TQ-5-- a biased eBay pick of the day!

The auction we have for a Yamaha TQ-5 ends in less than 19 hours. Why not buy it from us and have it in your home, making cool FM sounds and looking like something out of Highlander 2?

Here's a video that Gearwire made of the thing in action:



All proceeds from the sale will go towards funding more modules!

Tip Top Z3000

Our first dedicated VCO arrived today and it was immediately put to use... as an LFO:

Wogglebug Heart In

Sending a triangle wave LFO into the Heart In on the Wogglebug:

A big thank you to Tony for explaining this to me!

Are you in a shopping mood?

We're selling some things through the regular channels: eBay (a Yamaha TQ-5, pictured above) and Craigslist (a Big Briar(Bob's post-original, pre-current Moog company) theremin, a desktop iMac (w/ subwoofer), an Otari tape duplicator and a binder full of cool old Marvel Comics trading cards from 1990-2).

The Craigslist items are pick-up-only in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The TQ-5 is ready to ship!

Everything is in not-museum-but-otherwise-good condition (that is, it works 100%), with the exception of the Otari, which, as mentioned in the listing, needs some TLC.

If you're in the market for any of these, please get in touch! More soon!!

Woggleclock

Using a Doepfer A-143-1 to clock a Wogglebug:



I apologize in advance for what I'm sure is going to be a run of Wogglebug posts.

The Wogglebug is here!!

Our secondhand Wogglebug was delivered to my work address earlier today (thanks Hans!) and I've been counting down the seconds until quitting time since. 40 minutes to go...

The Wogglebug is a lot at once, but at its core it's a random voltage generator, based on the Buchla "Source of Uncertainty," designed and originally released by Grant Richter and his Wiard Synthesizers. I started (slowly) putting together our modular around this time last year and have wanted a Wogglebug in the system from Day One-- very excited to finally have it!

I feel confident in saying that videos are forthcoming. In the meantime, here's a Wiard Wogglebug (essentially two of the Make Noise modules behind a single faceplate), doing its thing:

New Mexicoe crowd photos

Tuesday's show at Union Hall was a complete success! Thanks to everyone who braved the storm and cheered us on.

Being 2009, most everyone there had a camera phone, and a couple of attendees have forwarded us shots from the night (Shannon Pet Cemetery took the ones in this post). If you were there and took pictures, pass them our way!

In the meantime, here's a snippet of our cover of John Martyn's "Over the Hill":

New Mexicoe, Union Hall, 8/18/09. from Scott McDowell on Vimeo.

PLL w/ guitar demos

Here are a few quick examples of the kinds of sounds you can get by running an electric guitar through a Doepfer Phase Locked Loop module:

VCO out:

Phase Comparator out:

GNARLY!

Motown Philly

We were in Philadelphia last weekend for a John and Benjamin with The Shamblers rehearsal. While there, Jess' bass (which Contras founder Terry Duvall found on the street in Pittsburgh years ago) finally, officially broke and she somehow found a new one in a thrift store around the corner.


Also, we spied a Shamblers sticker at the Philadelphia Record Exchange! Thanks for putting it up, mystery fan!!

Other updates from this past week:

--The Christian Pirate Puppets dusted off the cobwebs and put together a strong set for our show at Goodbye Blue Monday on August 30th including a NEW SONG!! First CPP show in a year or so and our FIRST NEW SONG IN A WHILE! It's very, very funny. Don't forget: all Goodbye Blue Monday gigs are free. We go on first, around 7pm. Be there!

--Next week's New Mexicoe debut at Union Hall (Tuesday, August 18 at 8pm) got a little writeup in the newest issue of Time Out New York. Granted, it's about Chris Forsyth, but still-- we're the "cheap pick of the week"! Woo hoo!

$750 fuzzbox clone

This is a Univox Super-Fuzz clone that Big City Music is selling. For $750.


To a certain extent, I can understand the gear sluttery that leads to spending $750 on a fuzzbox: you're not buying a sound at that point-- you're getting the prestige that comes from owning a rare thing. And if you don't want it build one yourself, if you don't want to source the parts, etc., paying a bit of a premium for one can make sense. But for a clone-- say, buying a Beano instead of an actual Rangemaster-- it seems excessive to me.

What are the outer reaches of what you'd spend on a piece of gear that you want but probably won't be able to find? Would you be willing to spend pretty much the same amount on a more readily-available clone? Also, does having a Mudhoney EP named after that thing raise or lower its value to you?

If it works...

(I'd hoped to add a video for "Starry Eyes" to this post, but apparently there isn't a good one to be found. If you can point me in that direction, though, please do).

"You Ain't Going Nowhere"

Pet Cemetery covering "You Ain't Going Nowhere" at our final practice for the summer, 8/6/09. Video from the following afternoon at and around Green-Wood Cemetery:

Gold Sounds

I needed to change the color of a couple of jacks for a project I'm working on. I thought about using spray paint but was worried that it would cause too much of a mess inside the jack itself.

I ended up using a Sharpie paint marker, which worked like a dream. Really fast and easy, with hardly any drying time.


If you're the sort of person who wants to color code your I/O, pick one up! Just be sure to paint the jacks before you install them (helping hands are, excuse the pun, very handy for this sort of thing)...

Things we acquired in July

Shark stapler, dinosaurs


Pig bank, cigar box


Fangs, "Stalking the Wild Pendulum," "The Center of the Cyclone," Miles Davis "On the Corner"