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Odd little stream of consciousness... Walking to the other room with South Park on the TV, they were making a sort of rap music scene. made me think of doing something similar as parody and using a drum machine. And that reminded me of my work.
I enjoyed working on amps and stuff. A lot of it is just routine, but I did enjoy solving the problems. My creative outlet was troubleshooting techniques. But every now and then a customer needed something special. MY favorite was my friend Donn. He was a solo act. He played guitar and sang. He had a CR8000 Roland drum machine. It sounded like a cardboard box, but it allowed him to toggle between two patterns with a button. And it had selectable fills. Each was triggered by a stomp switch. Most drummers won't let you easily toggle between patterns, let alone the half dozen fills. So with all the oatmeal box tone, he soldiered on with it. He came to me for help. He had a Yamaha RX11. SOunds nice, but can't control the patterns to his liking. The Yamaha lets you program songs - pattern changes - but they are locked in. You can't decide to jam on a chorus and extra few bars for example. He wanted me to make the CR8000 control the RX11 sounds. The CR8000 is pre-MIDI.
Donn worked an audience like nothing I've ever seen. The songs are just an excuse to be up in front of a microphone talking to the crowd. He might stop in the middle of a song - still strumming - and talk with the audience. SO he wanted the control of the CR8000. Not only that, he wanted to trigger fills. As it sat, there was a rotary switch to select a fill, then a trigger button. He wanted a large foot switch board with a button for each fill. Also the start and stop buttons, and the all-important toggle button. While we were at it, add a button to trigger the crash cymbal. Seems to me there was something else on the drummer. But the controller pedal also had four buttons along the top that controlled some triacs and outlets so he could flash a couple signs or lights.
Drawing on experience in the digital world, I made a little interface board and mounted a D25 connector on the rear panel. That allowed me to use a common 25 pin computer cable down to the pedal. If I set the fill knob to first position, all the data lines are left open. My interface then used diode logic to put the various fill addresses on the 8-bit bus when triggered. Each button closure triggered an output which put the various diodes on the data bus AND triggered the fill button. So it turned it into a one step..Half dozen buttons, he could step on any one and it automatically "selected" the particular fill and triggered it. Pretty cool if I do say so. Also added lines up - via the D25 - for th start and stop and the crash. It all worked.
Then another D25 on the rear. The sounds in the CR8000 are all analog. Crude analog. The digital control circuits feed triggers into the analog stuff. I ran the triggers out through the new D25. Over in the RX11, I made an interface board that basically "played" the pane buttons. The pane switches on the RX are matrixed. SO I made a board of opto-isolators. Each incoming trigger from the CR8000 fired an opto. The optos output side was wired across a panel switch. So now the snare drum trigger in the CR would also close the snare drum switch in the RX. So the CR8000 could "play" the RX11. Bonus, the RX panel was not affected, you could still play all the buttons. Likewise, in the CR8000, if we just unplug my interface fill board, the machine reverts to normal use. It worked flawlessly.
Then later, Donn decided he liked the sounds in the Alesis D4 drummer better than the Yamaha, and could I have the CR8000 drive that? Well Donn, the Yamah and Alesis are both MIDI, so a MIDI cable and there you go. But he also liked that the data wheel on the ALesis let you select whole drum kits, so He could change drum sounds between songs, say. COuld I make a button to let him toggle the data wheel up and down, and add it to the foot switch? Sure. The data wheel is a simple encoder, basically a dual circuit. One side is just pulses for incrementing, the other side is direction sensor. SO a little circuit board, I unplugged the data wheel encoder and plugged my little board in lace. MY circuit has two buttons that carry the pulse train, and the up button and down buttons have opposite levels on the direction line. That also worked well.
We did other things for Donn, but that whole Rube Goldberg had expanded the world of the CR8000 to the point we started calling it V'ger. After the satellite in the first Star Trek movie that left as a simple satellite and came back all added to.
But for me, it was a chance to be creative beyond just fixing something. We still have not found a drum machine that operates like that CR8000. Imagine a song programmed into a drummer, and then deciding as you play that this time we want an extra ten bars of jam before one chorus.
I enjoyed working on amps and stuff. A lot of it is just routine, but I did enjoy solving the problems. My creative outlet was troubleshooting techniques. But every now and then a customer needed something special. MY favorite was my friend Donn. He was a solo act. He played guitar and sang. He had a CR8000 Roland drum machine. It sounded like a cardboard box, but it allowed him to toggle between two patterns with a button. And it had selectable fills. Each was triggered by a stomp switch. Most drummers won't let you easily toggle between patterns, let alone the half dozen fills. So with all the oatmeal box tone, he soldiered on with it. He came to me for help. He had a Yamaha RX11. SOunds nice, but can't control the patterns to his liking. The Yamaha lets you program songs - pattern changes - but they are locked in. You can't decide to jam on a chorus and extra few bars for example. He wanted me to make the CR8000 control the RX11 sounds. The CR8000 is pre-MIDI.
Donn worked an audience like nothing I've ever seen. The songs are just an excuse to be up in front of a microphone talking to the crowd. He might stop in the middle of a song - still strumming - and talk with the audience. SO he wanted the control of the CR8000. Not only that, he wanted to trigger fills. As it sat, there was a rotary switch to select a fill, then a trigger button. He wanted a large foot switch board with a button for each fill. Also the start and stop buttons, and the all-important toggle button. While we were at it, add a button to trigger the crash cymbal. Seems to me there was something else on the drummer. But the controller pedal also had four buttons along the top that controlled some triacs and outlets so he could flash a couple signs or lights.
Drawing on experience in the digital world, I made a little interface board and mounted a D25 connector on the rear panel. That allowed me to use a common 25 pin computer cable down to the pedal. If I set the fill knob to first position, all the data lines are left open. My interface then used diode logic to put the various fill addresses on the 8-bit bus when triggered. Each button closure triggered an output which put the various diodes on the data bus AND triggered the fill button. So it turned it into a one step..Half dozen buttons, he could step on any one and it automatically "selected" the particular fill and triggered it. Pretty cool if I do say so. Also added lines up - via the D25 - for th start and stop and the crash. It all worked.
Then another D25 on the rear. The sounds in the CR8000 are all analog. Crude analog. The digital control circuits feed triggers into the analog stuff. I ran the triggers out through the new D25. Over in the RX11, I made an interface board that basically "played" the pane buttons. The pane switches on the RX are matrixed. SO I made a board of opto-isolators. Each incoming trigger from the CR8000 fired an opto. The optos output side was wired across a panel switch. So now the snare drum trigger in the CR would also close the snare drum switch in the RX. So the CR8000 could "play" the RX11. Bonus, the RX panel was not affected, you could still play all the buttons. Likewise, in the CR8000, if we just unplug my interface fill board, the machine reverts to normal use. It worked flawlessly.
Then later, Donn decided he liked the sounds in the Alesis D4 drummer better than the Yamaha, and could I have the CR8000 drive that? Well Donn, the Yamah and Alesis are both MIDI, so a MIDI cable and there you go. But he also liked that the data wheel on the ALesis let you select whole drum kits, so He could change drum sounds between songs, say. COuld I make a button to let him toggle the data wheel up and down, and add it to the foot switch? Sure. The data wheel is a simple encoder, basically a dual circuit. One side is just pulses for incrementing, the other side is direction sensor. SO a little circuit board, I unplugged the data wheel encoder and plugged my little board in lace. MY circuit has two buttons that carry the pulse train, and the up button and down buttons have opposite levels on the direction line. That also worked well.
We did other things for Donn, but that whole Rube Goldberg had expanded the world of the CR8000 to the point we started calling it V'ger. After the satellite in the first Star Trek movie that left as a simple satellite and came back all added to.
But for me, it was a chance to be creative beyond just fixing something. We still have not found a drum machine that operates like that CR8000. Imagine a song programmed into a drummer, and then deciding as you play that this time we want an extra ten bars of jam before one chorus.
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