263v Quantizer/Analog Shift Register

Mark Verbos released another Module. The 263v Quantizer/Analog Shift Register. There is no price yet but I guess it's not a module that I can afford at the moment. But it looks very usefull. Mark wrote quite a bit of history on this module. 

from the Buchla Tech blog:

In 1972 as a resident at CalArts, Fukushi Kawakami made four modules as additions to the school's rather extensive Buchla 200 system. The modules are a Control Voltage Switching Matrix, two Control Voltage Integrators and what I believe is the world's first Analog Shift Register. 

Since then, the world has fallen into disarray, computers have taken over, analog modulars have gone in and out of favor several times and those four Fortune Modules have ended up in Grant Richter's hands. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Serge made an analog shift register and wrote about it (under the nom de plume Arpad Benares) in Synapse. Even before the Fortune Modules, Buchla had made a rather amazing Control Voltage Integrator called the 155, but that's another post.

Anyway....

Analog Shift Registers are a bank of Sample and Holds. In fact, using only the first output, it is a Sample and Hold. When a pulse is applied, the CV on the input is stored on output one. Whatever was on output one is moved to output two, and so on. 

I had a couple of ideas of my own that could make it a better module. Sadly, it got back-burnered and never saw the light of day until now. The new version has rotary switches to select the scale to quantize to. The ASR outputs can be plugged into the quantizer with  shorting bar. There is no longer a "slave" switch to chain the two ASR's together, but a cable and shorting bar can now do that too. Some new ideas have come up as well, like using the quantizer to look-up the voltages from the "random" voltage sequences from the 266. It's obviously not as glamorous as an oscillator or filter, but it will come in useful to some people.

Soviet Modernism 1955-1991 Unknown Stories

Very interesting architecture happend in the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1991.
I will go to the exhibition at the viennese Architekturzentrum at MQ tomorrow
and very much looking forward to it.

From the homepage of the viennese Architekturzentrum:

The Architekturzentrum Wien writes architectural (hi)stories: ‘Soviet Modernism 1955 – 1991. Unknown Stories’ explores, for the first time comprehensively, the architecture of the non-Russian Soviet republics completed between the late 1950s and the end of the USSR in 1991. The research and exhibition project shifts the Russian-dominated perspective and focuses attention on the architecture of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, The Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

While Constructivism and Stalinist architecture have largely been included in Western architecture history, the Soviet modern architecture of the second half of the 20th century has remained practically unknown to date. Working in close collaboration with local experts and architects, a research group at the Architekturzentrum Wien has pursued the specialities in the architecture of the period and its ‘stories’. In the course of this extensive project a network has been created between a large number of researchers from the East and the West and interviews conducted with eyewitnesses of the time. Their stories have hardly been documented in writing and their works have not yet been viewed in context. Time is running out, and action is urgently needed as many of the buildings, which are still waiting for appraisal by architectural historians, are threatened. The poor construction techniques used at the time they were built means that these buildings are aging rapidly and there is a widespread lack of resources available, or support, for their upkeep.

Model 267e UNCERTAINTY SOURCE / DUAL FILTER

I just sold my 281e and ordered a Model 267e UNCERTAINTY SOURCE / DUAL FILTER for my
small Buchla Box can't wait for it. As much as I loved the 281e I think that the 267e with its noise, its two random sources and the two bandpass filter will be a much better fit and will play nicely with my 259e. Is this actually the perfect Buchla for the poor man? Let's find out!

Rogan Knobs

I took part in a group buy on muff's a while ago for a  lot of Rogan knobs that are used on some of the Buchla 200 modules and also some later Buchla instruments. My intention is to try out some Buchla DIY projects that seem to go on everywhere at the moment. They look so nice and I just wanted to repost some of the pictures xpander, the men behind the group buy, took and posted on muff's.
The Buchla community will be forever thankfull.

OBERBAMA - Barack Obama Dildulo

Nothing more to say, and obviously not Buchla related but made by some friends of mine.
Check it out!