Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

Here's a quick post on my first impressions of the Doepfer ribbon
controller. I built a +/- 12V stepdown circuit and hooked it up
awhile ago, and have played with it for about 30 minutes.

There's a lot to like about this thing. It's a nice size, 23.5" long
and about 1" wide, with all but 3" of the length taken up by
the 'ribbon' element. It was heavier than I expected, and is encased
in a sturdy steel U channel body. Actually, there is no ribbon at
all, in the Moog sense - just a smooth clear plastic surface covering
the touch elements. I find that the playability is actually better
than a Moog ribbon, because you don't have to deflect the ribbon down
1/4" to make contact.

There's a nice pressure output that works pretty well, too. It is
more sensitive than many of the pressure sensors on Roland keyboards,
which tend to be either full on or off with little control in between.

There are two gate outputs. One fires when you touch the ribbon and
one when you cross an adjustable pressure threshold. In addition, you
can set the ribbon to hold the last voltage once you release it.
Unfortunately, you give up the main gate output in return.

I had some nits to pick also:
Packaging wise, they chose to put the cable end of the ribbon to the
right. That's just plain wrong in my book. Also, I don't like the
raised box on that end which houses the connector. It would have been
better to make it flush or lower profile somehow. They use a USB
connector to connect the ribbon to the module, but warn that you will
fry everything if you plug anything into actual USB devices. I think
that's a poor choice of connector. Also, the 4 foot cable included is
too chintzy in length to let you move the ribbon where you may want
it. Hell, my modular is more than 4 feet high!

Feature wise, it bugs me that you lose the gate output when you turn
on the cv hold feature. That should not be necessary, and I'm going
to look into modding it. My guess is that they did this because of
the extreme simplicity of the support circuitry - there's a quad
opamp and not much else there.

Also, I want a mode to mimic the Yamaha ribbons on the CS-80, which
can take the first position you press on the ribbon as the home
position, and all movement after that as offsets from the initial
position. I plan on looking into a mod for that as well.

You can do hammer-on techniques with 2 fingers, and the controller
reacts in a last-finger manner, but the voltages you get are a little
strange. They are sometimes not the same as they would be when using
only 1 finger at the same position.

This thing may be worth making a Stooge panel for...

Anyway, it's loads of fun!

Moe