Today I finally got some time off to spend at the airport working on a vintage aircraft (Saab 91B Safir). We've had some minor issues with the engine which we hopefully have managed to fix. Today I tested the engine and it seems to work as expected.

I often get questions from various musicians about renting out gear from my studio. One of the most sought-after instruments that I have is my old Moog Modular system. The system is basically a standard Moog System 35 with a sequencer complement cabinet. Although the system is over 30 years old I rarely have any major issues with it. As long as the system is kept in one place and not moved around between different studios it normally stays in a functional state for a very long period of time. Occasionally the system needs to be fine-tuned but that's merely a minor issue ...

A few years back the original power-supply of my Moog system suddenly decided to give in during a tuning session of the oscillators. After troubleshooting the original power supply I finally decided to repace it with a new one from Power One.

Replacing the old power supply proved difficult because the connections of the new power supply did not fit the internal power harness of the cabinet. Rewiring the internal power harness wasn't an option since I wanted to keep the system as close to original as possible. The solution was to build a new power supply by reusing the enclosure of the original power supply. The electronics of the original power supply was removed from its enclosure to give room for the new power supply.

The new power supply was built by using four independent power supplies (NEriks PSU-1) connected and configured to supply +12V, -6V, +15V and -15V to the system.

In order to dissipate heat from the voltage regulators a heat sink was constructed from an 8 mm thick aluminum plate.

The circuit boards of the power supply was mounted on the heat sink plate which was installed in the old enclosure. The original transformer was reused as well as parts of the internal wiring and the output connector.

A few months ago I received a broken Moog Sonic 6 from a client in Norway. I've repaired a few Moog Sonic 6's in the past but I have never worked with an early revision of the Moog Sonic 6 before.

The Moog Sonic 6 is a duo-phonic analogue synthesizer manufactured by Moog Music in the 70's. The Sonic 6 was a result of a company merge between R.A Moog and MuSonics, which previously had been developing a synthesizer called the MuSonics Sonic 5 The early revision of the Moog Sonic 6 is equipped with the same type of diode-ladder filter used in its predecessor, the MuSonic Sonic 5. Comparing an early revision of the Moog Sonic 6 with a later revision (with a serial number above 1264) one will most certainly notice that they sound a bit different from each other.

Apart from the diode-ladder filter there are a few other details that also differs from the later revision. This made the repair process more challenging since I only had the service manual of the later revision at hand.

Having the Moog Sonic 6 in my workshop for some time I've become rather attached to it. I really like the design of the synthesizer which offers both extensive modulation capabilities and a very powerful sound. The only thing that really bothers me is the AR (ASR) type of envelope generator which sometimes feels a bit limited. All-in-all I think that the Moog Sonic 6 (especially the early revision with the diode-ladder filter) is one of the best Moog-synthesizers ever produced.

For more information about the Moog Sonic 6, please read this excellent article about the Moog Sonic 6, written by Gordon Reid.

Recently I've worked a lot to get our Saab Safir  airworthy but last night I finally got a chance to get back in my workshop to work with electronics again. The reason that forced me back to my workshop was that the COMM / NAV radio of the airplane suddenly decided to stop working ...

Note the frequency of Eskilstuna/Kjula (ESSU) AFIS tuned-in on the radio

It's been years since last time I worked with old analogue radio equipment so I was a bit unsure if I would be able to fix the radio. However, the fault turned out to be a bad capacitor that short-circuited the power supply to ground so I managed to repair the radio rather quickly ...

Internals of the COMM / NAV box. Note the large frequency selectors to the right in the picture ... I really love vintage electronics!  

Today we finally installed an emergency transmitter (ELT406) in our Saab Safir. Below are a few pictures from the event ...The aeroplane isn't airworthy in its current state but we hope to get it airborne again by the end of October this year.

It's been a while since my last blog post so I feel it's about time to write something about the recent activities that I'm been involved in. A large part of my recent work has been focused around avionics to some extent so we recently decided to extend the business of NEriks Audio to also involve avionics. The work with avionics have been organized as a new side business to NEriks Audio called NEriks Air.

Besides working with avionics, NEriks Air recently acquired a Saab 91B Safir (SK50) who previously has been owned and used as a military trainer by the Swedish Airforce. The clip blow was shot by Ronny Karlsson when it arrived at Kjula airport (ESSU) together with another Saab Safir 91B (LN-BII) from Norway.

Last week the SSM2040's that I purchased from a guy in Japan finally arrived. I've just tested each one of the them in my Prophet-5 rev 2 and all seem to work as expected. I really like the sound of the SSM2040 so I'm currently feeling very tempted to use one or two SSM2040 to build me a stereophonic filter module to use with my modular synthesizers ... Although, it would have been nice to use vintage SSM's for the filter module I think the best thing to do is to keep the SSM's as spare parts for synthesizers as the E-mu modular, Prophet-5, Octave the CAT, PMS Syntar, RFS Kobol ...

One of my favorite synthesizers is the Sequential Circuit Prophet-5 which was one of the first fully programmable analog polyphonic synthesizers introduced in the 70's. The Prophet-5 was manufactured in tree major revisions between 1978 and 1984. The first and second revision of the Prophet-5 used SSM chips, while the later rev 3's used CEM chips. Sonically there are many people insisting that the SSM-based Prophet's are better sounding than the rev 3's but I think its purely a matter of taste.

The Prophet-5 owned by NEriks Audio is a rev 2 that have undergone extensive updates to the power supply and digital board in order to make it more reliable. Generally, rev 2 Prophet's seem to have a rather bad reputation when it comes to reliability. My experience is however that most issues concerning reliability may be rather easy to fix just by updating the power supply and replacing all the tantalum capacitors in it. From a serviceable point of view it may be wise to continuously maintain an old Prophet since a failure may be very expensive to repair.

One of the most expensive parts in a Prophet-5 rev 1 or rev 2 nowadays is the SSM chips which are getting more and more difficult to source. As an example, the SSM2040 voltage controlled filter chip seems to be getting more and more expensive every time I see one for sale. A few years ago I was asked by a client to restore a Prophet-5 rev 2 which partially had been cannibalized in order to repair another Propet-5 rev 2. When I opened the unit I discovered that all SSM2040 was missing. Getting five new SSM2040 resulted in a total cost of approximately $250 ($50 each).

A few days ago I was contacted by a guy in Japan who I previously have done some business with. He asked me if I was interested in buying his stock of SSM2040 at a price of $120 each. Initially, I turned his offer down due to the high price but after some thinking I finally decided to accept his offer. I'm aware that I probably have paid an overprice for the SSM's but on the other hand I'm one step closer to secure the future of our Prophet-5 rev 2 ...
 

Yesterday I finally delivered the Buchla-system that I have been working on for the last few weeks. There have been numerous issues related to the work with it so it was a great feeling to finally hand it over to Mattias Petersson at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.

Above: Mattias Peterson, Royal College of Music in Stockholm, will use the Buchla for teaching students about sound synthesis.

For a few more hi-res pictures, please click on the links below:

  Ready for test
  Close-up of the 296 module
  View from the right-side
  Module 285 in focus ...

As mentioned earlier in this post, I'm currently working on bringing a vintage Buchla 200 system back to life. A few weeks ago I started to design the cabinet and after a few twists and turns the cabinet was finally finished last week.

During the last couple of days I've been working quite hard to mount the modules in the cabinet and test them. The biggest issue I've had so far is the original Buchla power-supply, which was connected through an old step-down transformer. As a precaution I briefly measured the voltage between the power-supply chassis and ground before connecting any of the Buchla modules to it. To my surprise I discovered that the voltage between the power-supply chassis and ground was approximately 230V! Disassembling the step-down transformer revealed that it was and old autotransformer. An autotransformer is an electrical transformer with only one winding. Since the input of the transformer isn't electrically isolated from the output its output may result in 230V between neutral and ground if the power plug happens to be plugged into the outlet the wrong way around.

I'm VERY keen on electrical safety issues so I will replace the old autotransformer with an isolated step-down transformer and rewire it according to modern standards. Hopefully I'll get the Buchla-system up and running in a day or two so I finally can test it!

Yesterday finally took the plunge and bought a new EPROM programmer for my lab. My old EPROM programmer suddenly decided to give up when I really needed it the most so there wasn't really much to do other than to start looking for a new one. Since I work a lot with old Prophet-5 synthesizers I needed an programmer capable of programming old 2708 and 2716 EPROM's. In contrast to the old 2708 and 2716 EPROM's I also wanted a programmer capable of programming the latest 32-bit microprocessors from Microchip (PIC32). After some serious considerations I finally decided to buy an ELNEC BeeProg+ although it turned out to be more than twice the price of what I initially was prepared to pay for a new programmer.

So, back to work with the Prophet's ... During the last couple of years I done some reverse engineering of the firmware regarding the firmware of the Prophet-5 rev-2. One thing I've been able to fix in the firmware is to prevent it from hanging during auto-tune if one of the voices is malfunctioning. In the latest version I've been able to add support for enabling and disabling individual voices through the program selection buttons.

NOTE: Please, don't send me inquires about selling EPROM's with the updated firmware for the Prophet-5. I have no clue about the copyright issues of the firmware. Fiddling with the firmware of the Prophet-5 is solely for my own personal interest. For general inquires about EPROM  programming, please refer to our vintage synthesizer repair page.

I'm not going to bore you all with details about my personal ups and downs of 2008. All I can say is that 2008 has been a very difficult year for me in terms of allocating time and resources for all the projects that I'm working on. Running two businesses and still have time to spend with my family isn't an easy task! My wife, who's taking care of the overall business administration of my companies, has patiently stand by my side and helped me more than I could ask for. She's a keeper and I love her deeply!

On behalf of me and NEriks Audio I would like to thank all our friends and all our clients for a wonderful 2008. A special thanks goes to Ulf Edelönn and the Fitzpatrick team who enthusiastically have supported us in regards to our work related to vintage synthesizers as well as modern gear from Moog Music. I would also like to thank Mattias Olsson of Roth Händle Studio in Stockholm for being a great friend as well as a huge source of inspiration for a technical geek like me!

It's with great passion for music and technology that I'm entering 2009 as head of the everyday activates of NEriks Audio. I'm feeling very enthusiastic about the future and I hope that 2009 will bring a lot of new and interesting challenges to us. 2008 was a bit of disaster for our product development, mainly because we didn't allocated enough time for the development of products. During 2009 we will cease to provide engraved front panels as a measure to get more time for our product development.

It's Christmas and for the first time in my life I'm spending parts of it all alone. My wife and my two kids went to my parents over the Holidays so here I am facing an empty house and missing my family more than ever. The reason why I'm spending Christmas alone this year is that I probably have the flu or something like that ... To protect my family from being infected I simply took the decision to spend Christmas alone.

Being alone at Christmas wasn't all that bad to start with but after talking to my five-year old son today I realize how much I miss my family. Trying to kill time I rediscovered my old vinyl record collection with artists and groups like Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Ekseption, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and many  more. The rest of the Christmas day will definitely be spent in the studio playing old Ekseption records on my turn table!

My interest in Ekspetion and Rick van der Linden was increased about two years ago when I first was asked to repair the Yamaha GX-1 owned by Benny Andersson (ABBA). During the work with his GX-1 I developed a huge interest in the GX-1 and started to collect spare parts and historical information about the instrument. I'm currently repairing another GX-1 owned by a musician in Japan, who has been very kind to supply me with information about the instrument which I didn't know. Apart from spare parts and technical information I'm very interested in information what happened to all the GX-1's that was manufactured. I'm trying to build an unofficial database with serial numbers and owners (both original owners and current owners).

Anyone with information about what happed to the Yamaha GX-1 owned by Rick van der Linden, please drop me an email!

It's not very often you get the change of working with rare vintage items from manufactures such as Buchla. I fact, I have very little experience of working with vintage Buchla modules so it is with great enthusiasm that I recently was commissioned to design and build a wooden cabinet to house a set of Buchla modules. I will also design a build some custom panels/modules to integrate with the system.

The Buchla 200 series modules are owned by the Royal College of Music in Stockholm which have had them since the early 70's. According to the Royal College of Music all modules work but they need to be tested and cleaned before they are mounted into the wooden cabinet. I'm really looking forward to get the system up and running so I can add some Buchla user experience to my Curriculum Vitae!
 

I have finally decided to replace my beloved Otari reel-to-reel 2-inch tape recorder with a computerized recording solution. The main reason is that the tape recorder it's too complicated to use for spontaneous recordings. I have up until now tried to keep the computers and software out of the NEriks Audio Recording Studio since I feel much more inspired by using dedicated hardware. Working on a daily basis within the software industry (my main occupation besides NEriks Audio) has made me feel resistant to bring computers and software into the studio since it simply reminds me too much of my everyday work. On the other hand I already work very closely with software and electronics when building, developing and repairing electronic instruments on behalf of NEriks Audio so one might wonder why I feel the way I do about software and music?

Anyway, I recently decided to scrap my previous ideas about using software for musical purposes and go for a computerized recording solution instead of holding on to my old tape recorder. After all, I might benefit a lot if I can utilize my software developing skills to develop customized tools and applications for my own purposes. I already have implemented some tools for measuring and calibrating synthesizers so I'm basically already using software when working with "music"!

So, what type of software will replace my old tape recorder? After a two-week period of intense evaluation I decided to purchase a license of Ableton Live 7. Installing Ableton Live on my old workstation didn't work very well due to limited amount of memory and a slow CPU. I therefore purchased a new workstation with two Intel QuadCore (Xeon 5450) CPU's and 8GB internal memory. In contrast to many recommendations I also decided to install and run the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. The main reason to use the 64-bit version of Vista was to avoid the 3GB memory limit in the 32-bit version. The installation of Windows Vista, device-drivers and Ableton Live went very smooth so now we're in session!

For the records: I'm keeping my tape recorder as a backup!

Today I received a SCI Prohet-5 from a client who wants me to repair it. When the shipping company delivered the package containing the synthesizer my five year old son suddenly exclaims:

 - Oh, no Dad! Please! No more boxes with synthesizers! It's enough with the ones you already have! I think we shall throw them all out and let the owners repair the synthesizers them self! Why must you fix all the synthesizers in the world?

My son normally thinks that its quite fun to watch me repair synthesizers and he also tries to help me in the best way he can without interfering too much with my work. I wouldn't be surprised if my wife has something to do with his sudden protest action since I know for sure that she is very skeptic about the current stock of boxes and cases that currently occupies the hallway of our house!

The Moog Micromoog is probably one of the most frequently visiting types of synthesizers in my workshop. During the last two months I have had four Micromoog's on visit, all with different problems. Last week I finished the work of repairing yet another Micromoog with a bad power supply, a silent oscillator, a non-working ribbon controller and a silent LFO. It took some time to figure out all the problems but as usual when it comes down to Micromoog's there wasn't any major issues it. A couple of new opamps and some replaced parts in the ribbon controller was all it took to bring it back to life!

Despite only having one oscillator and crippled envelope generators (only attack / decay) the Micromoog is really an amazing little synthesizer. Equipped with a sub-oscillator, a variable wave-shaper and a 24dB per octave low-pass filter it sounds great! If the great sound isn't enough the instrument also have a fairly open architecture making it highly suitable for processing external audio or controlling other CV-devices.

Modern Moog-gear such as the Minimoog Voyager is built with very high quality so it is not every day you get the change of poking around inside one. However, about two weeks ago I got a call from a guy owning a Voyager RME which he claimed didn't sound as it should. The Voyager had previously been repaired under warranty by the dealer who originally sold it. Back from the dealer the problem at first seemed to have been fixed but after playing on it for a while it turned out that every parameter was way off.

Although the Voyager still was under warranty; the owner took the decision to hire me instead of the dealer who originally had repaired it. When I got the Voyager I conducted an initial test and it sounded horribly out of tune. The oscillators didn’t track at all and the output level was almost non-existent. Opening up the Voyager revealed that someone previously had altered every trim-pot in the synthesizer, probably in a desperate attempt to fix the initial problems with it. All trim-pots had markings of being altered and one of the screws attaching the analog-board to the frame was missing.

Going through the Voyager Service Manual it took me about 9 hours to complete the calibrating procedures of the Voyager. Most of the time was however spent on implementing a software tuning application since my hardware tuning device suddenly decided to commit suicide! Being a little rusty on the mathematics of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) I eventually got the application to analyze the audio input stream from the sound-card. The output of the FFT was then used for calculating a the corresponding note, octave and cents of the main note. The GUI of the application still stinks but as soon as I get time to rewrite it I’ll probably make my little tuning application available for download for those of you who are interested … Please, stay tuned! ;-)

Although the business of NEriks Audio slowly is growing my main occupation still lies within the software industry. I’ve been an IT-Professional since the mid 90s spending most of my time working with compiler design, real-time operating systems and various process control systems. During the last couple of years my primary focus has however been on overall software design and software architecture so it is with great amusement that I currently find myself back to the roots of low-level programming due to some forthcoming products of NEriks Audio.

Some of the experimental products currently developed by NEriks Audio are heavily based on software for the controlling purposes of a device. I’ve always been very fond of pure analog signal paths so I will probably not go down the route of incorporating DSP’s into any of our products. At least not yet! One of the most time-consuming tasks has been to choose a hardware platform with a suitable micro-controller both performance-wise and I/O-wise. Once the platform was chosen I started to develop a framework which approximately 400 hours later had evolved into a full operating system with support for both multitasking and networking. Whether I will use all the features developed for the operating system is still very uncertain – However, I had a great time developing it!

Yesterday I finished the repair of an old Moog Micromoog. The S-TRIG input didn't work and my initial though was that it probably would be rather easy to fix. However, it turned out to be more difficult to fix than initially expected. One of the first things I discovered when measuring the trigger-oscillator of the keyboard circuit was that one of the opamps was faulty. I replaced the opamp but the problem with the S-TRIG input still remained. To my surprise the problem got even worse since the keyboard also stopped working. I started to troubleshoot the keyboard circuit and discovered yet another bad opamp. I replaced the opamp and tested the synthesizer once again with no luck. After approximately one hour of troubleshooting I slowly begun to suspect that the new opamps didn't work either. A quick check revealed that both of the new opamps was bad so after I replaced them once more the synthesizer finally started to work as expected.