When I originally got my "broken" Yamaha Reface CS, and subsequently fixed it by turning on the speakers in the settings with a quick factory reset, one of the things I didn't take care of right away was a small but important item that was missing from the device.
That item was one of the 4 rubber feet on the bottom.
And though some may claim that a 3-legged stool will never wobble, I can safely say that the same doesn't hold true for synthesizers.
Thankfully the solution to this problem isn't too hard to come by.
And it also isn't hard to install.
So that just leaves one last detail to take care of.
Which is the above proprietary midi port connector, which Yamaha for some reason decided to use in order to cram both the midi transmit and receive into one jack, thus requiring the use of an easily lost dongle if you want to actually connect this synthesizer to other midi devices.
Getting the replacement for the one that never came with my machine wasn't hard to do, but it took a while for it to come in. Thankfully it's here now, and I'll just have to hope I never misplace it.
There was a bit of summer weather this week, but it was quickly followed up by one last stab of winter.
So I'm hiding from the clouds outside by following up on some little details on my music setup. In particular, that one mismatched fader knob on my TR-6S.
I'm sure that you can understand when I say that this just won't do. I have no idea what piece of equipment this knob was stolen off of, but it's gotta go.
I can't just leave the bare metal stem, though, and luckily I don't have to.
It wasn't especially easy to find this replacement, but I did eventually manage, and it matches perfectly.
And then there's just one last thing. This unit is powered through its USB B connector, and as you may know, USB B does not exactly have the most positive engagement when it's plugged in. I haven' thad any issues with it so far, but since this box has a battery compartment I figured that slapping in some cells would give me a reliable backup for whenever the USB cable wiggles itself loose while I'm messing around.
NiMH batteries won't leak over time like alkaline cells inevitably do, and the self-discharge rate is pretty low, so I can pretty much just stick these in here and forget about them. It's cheap insurance against accidental power disruptions.
Since we last left off, I discovered that the side of my room that I set up my music desk on gets kind of dark in the evening. Sadly, when this addition was built on the house, they didn't actually bother putting in any overhead lights and instead tried to make do with just a tiny bit of track lighting installed where a porch light once was.
But, it just so happened that I had a spare desk lamp kicking around, so I repurposed it here.
And speaking of additions to the desk, I'd been keeping an eye out for a good deal on a Roland Aira J-6. It's from the same line as the T-8 and S-1 pictured here, but while the T-8 is focused on drum and bass sequencing and the S-1 is focused on synth lead sequencing, the J-6 is instead built around sequencing chord accompaniments and arpeggiations.
Now I don't want to get too deep into music theory here, but my expectations for how the chord banks would be laid out, and how they are actually arranged, apparently did not align particularly well.
I don't feel like my expectations were too extravagant. I just assumed that within a given set of 12 chords I'd find that they were cohesively selected to align with a particular scale key and mode, with perhaps some creative selections where they borrow the occasional chord from related keys and modes.
And I certainly at least expected that they would be roughly arranged so that they generally rose in pitch as you ascended the keyboard.
Buuuuuuuut nope. From what I can tell there's really no theme at all to each bank of chords, and whether any pair of them makes sense tonally when played next to each other seems to be pretty much down to just luck. In fact, Roland seems to have put so little effort into the selection that they even accidentally duplicated at least one bank of chords. (For those curious, Bank 5, which they classified as "Jazz", contains a chromatic set of Major-9 chords, despite one being mislabeled as a Major-7 chord, and this is identical to Bank 21, which they classified as "Utility", which also contains the exact same chromatic set of Major-9 chords, note-for-note.)
So as a result you can either poke around the chord sets randomly (and the box gives you no visual indication of what chord it's actually playing when you hit each key) in hopes of lucking upon some combination that sounds good, or use the manual to try to reverse-engineer your way through the mess of chord banks.
However, the good news is that you can also just largely ignore the preset chord bank and just input your own chords into the sequencer by picking the notes on the built in 13-button keyboard. Somewhat annoyingly, you can't program the sequencer in step mode using an external midi keyboard. Curiously you CAN program the sequencer using an external midi keyboard when in live mode (where you play each step into the device in realtime) which is at least something I guess.
Honestly the J-6 feels like a bit of a half-baked product compared to the T-8 and S-1, though I expect I'll still get enough use out of it to justify the price (which wasn't much). If nothing else, it's a pretty neat 4-voice Juno emulator.
So, I think this lineup should keep me entertained for some time. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for some good deals on a few other pieces of gear that I wouldn't mind adding to the setup. An upgraded drum machine might be nice, one that would get around the 32-step limitation of the T-8's sequencer, and perhaps give me more options for different drum sounds. The Roland TR-6s would fit the bill, and just to give you an idea of what it looks like, here's a photo of one:
Oh, whoops. Well, I guess it wasn't quite as hard as I thought to find one. Of course, this one was discounted for a reason, and it was a little bit rough when it showed up,
It had definitely seen a bit of cigarette smoke, plus it had been the victim of a few curious "customizations" by a previous owner, including swapping in the green knobs (which is fine, I guess), misplacing one of the fader knobs and substituting a mismatched one (I've got a matching one on the way), and adding some sort of green trim around the edge of the front panel, most of which had since chipped off.
And it was also filthy.
Luckily it's just a simple matter of popping the front cover off to disassemble and clean things.
Or at least it would have been simple if they hadn't, for some unknown reason, used an excessive amount of super glue to stick on that green trim.
But thankfully I was able to coax the top off after a great deal of struggling, without damaging any of the plastics. At least not any more than they already were.
The result after cleaning looks much nicer, though perhaps not quite perfect.
But sounding good is more important than looking good, and this drum machine sounds plenty good enough to be added to the bench.
So as I was saying, I'm not really in any hurry to add any more pieces to this setup, though I am keeping an eye open for any particularly good deals. For example, I wouldn't mind picking up a Korg Opsix synthesizer, which is an FM-based synth that has a lot of flexibility to produce tones that my Yamaha Reface CS can't do. Just to give you an idea of what one looks like, here's a photo:
Oh, whoops. I did it again, didn't I? Well, at least this one was in really good shape and didn't need any TLC to rehabilitate it.
But this does bring up a bit of an issue, in that I've got enough equipment on the bench that switching the audio back and forth is becoming a bit tedious. While the little Aira boxes have an audio pass-thru, as does my Yamaha Reface CS, neither the Opsix nor the TR-6S have that feature, meaning that I can't just chain everything into one long line to feed into the aux input on my little baby Line 6 guitar amp.
It's not really the end of the world, though, so I'm just planning to keep my eye open for a good deal on a mixer, maybe one with a built-in multi-track recorder. Something like the Tascam Model 12 would do the trick, and just to give you an idea of what one looks like, here's a photo:
Hmm, I really need to stop finding such good deals. In this case, the deal was extra sweet because the unit was malfunctioning. There's a bit of a well-known achilles heel on this model, which is that Tascam specced a really shitty power switch, and as a result the box will refuse to turn on once that $1 part suffers its inevitable premature death.
Thankfully the fix is very easy to perform for anyone who's even slightly adventurous, as I've documented here:
Ok, phew, that should be it for now. Anything else from this point on wouldn't fit on my desk, and really the only thing I could think to add might be something like a chorus effect pedal. The chorus effect really adds a lot of space and depth to synthesizer sounds, but it's not always included as a built-in feature on every synthesizer. Notably, the J-6 box doesn't include it, despite the original Juno synth that it's based on having one of the most widely celebrated chorus effects. So I'll be keeping an eye out for a deal on something like a Boss Dimension C DC-2w, which would probably fit the bill, and it even comes in a lovely purple colour as you can see here:
Well shoot, how does this keep happening?
Anyway, this chorus effect pedal takes a relatively flat sounding mono (or stereo, as of the Waza Craft edition which I have here) signal and applies a sort of phase-modulated delay to it that really livens up the sound, and in particular it gives it a ton of stereo separation.
Of course, to really take advantage of that stereo separation I'd need something other than my mono Line-6 guitar amp to output the final mix. So, I'll be keeping an eye out for a good deal on a pair of powered studio monitors, like a set of Yamaha HS5 speakers, which look roughly like this:
Hmm, damn. Well, I guess that wasn't going to keep working forever. Oh well, let's just have a good look at the setup so far.
Ah, so beautiful and clean... and also nothing's actually connected to anything else, so sadly we must summon the rat nest.
Well, that's not nearly as pretty but at least I can hear what I'm playing, which I suppose is the important part.
You might remember my Juki LS321. If you don't, this is what it looks like.
I've actually been putting it to use lately sewing up small booklets, since it has a very large maximum stitch length and I keep it threaded with some nice chunky Tex70 thread. But that's neither here nor there.
When I'm not sewing through a stack of paper, one of the things that's perhaps a little less than ideal about this machine is that there's no real markings next to the presser foot for you to judge your seam allowance by, nor is there an especially convenient way to attach a seam guide to the bed of the machine.
There's really nothing here but a smooth, featureless cover for the bobbin/hook area.
Thankfully there is a solution for this: a drop-down seam guide.
This bolts to the back of the head of the machine, and the little bearing (which can be swapped for a fixed guide, also included) guides the fabric.
But that does presume that you can mount it to the machine in the first place.
You see, it comes with M6x0.8 screws, which probably fit some more recent models of sewing machines, but definitely don't fit mine. What thread does fit mine? Well, that's where things start to get a little confusing.
Pictured below are three candidates: 1/4-28, 15/64-28 and the aforementioned M6x0.8.
The 15/64-28 is an oddball size of screw that was used by Singer (who, to be fair, designed most of their hardware well before thread sizes were standardized), and is present in a number of locations around the machine. However, it doesn't fit the holes in the back of the head where the seam guide mounts.
1/4-20 (not pictured here) is a very common size outside of sewing machines, but it had no hope of fitting: the thread was very obviously too coarse, and it seemed like the major diameter was probably too large.
M6x1.0 (also not pictured here) is also a very common size outside of sewing machines, but it too didn't seem to fit. Much like the 15/64-28, it would start to thread in but then jam up before getting anywhere.
The 1/4-28 was certainly not going to fit given that the 15/64-28 didn't fit, but it seemed like it might be a reasonable compromise: It felt like the holes were almost surely drilled and tapped for 15/64-28, but had gotten gummed up over the years, and so I either had the option to buy a 15/64-28 tap (which is surprisingly easy to find) to clean out the holes and then find some 15/64-28 screws (which are surprisingly difficult to find) to attach the seam guide, or I could buy a set of 1/4-28 taps and some 1/4-28 hardware and use that to open up the holes by 1/64th of an inch.
Well, you can see what option I went with... Except, something wasn't quite right. A 15/64-28 thread should only be 15 thousandths of an inch smaller than 1/4-28, and in fact a 15/64-28 screw will thread into a 1/4-28 hole with only a little bit of sloppiness in the fit, but trying to line the tap up and get it started in the holes wasn't working out the way I was expecting.
And that's when it occurred to me: I should probably try running a M6x1.0 tap into the holes to see how it feels.
Well here's the M6x1.0 tap after running it in. Just picked up some gunk and maybe a tiny skim of cast iron, but at no point did it feel like it was digging into the existing threads.
So these actually were M6x1.0 holes, but they were just a bit too crapped up with old dirt and dried-up oil so they felt like they were binding when I tried to thread a bolt in.
Well, I guess I bought that 1/4-28 tap set for nothing, but on the bright side I'll have it in my toolbox for some future use. It's almost always better to have a tool and not need it than to need a tool and not have it.
Anyway, the next step was to deal with the bolts. I had a stash of M6x1.0 bolts already, but they were a bit too long, even after running the tap all the way until it bottomed out. Thankfully a little work with a hack saw, a file, and a die got them shortened up appropriately.
The flange-head made things a little bit crowded when I tried to install the bolts next to each other, but luckily I had more bolt holes to choose from.
4 in total, in fact, and the mounting bracket was just wide enough to span two non-adjacent holes.
So this is what the seam guide looks like in action.
And whenever I need it out of the way, it just flips up and leaves plenty of space.
Now if you're thinking to yourself "this is all well and good, but what about the Singer 251?" then slow down there, we're getting to that next.
The 251, being a regular high-shank industrial machine, can take a much more ordinary style of seam gauge. This one bolts into place on the presser foot bar, just using the regular screw that holds the presser foot in place.
And much like the other seam guide, it flips up out of the way when the situation calls for it.
Which is very handy. I already had a bed-mounted seam guide for this machine, as well as some magnetic seam guides, but in terms of convenience this design really works well.
Neither of these were necessarily critical upgrades, but they're both very nice to have.
We're pretty safely out of the frost season now, so it's time to take care of this patch of empty mulch in front of my house.
This is where I removed the honsetail previously, and I wanted to give it a while to ensure that it wouldn't be popping back up. As can clearly be seen, it has not returned.
On the other side of the plumbing and hose reel is the rosemary that came with the house, and I wanted to get something that would be somewhat similar, but not just more rosemary.
And I definitely don't need more calla lily.
I was initially thinking I should get some lemon thyme, since it has a decent mounding habit and is relatively tasty, but the nursery wasn't stocking any. After a little humming and hawing, I picked up three of these.
I have some other varieties of sage in the yard already, but this particular cultivar is bred specifically for eating.
So let's go ahead and yeet these into the ground.
Well that was easy. Can't forget the irrigation, though.
And speaking of irrigation, the weather sensor for the irrigation controller that keeps my emotional support lawn watered got knocked off its mount recently.
This can't really measure the insolation and precipitation when it's dangling on the side of my house like this.
It's really supposed to be up here, though with the queen palm growing the way it is, it's probably a good idea to move it.
I think here should do.
I could have stapled the wire up a bit more securely, but whatever.
Speaking of things that are growing, the plum is in full bloom.
As are the daisies.
And the geraniums.
The rest of the garden is still waking up, so there's not much else to show right now. I'm sure that'll change in a few weeks.
