Category Archives: Gear

Anything related to electronic music equipment

TR-505 individual outputs

I have been wanting to add individual outputs to the TR-505 for quite some time and after I  installed the HKA Rom Expansion I did so. I found this page and followed the instructions on it to build in the individual outs. After some testing I soon found out that the mod did not fully meet my expectations. The culprit of the remaining original mods is that for the most important sounds, the volume envelope is bypassed, thereby introducing digital grit into the sound decay. Continue reading

KORG device not recognized by MIDI driver?

Is your KORG device like NTS-1 or Monologue not recognized by the KORG MID driver and you cannot perform updates or update firmware? You can try the following:

With the MIDI driver you also get utilities to add and remove devices. With a default installation (Windows based systems) you can find them in the start menu under [KORG/KORG USB-MIDI Driver Tools]. Run the [Uninstall KORG USB-MIDI Device] utility. Click Next on the first dialog page and you will get a list of all MIDI devices found on your system. Make sure that under options (click <Option …> button) the checkbox [Delete KORG MIDI device only] is checked. It prevents you from accidentally removing any other MIDI device.

Now check the list of KORG devices. If the same device is listet more than once, it can cause problems if a new device is to be added. It can happen when you have used a device with on different ports I guess. It is best to remove all occurrences of that device if you do not know which corresponds to the currently active usage. Or maybe it´s a legacy device you do not use anymore anyways. You can always reinstall that device at a later time. Simply use the corresponding [Install KORG USB-MIDI Device] utility under [KORG/KORG USB-MIDI Driver Tools].

Once your MIDI device driver usage list is in order, you should have no problems adding a new device. At least it helped me to get my NTS-1 recognized after I removed multiple usages of my nanoKontrol.

monotron Delay CV-Gate mod

The monotrons are sweet little analog toys to fiddle around with. And if you own one you have at least once thought about hacking it, right? Well, so did I and aimed at the monotron Delay. For the standard monotron a couple of resources for modders are available, and especially dinSync´s mod seems to work well for it. But the Delay version appears to handle things a little different…
The main issue is that the gate affects pitch and vice versae.
But only if you look at it from the input side, where you apply external signals to the respective testpoints. From an internal point of view the gate signal is simply derived from the same source as the pitch. So if you apply a +5V gate you are already exceeding the maximum frequency of the oscillator. This results in only a short