Buchla 200 - 101 Buchla 200 - 101 keyboard test

Buchla 200-101 system that Rick from "The Electric Music Box" was repairing. Or that is what he said. I think it sounds great nonetheless.

The Puck style Rogan knobs are back!!!

via xpander on muff's : "in my relentless effort to bring all of the Buchla style knobs back into existence, a group buy will finally be happening for Rogan "puck" style knobs thanks to the generous assistance of two fine wigglers. look for that to begin at the end of the week"

Can't wait for those and will definitely order some. Those where mostly used on the 259's in the Buchla 300 series, but some people prefer them to the skirted ones you normally see. 

UPDATE: the group buy has begun over at muff's. Don't miss out!!!!!!

 

GIF Art

I amlately fascinated by intenet art. Just love those gif's. Go to gifart.org for more.

The Music Easel has returned!!!

So now that the dust has settled I post some of the information that has surfaced here that is concerning the new Buchla Music Easel that BEMI will release in about 6 months.

Ever since I have first read about the Music Easel it was a dream of mine (and probably every Buchla enthusiast) to play one, just for a few minutes at least. But with only 20 or so produced the chances of this ever happening where very little. As I am located in Europe it is even harder to get your hands on one. But even though Don is the guy that never looks back, B&A has been bought and the new owners follow a different philosophy and have announced that they will release a functionally identical Music Easel in the next months. Everything will be the same as the original one. They even left the Programming Card the way it was. So you just take some resistors and solder your own presets for it.
The slot for the Programming Card can also be used for an additional card that lets you hook up the Music Easel to your I Pad or other devices and also lets you save presets.

I have not ordered on yet, but I will when the unit is ready and available in Europe. Can't wait for it. At first I was considering selling my 200e modules but I have since decided against this as I could not live without the 259e or the 267e and all the other wonderful modules.

BEMI's statment on muffs:

Pricing Structure
The Music Easel is BEMI’s first foray into selling Buchla gear through dealers, and while we are keeping the number of dealers purposely small, we are following a traditional dealer pricing model. This means that while BEMI will sell the unit at the MSRP of $3999.99, dealers can advertise it for $3,699.99. No matter whether you choose to purchase directly from BEMI or go through a BEMI dealer, orders will be shipped in the order in which BEMI receives them.
   
Orders / Email Address Confusion
Due to a combination of circumstances, some Easel inquiries sent to our sales@buchla.com address were not received. Our sincere apologies to those of you who were frustrated by our lack of response. We have recovered the mails, and we are contacting everyone who was not previously contacted and/or who did not subsequently place their order through either purchasing@buchla.com or  info@buchla.com.

Features
We’re listening! In addition to the many thoughtful comments we received at NAMM from the Buchla community, we’re closely following the “vintage accuracy versus modern functionality” debate in this forum, and doing our best to find the optimum blend of the two. We’ll continue to refine and implement changes in accordance with your input. Our goal is to put the best possible instrument in your hands.

The preset card is a good example. We think it’s really important to remain true to the original Easel’s preset card architecture (apparently some of you can’t get enough solder fumes). But we also understand the modern workflow and the need for immediate access to multiple presets---hence the design of our optional preset manager/ iPad interface card. Speaking of which, the interface’s spec calls for saving/loading presets, remote programming of the Easel via iPad, and wireless operation. MSRP 
TBA.

We’ll post the full feature list and specs on our new Web site as soon as it’s launched. (We’re busy translating the Latin pages now….)

Aesthetics
The debate over original vs. new aesthetics is raging nearly as fiercely as the one over features. Again, we’re doing our best to find the sweet spot. A couple of things you can be sure of: The case lid will be removable and we’re taking a long hard look at all of the graphic elements, from fonts and colors to knobs….

Don Buchla’s Involvement
If you were BEMI, would you reissue the Music Easel without Don’s involvement? Get real!

The Manual
It’s our intention to include an appropriately updated version of the original Allen Strange manual along with new documentation to help users unfamiliar with the Easel unlock its sonic potential.

European Service / Distribution
Yes to both! We’ll be announcing dealers, distributors, and service centers on our Web site as they come on line.

 

 

1984

"I betrayed you," she said baldly.
"I betrayed you," he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
"Sometimes," she said, "they threaten you with something – something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself."
"All you care about is yourself," he echoed.
"And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer."
"No," he said, "you don't feel the same."

Throughout, a song recurs in Winston's mind:

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me—

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.

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!

Buchla 249e Dual Arbitrary Function Generator

Before the Buchla 250e there was the 249e. But because of it's complexity Buchla decided to take it
out of production and replace it if the more straight forward 250e. What has happend to the 259e could now happen to the 249e as well. On Muff's rumors are spreading that Buchla might do another run of this module if enough people are willing to buy one. Mh we will see. Until than there is a used one for sale at Muff's. Go get it!!! ( If you have the money that is.)

This Buchla 249e module is in pristine cosmetic and operational shape. I am the original owner. This is pre v30 and comes with original documentation and firmware card.

Paypal is the way to go. Free shipping in the US (lower 48).

Please PM me if you are interested. All best wishes, Todd

249e $4,650