BENCH NOTES

Welcome back to Bench Notes! First, a big thank you for the warm reception to this new venture of ours. We’re having fun and we hope you are too!

This month we’ve been getting some major repairs over the finish line, including an Oberheim Four Voice and ARP 2600 among other rare synths and oddities. We’ll be sharing some of the weirder rebuilds with you in a month or two - there’s always more to look forward to from the bench! In the meantime…

THE FANTASTIC FOUR-VOICE

In a month of working through a handful of big jobs, the biggest was likely this Oberheim FVS-1 Four Voice. These things are musical monsters, and can be equally monstrous to repair. The circuit boards have no component labels and there are no tuning instructions to follow.

This particular instrument had some dead oscillators, missing hardware, and bad connections on the keyboard control and programmer modules that were causing some strange, glitchy behaviour.

After many hours of testing, researching, cleaning, repair, and tuning, this Four Voice now stands as a veritable feast for the ears and eyes. 

HEATING THINGS UP

The most important part of a repair is nailing the diagnosis. When it’s a more complex instrument, this can mean diagnosing it two, five, ten, even twenty times as the repair progresses. While oscilloscopes and  multimeters are some of our go-to tools, when we need to look at an issue through a slightly different lens, having a variety of diagnostic tools helps us speed up the process.   

Our latest acquisition is a thermal camera. Some electronic malfunctions will cause one or more components to heat up way above their intended temperature. Although it’s possible to narrow down a problem area through manual methods, using the right tool allows us to see how this behaviour might change over time in greater scope and depth and can set us on the right diagnostic path early.

Plus, it’s just fun to play with.

THE JUNK DRAWER

Some other tidbits from last month worth sharing:

• We looked at a couple of Roland GR-700 Guitar Synths, which don’t come around all that often!

• We got a fresh set of Rocket Sockets from the fine folks at LoveMySwitches

• Last but not least, we’d like to award “Employee of the Month” to our shop dog, London! Second time in a row!

LOCAL EVENTS

Synth and synth-adjacent happenings in the GTA.

Monday, March 11 | Toronto Electronic Music Open Mic

On the second Monday of each month, our friends at TEMOM hold an electronic music open mic night at Handlebar. 15 minute sets. All live. All musical styles. This Monday has a full house, so drop by at 8pm and enjoy!

Wednesday, March 13 | Render File

You can often catch our talented tech Sam making noise at Render File on Wednesdays. This casual event stars a different video game playthrough each week with an improvised score by a live band. This week’s game is LSD: Dream Emulator. Check it out at Wenona Craft Beer Lodge every Wednesday at 8pm.

—

Got any suggestions for local events we can add here? We’d love to hear about them! Just reach out and let us know.

If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading this second edition of Bench Notes! Feel free to let us know what you think, share it with a friend, or suggest new topics you’re curious about.

—The Team at Synths When