Revisiting another old pal
Wow, wonky crooked photo. Anyway. I bought a Modwave back in spring, and that thing sounds mad, very nice, easily into Microwave II XT territory and beyond thanks to PCM waveforms being included. It also has all the waveforms from the DW-6000 and DW-8000 in four tables, but I haven't messed with them yet because it seems that there is no way in any menu anywhere to click a button and get an initialized patch on the Modwave. Well at least I can't find a way. Anyone out there know? Tell me! But because it has those wavetables, I remember liking a handful of presets from the 6000 and was like hmmmmm maybe I can recreate them, but I'll need a 6000 to use as a model. Should be easy to find one, they're always on the auction, and never more than like $150. Ha! Waited AGES for one to finally get listed, and ended up paying ¥20,000 (like $135 with the exchange rate being what it is now, but to me it's more like $200). But yeah I got one. First thing to do....
Replace all the tact switches! Easy enough job. Finished in half an hour. Had the parts in a box already. Works perfectly now. Had a few iffy buttons before. The chorus has an odd noise though, like when the LFO is at its peak there's an extra whoosh of white noise in there so the MN3209 probably needs to be replaced, so I bought one off the auction as a guy had one listed. Pretty coincidental. Anyway. This synth had the most dust and extra surprises inside of any second hand synth that I've ever had. When I got it, I set it on its side and heard something inside going kablonk bump thonk boomp thud. Whaaaaat? Flipped it other way up, same series of suspect sounds. Opened it up to find a TON of dust everywhere, and these:
Left to right, post office eraser (another one of these was stuck under the power supply PCB), Black half-size marker, spaceship toy. I was like how the fuck did these get in here?!?! But then I saw that there is a big gap between the ends of the keys and the bottom panel there so yeah ok, some kid crammed his toys in there when dad wasn't looking, I guess. Madness! I also did this:
Recapped the power supply PCB. I had to lay down the large value caps as they were a different form factor from the originals, but they don't sit on parts that get hot, and they're out of the way, so whatever. Works fine. I wanna test the three large value caps on the left there to see how out of value they are, if at all. Can't find my multimeter that measures capacitance though. Where the hell did I put that thing? Hmmm.
And the failing Ruzzian invasion of Ukraine is in its hundred something day now. I won't be surprised if this little special military operation ends up being a special end of Ruzzia as we know it operation. Putler fucked up big time. The Ukrainians are never going to give up. And with the increased western assistance and advanced weapons systems they're getting? Sheeeeit. I say give them the long range HIMARS missiles and let the striking of targets within Ruzzia begin! See how they like their sunny little afternoons interrupted by the unscheduled arrival of high explosives. I learned that in Ukraine, they're referring to the occupants as svinakobacha, which is like schweinhund in German: pig-dog. Good on them. Pig-dogs fuck off! Kinda feel sorry for the people in Ruzzia, but not really. Let them suffer for the actions of their dickface dictator. And now do you wanna know how I really feel? Hahahahaha. Sucks because I love old soviet era synth stuff.... Oh well. Slava Ukraini!
