popped off the knobs, and started unscrewing the pots. Off came the face plate, easy enough so far. Now on with the new plate. Oh, the knobs/pots are in different places on this faceplate.
Some wiggling and poking later, and I’d got them lined up except for the input select switch, whose wires weren’t long enough to reach the plate. At this point I’d figured I’d done something wrong, and start moving the rats nest of wiring around trying to untangle them into something that would make it fit.

This was my first mistake. My pot juggling skills seemed to be better than my “remember which pot is which” skills, so I ended up emailing Antonio at noisebug to get a picture of a completed module (thanks Antonio!) for reference. I’d actually gotten them lined up correctly, but that one switch was never fitting in that hole with the stock wiring. According to Antonio who had just recieved a bunch of miniwaves, the first ones he’d seen hadn’t been this way, but the newer batch was, so if you’re looking to do a similar conversion, this may or may not affect you depending on the batch of miniwaves yours came from.

I was beginning to fear this was going to turn into a bigger project than I anticipated.

Out came the soldering iron. I desoldered the three wires from the switch on the board, soldered on longer wires, and then joined the old + new together. Kind of ghetto, but my soldering skills leave a lot to be desired. Success! I could now mount the switch on the panel.

Flushed with the success of holding my completed euro-miniwave in my hands, I walked to the modular with a view to fitting it. My kit didn’t come with instructions, but apparently they say something along the lines of “in a G6 case, you have to fit it between the bus boards”. Well, we’ll see about that.

The width of the miniwave pcb + the blacet power connector + the planb power adaptor is wider than the gap between two sets of pins on a bus board. I scratched my head for a while, and tried various contortions but couldn’t fit the damn thing in a way that wouldn’t involve shorting out something. A brief conversation with noisesource later inspired me to (in his words) “say fuck it, and do it my own way”.

I decided to unscrew the top bus board in the G6, and shove it over a bit, to give some extra space at the side of the case for the miniwave to sit in. If you only halfway unscrew the board, the screws and the nuts in the rail will slide with a little bit of force.

With this case modification done, that freed up an inch or so of space at the right hand side of the case. Triumph!

This project was a bit more work than anticipated, but was it worth it?
After screwing around with the module for five minutes, oh hells yes. It’s going to take a while to figure out how to get the most out of it, but it’s one of those modules that you can have fun with instantly.

Post from: Attack Sustain

Miniwave Eurorack conversion.

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