dieter says:
"we have a lot of work because of the redesign of many
products which have becom necessary due to the
cancellation of some integrated circuits used in these
products. Among others the following products have to
be redesigned: MAQ16/3, Drehbank, LMK2+ and LMK4+. The
reason why we decided to cancel the Schaltwerk and
Regelwerk was because of the obsolete parts. A
redesign for Schaltwerk and Regelwerk was not
profitable because of the small quantities.
It is a lot of (boring) work but does not generate any
news that would be of much interest for the customers.
A bit frustrating but even this is part of our job.
We are also about to finish the d3c controller,
especially to fix the final version of the case
becauss during the Frankfurt Musikmesse many visitors
criticized that the distance between the draw bars and
the keyboard is too much. So the pc board with the
draw bars and the case has to be altered. And even the
bass pedal d3b waits for the finishing touches.
For the A-100 I have only one small piece of news: The
A-148 has been redesigned and the new version will be
available about summer 2005. The new A-148 will cover
the complete voltage range (same improvement as for
A-150 or A-151) and each sub-module can be set to S&H
or T&H via jumper. The factory setting will be S&H for
the upper and T&H for the lower sub-module. We are
also about to finish the case for the A-100 CV/Gate
keyboard. As we have to take into consideration the
planned wheels/joystick/button box we have to make
some preparations so that the box can be mounted to
the keyboards case in an easy way. I think that it is
important to have the CV/Gate keyboard prepared for
the wheels/joystick box.
The next really new module will be probably the
universal AD/DA module(s). The electronics is not the
problem for the module but it's very difficult to plan
the controls, inputs and outputs for such a versatile
module. We do not want to make 10 or even more
different modules that essentially have the same
electronics behind the front panel but only different
numbers and arrangements of controls, inputs and
ouputs. So we have to find a compromise between the
number of different modules and the number of
functions within each module. I will keep you informed
about the proceedings and our ideas.
I'm not sure if I already mentioned this but the
results with the BBD's are a bit disappointing. The
idea was to built a modular BBD module similar to the
A-101-3 modular vactrol phaser with separate inputs
and outputs for several stages. But daisy chaining of
e.g. 6 BBD chips causes too many noise from our point
of view. The standard BBD applications normally use
only one or two BBDs with low pass filters at the
input and output whose frequency is linked to the BBD
clock (e.g. switched capacitor filters with the same
clock source as for the BBD). It seems that our
modular approach will not work. But I hope that the
universal AD/DA module will cover a lot of the
applications planned with the modular BBD module. But
of course I know that the specific BBD sound cannot be
realized with the AD/DA concept.
And of course we still are about to finish the final
version of the TKB during 2005.
In any case the number of new modules will be less
than during the last two years as the planned ones
require much more research than the "easy ones" (like
for example A-143-1, A-143-2, A-143-3, A-172, A-197,
A-167, A-138c, A-133 which required only a few
research)
Best wishes
Dieter Doepfer
Bakis Siros
Parallel Worlds / Polariton
Athens-Greece
1 group owner
http://www.shimarecords.co.uk
http://www.ward12.com
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