Attack Sustain » doepfer

A-112 sampler battery maintenance.

davej — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:50:24 +0000

Most modules don’t really need any maintenance. Like every other module, the a112 is something that can screwed into my rack, and made noise with, without needing ever really looking at its circuits again. At least in most cases. In my case however, when I bought this module used from someone on ebay, he helpfully included a spare battery cell. Which it turned out was for the best, because the module started misbehaving, outputting nothing but harsh noise.

Examination of the board showed that the battery had started leaking salty rusty ooze.

Doepfer must have been unprepared for this, because they chose to use a battery that is soldered to the board rather than some easier to replace form.

The actual replacement procedure is pretty trivial thankfully. Unsolder three pads, pull the old battery out, stick the new one in, and add some new solder. I’m no electronics genius by a long shot, but this was even within my capabilities.

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A-112 sampler battery maintenance.

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Doepfer MAQ16/3 panel

davej — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:41:53 +0000

I’ve been using the Doepfer MAQ16/3 sequencer for a while now and for the most part, really like it. Something about it has been driving me nuts since I got it though. It has 3 CV outs, 3 gate outs, and a MIDI socket on the rear of the unit. So when rack mounted, you can’t get at them, which means they have to be permanently patched (especially annoying for the MIDI socket if you want to occasionally use it with different gear).
My solution to this problem has been to leave a 1U gap underneath it and route cables from the rear through that gap. The ugliness plays hell with my OCD.

I’ve hunted for a while for some kind of 1U panel that just proxies the rear connections out to the front, without luck.
The closest I found was something similar for the schaltwerk which look like this..

These images came from the doepfer yahoo group. I’m not even sure that they were ever for sale. I couldn’t find them on the main doepfer site. The lack of a doepfer logo on the panel also makes me wonder if this wasn’t someones (very well done) DIY project.

I might have to resort to attempting to DIY a solution to this myself, which isn’t a particularly difficult project, just time consuming, tedious and there are 1001 other things I’d rather be doing than soldering connectors.

In the meantime, I think I’ll get a 1/4″ patchbay, and use a bunch of those 1/4″ to 1/8″ converter jacks.

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Doepfer MAQ16/3 panel

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HP greedy modules.

davej — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:42:38 +0000

A few months ago, Stretta brought up the notion of modules having a per-HP cost. Whilst the idea of choosing lower HP, or more functionally dense modules where possible is a good one, I came up with an alternative. Buying used cases is one obvious way to bring down the per-hp module tax, and they turn up fairly regularly at analogue haven & noisebug.

Something that seems to have been forgotten however, is that there are still a lot of the older ‘v1′ doepfer cases out there.
These are pretty much identical to the newer variant, but they have a smaller power supply, than can only supply 650mA of current. These tend to get sold off as ‘inferior’, and carry an even lower cost when sold these days.

I picked up one recently to house some of my HP hungry modules. As long as you keep in mind the power limitation, and do some simple addition to make sure you don’t exceed it, they remain a cost effective way to house those wide modules.

Here’s what I squeezed into mine:

(almost) fully populated.

A-188-2 tapped BBD (30HP, 120mA)
A-143-1 Complex envelope generator/LFO (28HP, 70mA)
A-113 subharmonic generator (26HP, 150mA)
A-128 fixed filter bank (20HP, 20mA)
A-101-3 12 stage vactrol phaser (30HP, 50mA)
A-127 triple resonance filter (28HP, 100mA)

And I still had more than enough room for a multiple.
Total power usage: 510mA. Didn’t even come close to running out.

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HP greedy modules.

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