SergeModular

I read an article some years ago by Grant 'Wiard' Richter, where he had trouble
with old Serge VCO's. What he ended up doing was cleaning the flux & crud off
the PC boards, then recalibrate. They worked great after that. And these were
old vintage modules too, with the paper-mylar graphics etc.

John P.

sasami@... wrote:

>
> My Serge is a real "classic" - from 1973. It is probably one of those that
> inspired people to name old Serges "dogs". It's VCOs are only any good for
> avante gard, or fixed sequences as they don't follow any decent voltage
> curve. It has a rather limited range of modules, probably because there
> weren't many to chose from at the time, and generally speaking, 30 years has
> been hell on its jacks and old wiring.
> Would I swap it for a virtual synth? NO WAY. Instead, I have spent more
> hours on it that it is theoretically worth, rewiring modules, repairing
> jacks, and just generally repairing and cleaning it up. I also plan to do
> some upgrades, including replacing the oscillators with custom made beasts
> designed to mimic the better aspects and panel layout of the existing VCOs,
> without the lousy tracking.
> As you say, there is more to owning an old synth than just the sounds it may
> produce.
>
>
> In electronics, no two modules will ever be identical. Sure they may be very
> close, but there will be minor variations. For example, there is no way a
> pair of digitally generated oscillators can really match two slightly
> detuned real oscillators.
>
> The other problem with software synths is a lot of people will use the
> prepackaged examples, and that's about it. We've seen this with classic
> Fairlight samples, preprogrammed digital synths, and in non music relates
> software, the over use of included effects in Photoshop for example.
> Basically, the design of a modular fights this trend. (Infinite resolution!)
>
> Ken

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