What a beauty!
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It is, even more so in person!
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iām foaming at the mouth, such a clean piece of kit!!
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Love it!
āThe Night Easelā
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arrived this afternoon, intension is pairing with some pedals but otherwise is the first sound source and heart of my new little mini setup. pickup cabling and monitors this weekend. stoked to dive back in and get going, havenāt owned an A4 for about 7 years
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It absolutely fits this description. This is an OG buchla easel (built entirely to spec with original parts). Made a few drones with it and it gets as dark and wild as it looks it would. A perfect noise machine
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Itās gorgeous! Very cool that itās all original spec. It looks a little bit thinner, but maybe thatās just the pic?
Iāve got an old Haliburton case kind of a dark green color, and I plan to eventually build a green paneled synth into it.
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i think thereās only 20 or so original vintage Easels that were made and still around. I know Roman (sputnik/black corp) had one and cloned the PCBs (and some 200 series modules etc) and sold those for a long time so people could build their own. the PCBs looked crazy because Don Buchla drew them by hand and left all his āmistakesā in there so there are circuits w/dead endsā¦ basically, that he didnāt useā¦ drawn on the PCBs.
when buchla started making them again they were eventually built at DarkPlace Mfg (malekko HQ) and I recall Josh (owner of malekko) matching all the vactrols so they were within certain specs so that they would all sound closer to the originals and be within a certain specification. this way the new ones would all sound close to the same and not be wildly different. vactrols are kind of a crap shoot and when theyāre made they can be very different tolerances and sound very differentā¦ so, someone can buy 1000 vactrols and maybe half of them will be in similar specification to get consistency of sound in the actual end result.
so, saying ābuilt from original partsā is a bit of an interesting characterization and might be more accurate to say ābuilt from original designā since the modern easel has some changes but is built also from original parts. either way, iāve not heard an easel that didnāt sound fucking amazing! and they are super fun to play and there are many many patching tricks.
Todd Barton played live a bunch of times at Modular8 when i worked there and those were always a joy to hear and heās really nice to chat with about all things. you should find him on social media and youtube. he does some patching videos w/different synths including buchla things.
also, Adam Scramstad who you can find on instagram, is a master of all things buchla old and new and worth following for his synth stuff. he understands them as well as anyone and is sort of mindmelded with the Buchla synth ideas.
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the roland sh-4d has landed in the tomte cottage, intentions are to replace the op-1f i sold as my go-to portable sound source. last night i realized its also a perfect ambient zone out machine.
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This was built by black corp. But youāre right, itās very possible that itās more of a built by original design rather than parts, since all the parts are not used and sourced in modern times. It sounds amazing though, so regardless itās pretty magic (this is the first drone Iāve made on it: https://www.instagram.com/share/BAHagTezJ1 ). But I guess I expected this from a buchla anyways no matter old or new.
The Todd Barton stuff is great, I wasnāt familiar with Adam so will have to check it out. Thanks for sharing this!
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Hmm, Iām not sure about the thickness of the original buchla but I imagine itās the same. Total height when closed about 7 inches.
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then youāre in good hands. curious how that came about. do the program cards work? i assume they do. thereās some interesting features in those cards.
the guy who bought Buchla and basically, imo, rescued it and righted the ship, so to speak, has been smart about it and focused on quality and treating it like an actual business with proper deals with 3rd parties and stuff. itās been a while but i met him when he came into modular8. canāt recall his nameā¦ itās been a whileā¦ but he owned a few smaller brands that made cool stuff and had a synth shop that he basically transformed into a distributor of his brandsā¦ i think thatās how it happened but i only had one conversation w/him and it was in a group. but he was a knowledgable guy about all things synth and genuinely cared a lot about buchla and sorting out any problems etc. i think itās why Buchla exists in the way it does today with fleshed out product lines and reliable delivery times etc.
An MPC 2500. First thing I ever bought and found myself missing the simplicity a lot.
Paired with 404mk2 and buddha thereās a lot you can do. Now thinking of heat+fx for the end of chain. And a bigger screen/desktop.
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I live in Japan, where Black corp also is set up. Have become acquaintances with them over time, and was lucky enough to be able to purchase this. Obviously glad I did.
The program cards work, but currently I have not spent enough time exploring them enough. They gave me two with the easel, so itās on my to do list.
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I ordered a pair of ADAM Audio D3V desktop speakers. They will primarily be used for casual listening and possibly some light-duty music production.
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Let me know how the low end and punch is. Those would be solid monitors for my small room. Usb-c to usb-c connection to the macbook is a great idea and I can connect Elektron synth directly to these monitors.
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- Ableton 12 Standard second-hand license
- Pigments 5
I have been playing with Renoise and VCV Rack and was curious about going more ITB. At the same time, I am having fun to create 1-8bar patterns that goes nowhere in the DT2.
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Push 3 controller. Intentions are lots of MPE-ing in Live.
First micro impressions are super solid build, veeery senstive pads (havenāt checked any settings yet) and nice clicky buttons. And yay for German efficiency with next day delivery. They must have been prepared 
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Just arrived. I donāt typically buy many records because I donāt typically have the kind of leisure time to relax and listen to them, but every once in a while I indulge for some particularly excellent albums, especially ones with artwork I like.
Pretty sure this is the prettiest record I own now. My intention is to blast off into space once the kid is in bed.
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