Ensoniq ESQ-1

I bought this off of eBay broken. Thought it would be a fun project. I still do, but it turns out it is more broken than I thought it was. It only plays the stock piano sound and the screen is messed up:



The ESQ-1 is a rad synth. It has digital oscillators and analog filters, three LFOs, a cool envelope generator, and a built in 8 track sequencer. You can actually program this thing to sound like a techno-type drum kit. It's sick. I just need to get it to work. I have a feeling, at the very least, I will have to get the EPROMs (the thing that stores the OS) reprogramed.

I tried a hard reset, grounding the battery (to reset the RAM), checking the voltages form the power supply,  and checking to make sure all the chips are properly seated. I need to go over everything and clean off any corrosion. If it still doesn't work I think I will have to send the EPROMS away to get re-programmed.

Since I took it apart, here are some pictures:









I'll probably get around to some more trouble shooting over the weekend.

Toys!

When it snowed I got really board. That means that I surfed the internet a lot. I remembered that I love synthesizers, so I started to think about buying one. I also remembered that I really wanted a drum machine. This took me to eBay. After browsing for a day or two I found exactly what I was looking for. I was excited. So I bid on them. And then I won them. Here they are:

Oberheim DX. This is the "Blue Monday" drum machine. Well, its big brother the DMX is, but they have the same exact drum sounds in them, the DMX just has more. The one thing that makes the DX much cooler than the DMX is that on the back of it, there are thumb screws that adjust the pitch of the sounds. It can hold up to 100 sequences, you can change the number of measures in a sequence, the time signature, and you can arrange those sequences into up to 50 songs. And the buttons make a very satisfying click when you hit them.

And then we have the Roland Juno 106. This sound is THE sound of the 80s. It has 6 voices, a sawtooth wave, square wave, pulse width modulation, a sub oscillator, a sweet envelope generator, high pass and low pass filter, and two different chorus (or as I call it, the 80s button). 16 different banks of 8 patches. This is a really incredibly versatile synth.

I'm working on a rig for all this stuff. I'll post pictures when everything is set up.

I Dream of Modular Synthesizers

Its True. If you love electronics, especially stuff with a classic old-school look. There is something I love about having to patch in the sounds you want with real cables, not by pushing buttons.