[sdiy] Steiner-Parker: eye-kurumba1

[Mike Brown]

Hey Peter,

First of all, sorry to hear about your dear friend.  Those of us who have
been there, know.

But secondly, I was wondering if we might see some pix of the Synthasystem
on buzzclick-music.com?  I'm always interested in seeing these sorts of
historical synth oddities.

regards,

Mike Brown
mike at electronium.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Grenader" <pgrenader at mksound.com>
To: "synth" <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 9:46 PM
Subject: [sdiy] Steiner-Parker: eye-kurumba1


>
> all,
>
> I had the fortune of inheriting a Steiner-Parker Systhasystem from a dear
> friend who recently passed away.  Great little modular, with pnme of the
> best filters out there and some of the cleanest analog sinewaves I've ever
> seen.
>
> Most of it works, some didn't at first and I've since gotten them on-line,
> some are still scrwd up --> the three input VCA/Mixer and the third osc.
>
> Both work, sort of.  The VCO acts like it's being controlled by a sloped
> random voltage and the Mixer is giving me about an 1/8 of the output
levels
> of the rest of the box.
>
> But this isn't why I'm posting.
>
> I removed the VCA/Mixer from the box last night and found what I would
> consider the worst workmanship I've seen in many many years.  90% of the
> joints were cold, globbed on like the head of a Fosters Freeze cone. Flux
> was caked on so thick in some places you could not see the solder
> underneath. Bits of solder all over the wire housing. It was just a
fright.
>
>
> Cleaning it up didn't do didley for my problem, so me thinks one or both
of
> the two output trannies (MPS 5172) have taken a powder.  I've got
> replacements on order.
>
> I was also surprised to see that none of the boards in this machine were
> either soldermasked OR solder plated!  They were soldering directly to
> copper traces.  That and the fact that many of the holes were not in the
> center of the pad leads me to beleive that Nyle was making these boards in
> his kitchen.  It is also interesting that there are only three different
> board sizes in the machine.  Again, I think he made these on his own.
>
> Remarkable as the machine really sounds good.  The filter is breathtaking,
> outside of the one wack one, the oscillators are stable and pure -
> everything outside of the phasor (which is a litttle weak) is top notch
> sonically.
>
> Intersting however I heard the another Steiner osc, on one of Roger
> Cordell's Synthacons and it also had this wack unstable frequency
problem.
> If any of you have any experience with this sepcific anomoly with SP gear,
> please let me know.
>
> P
>
>