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Anyone got a Waldorf Pulse Plus ?


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anyone with a Waldorf Pulse Plus mind taking the lid off their machine and doing a little photographing ?

i have one here which im rescuing from the dead & someone else bad attempt at a repair.. and half the wires on the CV board arent connected anymore; and rather annoyingly they don't goto one neat point for easy identification of their destination.

would anyone like to give a hand on this one ? :)

Thanks for reading.

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OK, can you handle an MP4 file?  I didn't have much time tonight, but I wanted to get something posted for you, so I grabbed the HD cam and shot a few seconds of video.  (Sorry for the bad lighting.)  I hope you can grab some pics from it for the info you need.  Let me know if that doesn't work and I'll dig up the still camera.

http://www.analognotes.com/waldorf/pulseplus/rightribbon.mp4

http://www.analognotes.com/waldorf/pulseplus/leftribbon.mp4

As you'll see, the middle pin on the left (five wire) cable on my Plus is loose.  If yours is attached, I'll love to see a shot of where it connects...  :)

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Thanks for that doug :)

should do the trick :)

yeah, its a right rats nest for a commercial product; the pulse plus has AFTERTHOUGHT written all over it...

back when it came out, it wasn't cheap, round about a grand (uk pounds) in the 90's  if i recall.. and as nice as they are.. its shocking that they managed to command that t price for a relatively rudimentary monosynth ! I guess adding the cv/av features was a way of adding a little extra value to the synth and tempting afew more customers.

worst part of it, was they chose to use some rubbish, solid core ribbon wire which is highly prone to snapping !

on the other hand, the main board appears to be identical to the vanilla pulse, which means this tells me something really useful.. how to add audio in to the filter of the plain pulse correctly (without a firmware mod i expect :) ).

and also how to add cv in and out to the plain pulse (will almost definitely require firmware flashing).

i could retrace the auxiliary cv/audio board to circuit diagram if peeps want that :) and given that the pulse is a long gone product, i guess i dont mind putting my neck on the line too much & going to the trouble of finding a suitable rom burner to read the firmware & provide it to peeps who want it on request :)

Thoughts ?

(see here for post with vanilla pulse pics: http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php/topic,8222.15.html )

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Thanks for that doug :)

You're welcome.  Thank you too...  :)

yeah, its a right rats nest for a commercial product; the pulse plus has AFTERTHOUGHT written all over it...

back when it came out, it wasn't cheap, round about a grand (uk pounds) in the 90's  if i recall..

With that kind of profit margin, I'm amazed that they managed to go out of business...  ???  ::)

P.S. Is your middle wire connected on the five conductor cable?

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its shocking that they managed to command that t price for a relatively rudimentary monosynth

Relatively rudimentary monosynths are everywhere, commanding unreasonable prices... You collect vintage synths, you should know!

yeah, its a right rats nest for a commercial product; the pulse plus has AFTERTHOUGHT written all over it...

<snip>

on the other hand, the main board appears to be identical to the vanilla pulse

Ahh... there ya go.

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yeah.. i do like to grumble about it tho ;)

the markets a little different now however, really perky soft synths and all..

about the only current monosynth that i know of thats shifting relatively well at megabucks prices is the moog. id be especially curious to hear of anyone else who's duplicating that kind of success on monosynths :)

in all fairness tho, the little phatty is actually pretty good value for money by their standards.. and the build quality is really really high; feels as well as sounds great to use.. its peeps like korg that with all their polyphony make me wince tho.. feels so horrible & plasticky, and alot of their new gear just sounds trashy and weak to my ears ..unless its an oasys ..which is ..erm around 5 grand !

Ah yes doug... will look up those wires soon...

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yeah.. i do like to grumble about it tho ;)

I can't complain too much - I've gotten some very good deals on some of my toys.  (Chroma, Prophet T8, MKS-80 - 'course, I had to do some repairs on a couple of them...)  I'm hoping to find a CS-80 and a Jupiter 8 one of these days, and I'd like an Xpander or Matrix 12, too.  I've seen some pretty serious prices on those things though...

the markets a little different now however, really perky soft synths and all..

Yes, there are some great sounds out there, but the user interface is still a big problem!

its peeps like korg that with all their polyphony make me wince tho.. feels so horrible & plasticky, and alot of their new gear just sounds trashy and weak to my ears ..unless its an oasys ..which is ..erm around 5 grand !

Heehee, well, I doubt if I'll be getting rid of my Triton Pro any time soon...!  ;D  I briefly considered replacing it with an M3, but I can pretty much accomplish the same thing (and more!) with the combination of the Triton and the V-Synth...  (BTW, five grand?  You must not be talking dollars...?  They're $7500 here in the States...)

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a chroma ! :) yey !

cs80.. rare as rocking horse doo doo.. the only one ive seen in the uk lately was someone advertising on SOS ..and 5 months on still wants NINE grand for it.

spoke to him once, as i inquired about some other synths he had, various bits.. but the guy was giving it the right hard sell.. and even if he isnt a scammer, he's sure trying to scam legitimately ;)

1,500-3,000 is probably a reasonable market price for one in really good nick.. i very much doubt he's going to get the sale he wants.

however keep an eye out for the lower end cs series synths ..the mini format ones ...they have the same guts in them; albeit less of it ..and go for far, far less. ..hundreds ..rather than Bentleys ;) ..im pondering getting one of the low end cs's ..can just stack them up in recording for layered polyphony/multitimberal if required :)

korg oasys ...5 uk grand i think.

yeah, some of their earlier machines ..and some of their higher end ones arent too bad on sound ...mind that bloody triton le & the radias make me cringe ..had encountered both whilst working on some peeps projects ..frankly ive heard better budget plugins :(  ..lots and lots of corner cutting going on with dsp.

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however keep an eye out for the lower end cs series synths ..the mini format ones ...they have the same guts in them; albeit less of it ..and go for far, far less. ..hundreds ..rather than Bentleys ;) ..im pondering getting one of the low end cs's ..can just stack them up in recording for layered polyphony/multitimberal if required :)

Well, I *do* have two MKS-80's, a couple MKS-30's and an MKS-50, so I've got enough sounds stacked up...  ;D

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  • 2 weeks later...
Doug: P.S. Is your middle wire connected on the five conductor cable?

after completeing a pile of must finish electrical tasks; the waldorf is next up; just looked into this.. unfortunately none of those cables are connected on my one :/

that middle pin does however appear to be functional; it goes to pin 10 of the first tl064cn opamp.. this in turn feeds the Tip of the Gate Out socket on the back.

Look around on your pcb; theres sure to be signs of where one wire sheared off :)

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well, this repair has been shelfed for now...

Fixed a bunch of stuff on it with regards to broken tracks & fried power supply; however the right processor 68hc11 seems to be skitting out & is generating random midi data making the bizzareist burbles. traced the midi in all the way to the bottom right pin of this processor & there appears to be no external interference between the socket & the cpu.

im guessing that despite the EEPROM; that these chips still have some of their code imbedded internally; so simply replacing them wont work ???

so... i've pinched two of the knobs & one of the original pots to make my first pulse perfect (damn getting hold of those knobs is -impossible- !) & this has been shelfed as a source of pulse spares ...roll on the next fixer upper pulse :)

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