Ups & Downs, Mostly Downs.
I sold it all. At some point way back around late April, I just felt like I never wanted to set eyes on a piece of gear again and I sold just about everything I owned. There's an empty A-frame keyboard stand, an empty Apex 3-tier keyboard stand, a mostly vacant 7U rack with a Roland 1U line mixer in it that the aux doesn't work. A KPR-77 and a DDD-5 hiding under a pile of stuff in the corner. And the HS-80 I chop shopped. Everything else, gone. I dunno what did it. Depression. Lack of motivation. Changing mindset. Laziness. Honestly, I hadn't touched anything really, at least seriously, in an "I'mma produce something" kind of way for well over a year. Just half-heartedly poked at stuff then turned it off after letting out a great big sigh. So it went.
Eight months later, after the death of my father, and a lot more heavy mental baggage type stuff, I found myself itching to make music again. The iPad an KORG Gadget wasn't cutting it. Don't get me wrong, I played a live set in Osaka two years ago using just that and it went off. I wanted something a bit more, I dunno, substantial? And with more synthesis power? So I bought an MC-707. Haven't really done much but scratch the surface and noodle around but I'm impressed with the Zen-core or whatever they're calling it. Glad to see the D-50 DNA is still there (four partial synthesis engine) and the Zenology plugin editor makes sound design a shit ton easier. So we'll see where that goes. I also had the itch for a vocoder, so....
Couldn't leave well enough alone, had to change out the LEDs before I even tried it out to see if it worked or not. That green theme Roland is going with gags me... Looks better in red. If I have half a mind I may attack the MC-707 but I dunno. The LEDs were the super tiny ones, 0603 size if I remember right. SMALL AS FUCK!
Had to use 303 eh? Heh. That's the one under the Robot pad. Literally smaller than the graphite tip on a pencil by half. DO NOT SNEEZE. But I have a tool which I may have talked about that made removing these a helluva lot easier, el-cheapo made in china hot tweezers!
Got these for around $50 or something off AliExpress, I think. Sometimes the ends don't meet up, so you have to open and close them again. Definitely not made in Japan quality, but nowhere near the price either. Ah well. Today I meant to bring liquid solder in a syringe, which makes soldering the LEDs on super easy but noooo like a dumbass I forgot, so it was back to the old slow way... put solder on the pads, tin the LEDs (NOT EASY!), heat one pad, slide the LED on (using tweezers), then hit the other side. Time consuming but it worked. Hmph.
Anyway. It hasn't been an easy year at all. I've seen better times. I've had better years. Trying to bring 2023 to an end on a brighter note. Hope you guys out there are doing well.