[sdiy] You all missed my arp omni chronicles..

[Bob Weigel]

I've had some interactions of strangness with Kevin of late so pardon 
this...SOME TIME AGO..in rmms newsgroup, I was joyfully talking about my 
experiences with a polymoog I picked up cheap and how with the sound no 
matter what pain you had to deal with it was worth it.  Kevin came on 
with his anonymous handle and criticized me...rather sharply...for 
saying initially that it looked like all the parts were pretty much off 
the shelf from what I could see so far.  I wasn't sure if I was dealing 
with a troll or what  ..."we are many?"?  Ahem...
     Kevin takes casual conversation much more seriously than I do. I 
can converse with peole in newsgroups without the fear that somebody is 
going to reaaaaaddd the archive out of context and get a bad impression 
and go hang themself with it. :-)   THUS HE BRINGS THIS UP AGAIN THE 
OTHER DAY.  And demeans me for this type of interaction...
      Since my institution of the new web page with universal tech he 
seems to be on a warpath of sorts.  I thought I was doing a good 
thing..really.  I put a bunch of links to his page and others thinking 
that was a great thing for the synth community; having it where you 
dont' have to waste time with all the bogus links you get with google.  
But no good deed should go unpunished.
        OK KEVIN.  You won't deal with this in private.  I went to great 
length to explain thoroughly why I didn't see any harm in what I posted 
back then GIVEN THE CONTEXT that I had already established that I was a 
TOTAL POLYMOOG NEWBIE!!  And..even at that...I mean hey.  They're a lot 
of labor but the QUESTION revolved around whether you could get parts.  
Most of the ones that have problems SAVE THE DIVIDERS I find out...are 
off the shelf.  Still.  You don't see uA726's fail that often (even 
though I'd already mentioned those).  You don't see the TOS fail that 
often. You don't see the polycom chips fail that often COMPARED to the 
op amps and ttl stuff that is..off the shelf. 
         Regardless..."learn to fix" in reference to me after 20 years 
of fixing NEARLY EVERYTHING people have sent my way....seems kind of 
Silly.  Maybe you should go be a humble tech for somebody again and 
learn to socially interact! :-)  All this... just because I enjoy 
discussing it to see if others have ideas?  That's what community is 
supposed to be about Kevin.  If you don't share ideas and problems, you 
don't learn as fast.  NOTICE....I share just as much or more than I ask 
in these groups.  I don't see any reason why you think you have to post 
derogatory statements AND waste my time in private e-mail when you 
aren't willing to post a logical reply to what I say. -Bob

Kevin Lightner wrote:

>
>
>
>
> Bob,
>
> You like long stories.
>
> I'll share one.
>
> When I was a lowly service tech at the otherwise mighty Roland US, we 
> had a resident Japanese import manager and engineer/tech in our dept. 
> I say "engineer/tech" with respect also, because I feel that engineers 
> do not always make the best techs and vice versa. This person also was 
> on the SH1000 or 2000 design teams. He'd been around for a while and 
> knew both sides of design and serviceability issues. He was the liason 
> to Roland Japan who also explained what failed and why and how to 
> build products that were easier for techs to work on.
>
> Well, when one of us techs couldn't find a problem, we'd often find 
> ourselves tugging at this more experienced fellow's heels. In 
> retrospect though, we couldn't have been in a better place: all docs, 
> all parts, full replacement boards, power desolderers... we had it 
> all. Yet often we were stumped.
> Obviously we were hacks, swapped ICs with the wind and basically 
> guessed our way to success.
>
> After a while, this Japanese fellow grew tired of interacting with the 
> "kids" on their repairs.
> He usually then offered only one bit of advice, three simple words 
> uttered in broken English.
> Now with approx 20 additional years under my belt since those days and 
> a much better tech, I  have come to realize that his advice was the 
> best and most accurate advice I've ever heard.
>
> Now I will share this sage advice: LEARN TO FIX!!
>
>
>