Showing posts with label Rack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rack. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

2Egress Studio Furniture and Cases

After the recent wave of interesting new Eurorack-modules you might run out of rack-space pretty soon...
I recently stumbled upon a Canadian firm that builds and designs studio furniture and Eurorack cases.

A few of the 2Egress Eurorack case-designs
2Egress is a three year old small business located in Toronto, Canada that specializes in technical furniture for recording studios and film editing suites.

"Growing up with an avid woodworking father, Brock inherited a love for all things wooden, and developed a passion for restoring classic racing sailboats.
These experiences have been stepping stones to the high quality, detail oriented pieces that he designs and builds today.

As a schooled audio engineer and musician, it became clear to Brock that studio furniture had become stuck in the 60's and 70's - ugly and utilitarian to excess, the standard pressboard self-assembled furniture available was not recognizing the unique needs nor aesthetic discernment of the industry.
Some time ago they had been invited to build a Eurorack case and have decided to continue building them ever since."

12U 104HP wide custom case for Damian Taylor
Recently they designed and built a double wide 12U 104hp modular case for Grammy-nominated producer Damian Taylor (Bjork, The Killers, Unkle, Arcade Fire, The Prodigy).
It houses four Doepfer PSU2’s and 8 Bus Boards, has two IEC power connectors on the rear and even a matching rear panel to compliment his studio space.
They included 1/4” connectors on the rear with passthroughs to the front of the case. 
See the building-process HERE, and the finished product with modules installed HERE

I really like this sort of craftsmanship, that's why I think it is worth posting it here.
If you are looking for a new case or rack, contact them to find out what they can do for you.
They mention worldwide shipping on their website...
Based on the pictures they seem to make good quality products with an eye for detail.
Watch their site as they will be adding some very funky cool cases in the very near future.
Loads of drawings are already just waiting to be pumped into their CNC machine...

Also check out their impressive portfolio at http://www.2egress.com/portfolio.html

Website: http://www.2egress.com/home.html
I also added their RSS newsfeed to the right column of this blog >

Friday, October 18, 2013

New Doepfer A-100 Case A-100PB Announced

New A-100PB case without cover
Following the success of the larger Doepfer monster base cases, they announced today that probably from December 2013 the "small brother" of the monster base A-100PMB will be available.

The new case A-100PB is very similar to the A-100PMB but has only half the width (2 x 84 HP for installation of modules).
You could say that this is the flightcased version of the basic wooden A-100LCB case...
The suitcase versions A-100P6 or A-100P9 can be positioned on top of the A-100PB because the width of the A-100PB is a bit more than the width of A-100P6/P9 and the footprint of the A-100PB is adapted to the depth of A-100P6/P9.
The A-100PB is equipped with one power supply (1200mA) and two bus boards.

New A-100PB case closed
The bus boards are located in the rear area (even those for the modules that are mounted in the front row). This was necessary to take advantage of the full height of the front area for installation of A-100 modules.
The max. depth for modules in the front row is ~70 mm.

A cable lenght of 20 cm for modules in the front row is still sufficient as the bus board is close to these modules (just behind the area required for the modules, same bus board position as for A-100PMB or A-100LCB).
The price of the A-100PB will be about Euro 550 (without modules).

Sunday, October 07, 2012

Random Video: First Stage of a Modular Synth

I found this informative and interesting video on the web about basic rack/case-building... enjoy!

Video: First Stage of a Modular Synth

" Just started building my Eurorack modular synthesizer. I wanted to demonstrate that building your own "Frankenstein" system is easy to do. This video demos, the set up of the power supply and bus board, and a single VCO module."

Uploaded by kj6bbs (Chris)

Monday, October 01, 2012

Modular In A Picture Frame

A great idea for a nice modular case can be found on http://groanmaster.blogspot.nl/

This project by Andrew Dobbels involves a real picture-frame and a 208 HP Eurorack with various modules.
You can find the making-of pictures on his site with explanatory texts, so you can build your own.

More pics HERE

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

The Eurorack Standard

Many early synthesizer modules had modules with height in integer inches: 11" (e.g., Roland 100), 10" (e.g., Wavemakers), 9" (e.g., Aries), 8" (e.g., ARP 2500), 7" (e.g., Polyfusion, Buchla, Serge), 6" (e.g., Emu) and had widths in 1/4" inch multiples.
More recently it has become more popular to follow the standard 19" Rack unit systems like the 6U (Wiard), 5U (8.75" e.g., Moog, Modcan), and 4U (e.g., Serge).
Two rack 3U unit systems in particular are notable: the Frac Rack system (e.g., Paia) and the similar Eurorack system.

Manufacturers using the Eurorack format include DoepferAnalogue Systems, and Cwejman in Europe, and Plan B, Livewire, and Harvestman in the USA.

The Eurorack format uses modules of 128.5mm (slightly over 5") height.
Horizontal width is measured in "horizontal pitch", where 1 HP = 5mm (slightly less than 0.2"); most manufacturers use a horizontal unit definition of either 1U = 4HP, or 1U = 6HP.
3.5mm phone jacks are used for interconnection of audio and voltage control.

The Eurorack format needs ±12V power (most other current formats use ±15V), in addition to +5V required by some modules.
Unfortunately, the power connections are not completely standardized yet; the format uses ribbon cables for power and a two-row ribbon cable connector containing either 10, 12, or 16 pins.
The 16-pin connector uses some of the extra pins to distribute control voltage and gate signals from a keyboard to the modules via a common case connection.

More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_synthesizer,
http://electronicmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Eurorack, and
http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2009/01/31/eurorack-modular-synthesizers/ or http://www.modularplanner.co.uk/ for suggestions.

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Racks, Cases and Monsterbases

In the beginning it was easy; you only had a few choices:
You could either buy a 3-unit high rack (A-100G3), a 6-unit high rack (A-100G6) or the 6-unit high suitcase version (A-100P6) from Doepfer to mount and organize all your A-100 modules.
Nowadays you can choose from a huge variety of other housings from Doepfer, from 32HP width miniature-cases up to 168HP monster-cases.
You can even make your own cases/cabinets with the low-cost DIY-kits containing rails, a power supply and bus-boards.

The most economic versions nowadays are the low-cost plain wood cases (A-100LC6/LC9) ,which cost about 35% less than the metal and standard suitcase versions.
If that is not your thing you can always go for the monster-cases;
Twice the usable width of a 'normal' rack, but finished with a black or grey finish in a flightcase-look are available in many different shapes and sizes.
There's even a monster-base that fits under these cases, with 2 rows of 168HP width, one with horizontal alignment and a second with a 45 degrees inclined row.

- note from the Doepfer-site: " ...the 12U monster cases are a bit difficult to handle by one person only "

I recently ordered my 4th metal G6 case because i already owned three of them that are filled up to the max. I already have some loose modules lying around that i would love to have back in my system again.
Budget-wise i wanted to go for the LC9-version(s), but then i had to re-arrange the rest of my system too, to give it a same look. Too much work for now.

For my next expansion i am considering building myself a cabinet, using 5 or 6 A-100DIY1 kits
That is probably by far the most in-expensive way. If i sell my G6-cases second-hand, i will probably even have some money left to buy me an extra module or two. We'll see...