For Sale on Muffs: Original vintage Buchla Music Easel / 208

Roman F is selling his original Buchla Music Easel/208 but without the
touch keyboard, the 218.

what is included:

case
psu
2 boats
208
2 patch cards

all is original and works perfect

i'm not interested in selling the 218 atm, but since i don't want to break this unit apart i can trade it to 221.

$30.000, cash
located in LA, i can bring it to any major US city if we share the flight

... that's a york university's easel, later owned by audities, then by couple private persons and i'm the last owner.

Check it out on muffs.

Wonderful Buchla Clones and DIY!!!

Wonderful Buchla Clones and DIY modules by jooksi. I have to say I really envy him for his dual version of the Flopsequencer. I have a singel one, the rest of the panel is empty. Would love to add something. Otherwise it would be a waste of space but I  have not decided what kind of module I should fit in there. Time will tell.

Note: go to his flickr to see more of his amazing DIY Buchla modules.

New Stuff arrived!!!

So a some new stuff arrived in the last couple of weeks.Some panels, some knobs, the simple yet amazing flop sequenzer Djangosfire build. So I took a picture with all the new Buchla stuff.Have to build some modules and need to finally get a bigger case as it is quite sad that I can't use my 267 at the moment.

 

259e and 267e are taking a trip to outer space

Just posted two small demo pieces I just recorded on my soundcloud channel. Both feature just the 259e, the 267e and my beloved El Capistan pedal from Strymon.

I am still amazed about the different sounds one can come up with, using just two Buchla modules be it the 281e in combination with the 259e or now with the 267e. I must say I also had a lot of fun with the 258v.

Buchla 100 system for sale at Muff's Modules

There is a super nice Buchla 100 system for sale at muff's that acording to Rick the man behind the electric music box website includes the following modules:

Fully restored 1970s Era Buchla 100 Modular System in 101 Cabinet:

101 2 piece 25 Panel Unit Cabinet
115 Power supply
110 Dual Gate (2 VCAs)
160 Dual Noise Source
175 Dual Equalizer (2 Filters)
194 Comb Filter (Filter)
190 Dual Reverberator
171 Dual Instrument Preamplifier
111 Dual Ring Modulator
106 Six Channel Mixer
196 Phase Shifter
192 Dual Lopass Filter (2 Filters - SUPER RARE MODULE)
158 Dual Sine/Saw Generator (2 Oscillators)
158 Dual Sine/Saw Generator (2 Oscillators)
156 Dual Control Voltage Processor
107 Voltage Controlled Mixer (10 VCAs!)
140 Timing Pulse Generator
123 Sequential Voltage Source (8 Stage Sequencer X 3)
180 Dual Attack Generator (2 Envelopes)
170 Dual Microphone Preamplifier (transformers!)
130 Dual Envelope Detector
114 Touchplate

all modules cleaned/recapped and tested, power supply refurbished.. wood cabinet restored. this system has 4 VCOS, 12 VCAs, several filter varieties including the rare 192 Lopass Filter which was one of the first Buchla module with Optos!, 8 stage sequencer, tons of processors and excellent stereo reverb.

Pics/more details soon

price is $35,000 plus shipping - pics soon.. here is a crappy one for now:

 

 All modules are cleaned and checked out by a Buchla instrument specialist

The 267e has arrived!!!

Just got my 267e right before Christmas. Wonderful module. Very very well build and one of the deepest Buchla modules I have seen. Took me a while to put it into my 2 panel powerd Box until everything worked fine. Only spend a couple of hours with it so far but I will post some audio soon.

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.

Fuckin' Cool Format Jümbler

A friend of mine build this super nice Format Jumbler for my birthday. It's in Module Module format. Very nice. Thanks a lot. Can't wait to try it out.

Klee Sequencer

I just found this panel on muff's. Very nice idea and I hope someone will build it one day. There are a lot of Buchla DIY projects going on on muffs. Go too muff's DIY subforum and see for yourselfs and get inspired too build your own.

Intellijel uStep ModuleModule

Intellijel's new ModuleModule is actually a reincarnation of Intellijel's uStep that is already available in the very popular Eurorack format.

features include:
separate sequence lengths (1-8 steps long each) or single 1x16 mode
seperate gate lengths
store/recall patterns (8 locations)
8 levels of shuffle
seperate sequence outputs with dedicated leds showing gate logic status
relative and absolute timing modes
gate range from 500us to 30minutes (capable of audio rate sequences)


use this module for:
beat/trigger sequencing (great for polyrhythms)
control of adsr/asr envelopes
clock dividing
swing clock
convert gate to trigger 


Price: $290

Available for direct order from Intellijel HQ.
Please e-mail orders@intellijel.com with your location info for shipping quote

IRCAM's old Buchla 300

I always like this pictures of the old Buchla 300 from IRCAM and the text, especially this part:

"Even in its current place of rest, under quite a bit of dust, it seems to hearken back youthfully to a earlier time before this age of DSP, when men were men and resistors, resistors."

Check out the rest of the pictures here.

ModuleModules

The ModuleModule format for Buchla systems which was introduced by Chris Muir from Eardrill a while a go is on fire at the moment. In the last two weeks alone four new have surfaced. Intellijel has released there uStep for it. Roman F. from Russia a waveshaper based on the Music Easel and now Jason R. Butcher also announced two new modulemodules. 

The first is a Balanced Modulator which is based on the original Buchla 285.  The second one is a Reverb which uses a spring reverb emulator. Both will sell for 400$. I have too say that they look very tempting and they are also totally hand made. Great stuff!

Buchla's 257e

The upcoming Buchla 257e will be a new controll voltage processor and will probably fill the gap that the 255 has left behind.

Eardrill's Morphun

Chris Muir said on muff's that it's only a few week away. I looks beautiful and I love the sliders with the green leds. He wrote that it will go over five octaves, when quantized (actually 64 semitones) and ten volts, when unquantized.

Short Update: Chris Muir just anounced that the Morphun will sell for 475$ and that he is ready too take orders. Check out his Eardrill homepage for more information.

My new Buchla Box!

I recently bought a two panel powered box and put my two modules in it. I am constantly amazed by the sounds it makes. I hope I can uprgade too a bigger case soon. The new Skylab by Buchla&Asocciates looks very promising and will cover my needs for a transportable case.

As I said before, I love the 259e.

Buchla 158 Front Panel

I was always fascinated by the first system Buchla ever build, the Buchla 100. There have been a lot of DIY projects recently exploring the vaste amount of Buchla schemetics. And some people did  wonderful jobs cloning entire systems for themselves. As the 258 is alredy available from someone else I thought I make a panel for the 158 from the Buchla 100 and see where people take it from there. I loved the sound of it when Morton Subotnick brought his Buchla 100 system to Vienna that also included a 158. I went for the same font as on the Eardrill modules which is extremly close to the font on the 200e panels as I thought that nowadays people will use it primarily with original Buchla 200e modules.So I hope they will be a very close match. The lines are a bit thicker than on Buchla 200e modules as I felt that the panel would otherwise look a bit empty. I put San Francisco Tape Music Center on it as a tribute to those times  I have no idea when I can make them available as I have a lot of other stuff going on but if you are interested in one send me mail (or pm on muff's) so I can roughly estimate how many I should order. If you are looking for some sounds of the original check out monopoly's blog: mono-poly.blogspot.com The panel is not finished yet.

Protofields and the Buchla 200

 This is my favorite Buchla 200 video. So inspiring. I think this is the Buchla that now belongs too former NIN member Alessandro Cortini but correct me if I am wrong.

An extremely rare version of Protofields piece made in one take with the Buchla 200 System. This is just a memory of these days not a finished work.

Music by Antonio Isaac, camera by Gerardo Pellicer.

 

Suzanne Ciani: Lixiviation

Labeled the “American Delia Derbyshire (Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 – 3 July 2001) was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète) of the Atari generation,” Finders Keepers Record has released a compilation that features early compositions by the synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani who was one of the few women around that timethat made a career as a synthesist. This new album heavily features the Buchla 200.

In the 60's sculptor Harold Paris first introduced her to Don Buchla, whose studio building was next door to the UC Berkeley in the industrial waterfront section of Oakland. She worked for Don Buchla in his factory and by doing so got her first Buchla 200.

For me she is not just making music but creates landscapes that unfold in front of you as
you listen to the record. And it takes you to places where you have never been before.

Suzanne Ciani says about one of the pieces included on this compilation:
“This is an exampleof a Buchla piece where the music is generated by the machine itself, after lots of careful programming. I would spend weeks just living with the machine, always on, and tweak the parameters that were interacting to create this “automatic” composition. The idea was that you worked with the machine, setting up sequences and envelopes and filter modulations that interacted  in an organic way. The composition then infolded infinitely, going for weeks.”

Suzanne Ciani has a very detailed but also in my eyes, joyful approche in a way that I realy like and I would say that this record is definitely a piece of electronic music history.

Eardrill's new module: the Morphun

Eardrill, a company that is making Buchla compatible modules has just anounced that they will be releasing a new ModuleModule in the next couple of weeks. Chris Muir introduced the ModuleModule format a while back and is continuing to come up with great designs that compliment the 200e or old 200 systems. Finally also some other manufacturer have dicovered that the ModuleModule is a great platform for some of there designs. For example the Eurorack manufacturer Intelijel will be releasing their uStep module which is a 8-step (or 16 step) stepsequencer.

The new ModuleModule is called Morphun. With the Morphun it you can easily reshape control voltages making it a playable CV processor. The interesting part for me is that it can also be used as a simple eight step sequenzer.

Chris Muir wrote on his home page that the Morphun will have four main modes.

Morph The mode I started with is the morph mode. As a historical reference, Morph mode is sort of like the Tracking Generator found on an Oberheim Xpander, and sort of like the breakpoint generator on the 256e/257e. In this mode, a control voltage coming into the morph jack scans across the values on the sliders, interpolating between slider values as it goes. This lets you sculpt / reshape a control voltage into many curious shapes. 

Snap Then I added snap mode, which snaps between the values on the sliders. A full-scale ramp at the morph input will act as a sort of sequencer, stepping through the eight values on the slider. For example, if you drive the Morphun from an LFO with an ascending sawtooth wave, the sliders will be output in order, if from a descending saw the sliders will be output in reverse order. If you drive it with a Source of Uncertainty Quantized Random section set to 8 steps, the Morphun will randomly select among the eight sliders to output. 

Clock Clock mode is more or less a normal sequencer.

Strobe Strobe mode is sort of a cross between morph and clock mode, the value at the morph input is sampled every clock, than the interpolated value is looked up on the sliders.

Looking forward to this module and I hope I can place an order soon. Love that it has sliders like some old Buchla 200 modules.

My old system and the 258v

My old system before I had to sell it (Sitting on top of the Eurorack). Sadly I have never used an original 258 but the 258v by Mark Verbos is one of the most amazing oscillators I have ever heard. Outer space FM, amazing drones and bell sounds this oscillator does it all. And the great part there are two in one module. The best part is when you crossmodulate both oscillators. Mark even added a trimmed 1.2 volt/octave CV input.

From the Buchla historical homepage: "Two independent voltage-controlled oscillators, continuously tunable from 5 Hz to 20 kHz. Each has two processing inputs and a frequency modulation input. Waveshapes as well as frequency can be voltage controlled. Model 258 oscillators feature low sine wave harmonic content, negligible settling error, and high short and long-term stability, even with rapidly changing ambient temperatures."

This will be my next oscillator for sure as I miss it dearly.