DIY

The last few weeks have been all about sitting round the house and not the studio, so I have been keeping myself busy by tinkering with the Serge modular, and trying to build the custom Serge/Doepfer panel for it. I decided to go with knobs which match the later Serge STS modules, as they are exactly the right size for the Doepfer panel holes, and are really nice to use. I got them from Small Bear Electronics in America, who provide an excellent service

What was really hard was working out the measurements for the holes in the panel artwork. I ended up using some digital calipers to measure everything out, then I made a panel design in Illustrator

Then I dyed the paper to match the old Serge panels, printed it out, laminated it and punched the holes. After about 5 attempts, the holes actually started to line up with the metal face plates on the Doepfer modules!

I then populated the panel and created the 'junctions' and fixed it all together. There are some extra holes I made above and below each module so that I can add functions later if necessary. Luckily the Serge and Doepfer modules both use +/- 12v, so I just connected the power supply rails together, and it works!

Another thing I wanted to try were some of those Stackcable cables, so that I could build crazy patches with minijacks instead of bananas. I had to import them from Germany [from www.schneidersbuero.de - great service again]

Here are some crappy pics from my phone I took late last night. I'll take some better ones soon....