MOTM

>>>>
>once again i recently heard someone state that the motm modules were 
too
>difficult to distiguish because of the lack of some sort of border
>around each module.

Let me take a wild guess, that person was Mike Peake AH. He has never
owned any MOTM, so how would he know?? I have never heard anyone who
actually uses MOTM say that they have any trouble distinguishing 
between modules. Nor have a heard anyone else besides Mike Peake make 
such an absurd comment.
<<<<

Well, actually...

While I dismiss most of our psychic buddy's vitriolic rhetoric, it 
never hurts to talk rationally about synth UI (and it's a subject 
near and dear to me, so excuse me while I blab awhile.) Just so that 
everybody knows what my tastes are, my two favorite modular synth UIs 
are CMS and E-MU, in that order.

I am one of those people who DO get lost in a sea of knobs. It's not 
so bad if you are rack mounting and have maybe 5 or 6 modules across, 
but it gets much harder to distinguish what you are looking at in a 
wide case. One of the first things I did when I built my first 
cabinet, way back before the Synth of Doom case, was to experiment 
with white art tape on the borders of my modules. Although it was 
kind of tacky, and it was hard to get the tape applied in a strictly 
straight line, the effect on 'module recognizability' in a system was 
immediate and dramatic. I still hope to come up with a universal 
solution for this problem. Various things have been talked about on 
this list such as slip-on plastic or metal edging, but nobody has 
found an ideal solution yet. Several people (Elhardt and Fulton, for 
instance) use multicolored or white tape. To see a pic of the corner 
of my old system with the edges taped, look here:

http://www.hotrodmotm.com/images/3StoogesMOTM.jpg

While edge separators is one way to go, the most elegant solution is 
offered by CMS, which prints block diagram graphics on the front 
panel with graphic lines directly to the input and output jacks - 
very ARP 2600-like. Unfortunately, it looks like Phil Cirocco has let 
his website lapse, so I don't have a link to point you to. I DO have 
a pdf CMS catalog, if anybody really wants to look at these beautiful 
panels.

I believe that Paul has stated in the past that he was prevented from 
doing edge stripes when he started MOTM by the limitations of the 
technology or skill of his screen printer. Every product requires a 
series of trade-off decisions about quality vs. cost - in the MOTM 
case, Paul chose to concentrate on the circuit side, and keep the 
modules affordable by going with painted instead of anodized panels. 
I think it was the right decision, but I also think that adding edge 
graphics is the ONE thing that would make it much better.

It's too late for Paul to change even if a new solution could be 
found, however - there are 3k modules out there already. So it's up 
to us to come up with a retrofittable solution.

>has anyone ever tried or considered polishing the
>paint off the edges of your panels to make that border?

This has been mentioned by at least one other person, but I don't 
think they ever tried it out. The thing that keeps me from doing this 
is that it would make my modules hard to sell to anyone else, unless 
we can convince everybody to do it!

Moe