Jidis

:'( I hope that's wrong (or a typo). I just saw him on Gearslutz a couple weeks ago. ??? George

Walnut and Mahogany both look really "high class" and dark, but you can stain most stuff to make it darker (or red). I've had a rough time making either of those two look bad with various stains and top coats. Mahogany's grain is a bit more open. I've gotten a nice gloss on walnut with a few top coats and buffing. This is semi-gloss lacquer on walnut: That, IIRC, is actually with no stain (like I said, it's hard to make it look bad). Be warned about working most of that stuff. The durable nicer looking ones are some of the hardest ones to work. George

It's funny, the same topic of pooling together custom Eagle libraries has been going on for the past couple days in one of the Gearslutz forums: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/geekslutz-forum/147041-eagle-cad-libraries.html I think those guys are probably in search of big analog crap though. George

For anyone interested- Reaper2 has been in sort of a public beta for a few weeks and is looking pretty cool. They're building MIDI features right now so I figured someone here might want to participate. They are very open to suggestions. Still cheap $39.95/non-commercial and free/unexpiring for trial use. http://www.cockos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12381 Sorry to sound like a salesman, but the support over there is quite admirable. George PS- If someone here tries it, tell me how to get the $&*!%'n parameters mapped to MIDI (both ways). - maybe that's something they need to expand on 8)

Well, look on the bright side.You can buy a nice Weller/Ungar rework station which is supposed to last forever like I did,and have the same crap happen with the replacement tips, rendering the whole thing about as useful as the junk iron from Maplin after it dies. >:( I'll soon be in the market for that cheap import desolder gun people talk about. George

It's been on the Gearslutz forum for a bit: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/140761-channel-strip-control-surface.html Looks like quite an undertaking if it's supposed to link into the host's plugs for the GUI and all.

I think he may be missing in action. :o Keep in mind this thread is way old. I just brought it back because I found one of those boards. Coincidentally opened mine last night. That thing must have been nice as crap in it's day. It's got one huge expensive looking PCB spanning the whole inside. I'm seeing now that Rowan must have drilled new holes for fader screws, as they were held only to the PCB on mine. The buttons alone look to be pretty expensive. They've got socketed lights (pushed into two holes) inside them and removable caps. Wish some of the stuff could be moved around a bit though. It wastes a bunch of prime space, like under the transport, and the top area where Rowan added stuff. Hoping he gets back in here. George

John, I seem to recall that they did have known issues a while back with using slave devices on the IDE chain. Like it wasn't actually supported, but some people had made it work (probably with the same workarounds you found). On a side note, I run 9.2 on my G4 and swapped the internal at some point with a smaller drive I had free. It now boots really slow, like it's looking for a system disk and ultimately has no choice but to use the new one. The master/slave config is all the same, and I've used the control panel to properly assign the system drive. Drive contents should also have been the same. All I could figure was that it was brand or firmware related, but it's no big deal. George

Still wondering.... ??? -Not that I doubt anyone has tried, but does he just ignore you or say "F* you, I'm doing it anyway!"?

That's putting it mildly. So that >$500 winning bid is an actual purchase? Smash says he's done this before. What did he sell that time and has anyone talked directly to him about the fact that he was asked not to do this (and gotten a response)? Seems hard to believe. Sympathies to all involved, George

You might have mentioned that this thing is seven feet wide. :o :o :o :o Just grabbed one for twenty-five bucks here. All the pictures I'd seen made me assume it looked about like my Cooper CS-10. It's almost worthy of it's own stand. I've had a beige workstation/rack half done for a couple years. May be a good reason to finish it and figure a way to work this thing into the desk surface. Have you still got dimensioning data or anything? I haven't looked into the case yet, but I'm in no hurry. Take Care, George

Well, on a positive 3mm LED note: A long while back, I bought assorted 3mm's from this guy- http://stores.ebay.com/West-Florida-Components and liked the way they looked. About a year and a half later, I tracked him down for 100 more and asked if I could get the same stuff. He got me to check my old ones for a "lip" at the base and made sure his warehouse guy packaged the same kind. Good guy if you need diffused 3mm in standard colors (mine are with no lip). Says he ships worldwide, but I'm not sure if it's worth it. Don't mean to brag Sasha, we've got plenty of s**t to step in over here in the states too (remember, I'm the guy that just bought the counterfeit flash card ;D) George PS- If you do enough woodwork, you may want to look into a jointer table for precise edging and dimensions. You can make a pretty nice one easily out of a cheap router and a few scraps of ply. I rough cut everything around an eighth inch oversize and then just plan to slide the pieces across that a few times to burn down to my exact pencil lines and square things up.

Thanks Stryd! I just mailed them (SanDisk), but didn't get into any auction details. I mainly asked about the test results. If they offer anything that will be great, but if I get stuck with the card, I can live with it I guess. George

The guy literally had thousands of positives on eBay for the SanDisk cards and the labeling and all is perfect. Didn't realize it was such an "organized" business. Looking at SanDisk's site, where you can purchase cards directly, a 4G is in the 90 dollar range or something, so I guess $39.95 should have been a good clue. ;D On the other hand, the HDTach results did indeed suck, and I'm not sure how much of it a counterfeit card would be responsible for. I need to look into what the exact throughput specs are for these things if used with direct-to-IDE adapters, but it may not be much higher than what I got. It looks like SD's site may mention 10MB/s for a "sequential" read speed (http://tinyurl.com/2r9h5u). Here are some of the figures (CPU utilization bothers me the most): Not sure what I'll do. I wish I could track down a different CF card locally and see if it does any better, but it's definitely not worth 90 dollars for a real 4G (the laptop only cost me 60). I may either keep the card and deal with the crappy speed in the 98Lite laptop, or get a cheap USB card reader and use it as a flash stick. George (seller BTW is edepotxpress on eBay, but I think most bulk CF dealers on there are probably BS ;D)

No, I'll do that tomorrow, but if it's ridiculously slow, it may not be so cool. ;) I'll let you know what it does. George

If you're still interested, the actual flash card showed up today (the adapter's been here for a few) and it's in the 98Lite laptop now. I ran into every little crap problem I could, from forgetting to take a boot disk with me, to finding out that the adapter had ALL the pins (whereas the laptop IDE's are missing that one in the center). I had to drill out the female socket in the hard drive caddy where the covered hole is with a big clunky power drill (no electronics/Dremel stuff on site). The computer sees it just fine, and I was able to FDISK and partition it OK, but certain operations seem way too slow for some of the speed specs I've seen. I didn't have a 98 version of HDTach or anything there either, so I'll look into that tomorrow night to make sure it really is slow. I've also still got to turn off the VM. If Mike's here-- Was there anything special to do as far as formatting? I noticed when it was in a USB card reader under XP, the disk management panel had options for block size or something. XP also doesn't seem to be able to access the logical partition on it, but that's me just be because of the card reader or something. Take Care, George (damn glad to have that noisy HD out of there BTW 8))

Yes, definitely good prices there. The link in that other thread seemed a bit high for a switch. ??? Those ones you pointed to actually look just like something I've seen here on a cable box or something. BTW, the DVD players are probably the ones most likely to have the nav. switch (since they've all got menu navigation features), but I guess some VHS may have cool parts too. Some of the cheap import DVD players we get here seem to have a life expectancy of about 3 months too. All the more reason to rob them of their buttons. ;D George Enjoy the buttons if you can get them off. Hope you don't hate that 12-key thing as much as I did. It's funny, I see ones that look just like it on Eventide effects processors and stuff. I can't imagine how angry I'd be if I bought something for 2 or 3 grand with a keypad like that.

Yeah, I think that came up in that thread about reliable HDs. I've got one that I dragged around in a bag for years and it still works. I think you have to get an exact batch or run number to figure out what breaks and what doesn't, but that of course is only after a whole bunch of them have broken and word has gotten around. 8)

Thanks again Mike! I think I'll just go with whatever deal I can find on the regular one. Interesting to know what's in an iPod too! George (that adapter hasn't shown up yet BTW) PS- I was a DeathStar owner too (nice name ;D). Mine went within a few months. I thought Apple was doing me a favor by slipping the nice 7200rpm IBM into an "end-of-life" Mac line which was supposed to ship with a 5400. >:(

True in a perfect world I guess. :( I've mentioned it a few times, but check this thread for a recent description if you are indeed trying to use the Steinberg generic remote: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=9507.0 Again, if someone can make that work correctly, please describe the process. ??? Otherwise, please bitch to Steinberg and let them know that we can't all afford a WK ID controller. As they are still busy working on N4 (and fixing all the stuff people reported for the new Cubase 8)), it might be a good time to get them to tweak something. Take Care

Markusone, I did a similar one for the UAD Neve 1073 a while back (see below), and one for their Precision EQ a few months back, but never decided on a panel label design. The topic also came up a few days ago in the UAD forum after the release of the 88RS channel strip (very similar layout to what you want). Now for the downside. :-\ The DAW "link" David Banner mentioned really screwed the whole thing up for me. I guess it depends on what SW you end up running, but the Berg stuff didn't cut it (ironically, as they're the VST kings). Nuendo, or Cubase, only outputs the assigned generic remote messages when the parameters are changed from within the software. For instance, if I flipped the phase button on the 1073 controller, the plug would change phase, the onscreen GUI button would change state (if it was open), but the LED on my controller would stay off. However, if I activated the switch in the plug interface using the mouse (after wasting all that time building a controller), the LED would come on. Big-ass mess as you might imagine. I think there was someone here or in the Nuendo forum who claimed it worked OK, but I'm afraid that he had a different configuration somehow (maybe his box lights were linked to the switches). I tried just about every Nuendo parameter I could find. If there's anyone here who could come up with a solution, I'd love to hear it. I haven't let it stop me from trying (or pry me away from Nuendo), and I bump the topic up in the Berg forums every so often. Unfortunately, not many there are into DIY controllers, and the generic users aren't expecting outgoing messages for their lights. Also, if any Cubase 4 users should read this, it would be great to know if *anything* at all has changed with the new VST stuff (remote wise). BTW- switching from channel to channel is one of the positive sides of the plug link you're looking for (at least with Nuendo/Cubase). If I slapped a 1073 across the same insert point of each channel and assigned a remote map to the "selected" channel, I could arrow from one channel to the next, and the MIDI messages or notes I had assigned would be thrown out for the corresponding channel's EQ settings each time I changed channels ... perfect! This sort of prompted me to change my goals with the next (PEQ) controller. You may be able to get a more efficient control surface if you redesign the interface a bit, rather than trying to clone the actual plug's GUI. On the PEQ board, I switched a bunch of the controls from "stepped" knobs, to up/down pushbuttons with a row of labelled LEDs to indicate the current setting (works like an encoder/LED ring). I also went with as few knobs and faders as I could, but there are a few with too many steps to do the LED thing. The "regular" pots you're dealing with will be one of the biggest handicaps to the controller. In the PEQ, I'm hoping to incorporate a "set" mode, where it will store the most recent incoming knob messages (values) and I can tweak the knobs to match. However, the PEQ is more of a mastering EQ than the SSL or Neve channel strip. For something you'll constantly be inserting, or have multiple instances of, you may try to come up with an easier method as mentioned. Never ever found an answer to the question of whether or not the VST spec included any virtual meter data. - not that we'd be able to do anything with it from a generic link though. ;D Take Care (and please post if you start working on anything related) George

Mike (or anyone)-- I'm finally getting back on this and should have an adapter showing up maybe this week. I got a faster newer laptop and haven't been spending much time on the P3 I wanted the flash for. Unfortunately, the 40 pin full-sized adapters seemed to account for most of the neat looking ones I saw. I ended up with a single CF card laptop drive adapter. The choices of card on the other hand were sort of overwhelming. There are even ones which appear to have moving parts ("microdrive" or something). Is there anything in particular that I *don't* want in the CF card? I could probably get by with 2G, but 4 would be safer. They look to be in the $35-50 (USD) range for a 4, and SanDisk seems pretty common. I don't think it's worth a whole lot of money for what I'm doing on it, and I may actually be able to turn off VM on this machine as well. Thanks Again, George

Yeah, Robin (RTurner) was coaching me on muriatic acid etching a while back. I like the etched aluminum look a lot, and will hopefully be doing some soon. Very durable. :) Here's a couple threads: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=8108.0 http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=7775.0 (you may have to get toward the end to see the metal pictures) George BTW- Stryd has the link to that stomp box tutorial site (http://aronnelson.com/gallery/album24) in Artesia's thread.

You mean on the DVD player tip or that crap button board thing? ;) Glad to help either way. I'm surprised nobody here has already gutted one of those DVD panels for the navigation switch. It's a damn shame to waste such nice parts on "normal" people. George PS Again- Don't get your hopes up on that 12 button keypad I had on that board. I'm planning to use one as well, but I never really liked the feel. It's one of those things where you sort of have to "squish" the rubber buttons in to get a response. Probably good for occasional use, like maybe numbered cue/locate buttons or something though.

Simone, Not sure exactly what style you're after, but consumer electronic stuff can have some decent ones once in a while too. Check this thread: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=8839.0 Most of the "non-slim-case" DVD players I've seen have them, and people rarely get off their tails to use the panel buttons, so they're likely to be in decent shape even if the player is old and dead. If you (or anyone else) see any really cool looking ones, please post the models here. Remotes for them and other cheap consumer junk may have them too, but the panel parts on the players look really easy to remove and re-mount. BTW- I've got a JVC VHS player remote here with an awesome spring loaded jog/shuttle wheel with finger detent (PQ11374). --- Still haven't ripped one open to see what's behind them, but I suspect it's just cheap tactile switches. :) Also, I've got a JL Cooper CS-10 here, where they've used four 12mm square switches in a "diamond" pattern for directional buttons and it looks and feels really good for that, but you'd obviously lose the center button if you made something like that. The hole, on the other hand, would be nothing more than a big square. George PS- I meant to email you, but that button pad finally went out last week. It may get there this week.