New to the Group!

Hey everyone. My name is Dave. I'm 24 years old and absolutely obsessed with modular synthesis. I come from a very musical background and started on piano way back. I soon after went full force with guitar. I've picked up other instruments such as tenor sax, violin , bass, drums, larynx among others but guitar is still my main thing. I'm a bit if a gear-head. Before we get to the modular stuff, this is my main gear I'm currently rocking:

-'65 reissue fender twin reverb (for sale.. thinking a Dr.Z stang ray and 2X12 instead)

-'61 reissue gibson sg 

-home-made distortion (couldn't stand crappy tonebone switches). 

-home-made digi-delay

-home-made fuzz

-keeley compressor

-line6 modulation modeler

-boss tu-2 tuner

-univox microfazer

-boss dd-20 giga-delay

-roland re-150 space echo tape delay

-akai s5000 sampler with maxed polyphony/ram and full sampled mellotron/rhodes etc...

-macbook pro

-axiom61 midi keyboard

-altoids mintbox theremin

and......

-An ongoing diy modular synth. This is really all of you care about! haha. Let me explain a bit before showing you the pics. I've always loved synths and mainly analog/modular synthesis. I always wanted to buy one but to get a nice oldschool moog style big knob/1/4" jack equivalent.. i was looking to spend at least 3 grand which i simply could not afford. at ONE point, it seemed like it would be less expensive to build my own.... oh what a fool I am. I am only 2 modules in and have spend well over a grand thus far. Either way, it's fine since i'm learning alot, and have something truly unique. I also decided to go a direction that would cost more since i wanted bigger jacks and whatnot. After making a few stompboxes and getting some decent power tools, safety equip, soldering workstation and whatnot, i was ready to start the modular. It's not meant to look great or anything like that. It's a hobby for me and It may never see the light of day. The cool thing, there are no rules. It can get as insane as I want it. I followed the synthesizers.com diy cabinet and made a crappy barely workable cabinet. Made it from inexpenive "knotty pine" from home depot. I had panels cut at a local metal shop. All are moog specs. I had 1/2/3 length panels cut. Just using 1/8" thik aluminum plates. Nothing is properly measured out on the front. Everything's been eye-balled and has worked out this far. Theres so much to do that sometimes I just opted to make a quick decision and press on. I made a paia midi2cv8 for my midi-cv converter. I had to cut a gross hole in the panel since the kit wants to use 1/8" jacks and needed the dip switch to be accessible. My first/only other module past the midi-cv converter is an mfos vco. I purchased the pcb's from their site since they are actually cheaper than me doing it myself. I'm also in an apt. now so less chemicals the better. I bought their vco, 4-pole lowpass vcf, vca, adsr. The other 3 have yet to be created. All parts are in my hands as are all necessary tools. Just need to get it put back together since the move from nan-vic and away she goes. I am using 2 motm distro's. Only 1 connected at this time. I'm just using the 960 right now since the mfos modules are +-12v only and will work off of +-15v. I have the 990 as well setup so if i get my hands on any modules with the additional +5v, I'll have it all ready to go. I know there are other ways to go about this, but i'm still quite new. I'm using a power-one triple output linear power supply. their biggest one. It's rediculous. +-15v, +5v. I generally would run it to the 990 first, then to the 960. So i have groups of connectors for either the dual or triple power needs. I decided to go with mate-n-lok connectors. Connected wires from the +-12v, g, g on the pcb's to one end of the connectors. (they are free hanging but through a hole in the pcb to keep slack on them so they don't get tugged). The other end is the motm style connector to the distro. I had to hack one end of the cable off to create the mate-n-lok. that way i can unclip easily and they all have uniform connectors.... what else... I tuned the converter to 1v/oct using my multimeter and actually used a computer based scope on my mac for the oscillator. I had spent so much already that i wanted to try a free equivalent before buying more hardware. I ended up using the bram and sean smartelectronix s(M)exoscope and it worked like a charm.  had great visuals. I shaped the waves using that tool and listed with my own ears to eliminate sine distortion and whatnot. The synth doesn't do that much yet, but it works and plays in tune. I went for the temperature compensator on the vco as well so it won't slip. Soon enough, i'm going to piece it back together and start on the next module. Probably the vcf. There's alot I'm forgetting right now but it's been about a year of research (never soldered before that) and a year of collecting parts and building. here are a couple of pics. I left my digital cam in Nanaimo by accident so there are better pics on that for later. This is all I've got so far:

So there you have it. Questions/comments/ideas/thoughts? I live in Vic so you guys probably won't see me much at meetings but I'd love to be a part of the community. Bye for now. 

Dave