Continuing with the Buchla Music Easel

The cool set of videos someone posted on muffs would have helped me understand the pulser and envelope behaviour so nice work musicalfungus! Good that I worked it out myself I guess but shows this thing really isn't always intuitive.

https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2693394#2693394

Struggled some more with the Easel generally, reckon I  understand most of it now, even the aux card which will be useful. The keyboard is not responsive enough, especially the area around key 18 which seems very temperamental, notably after it's been on for a bit. Also the 'pressure' seems very variable - it doesn't seem to depend on how much of my finger is making contact but some random element I can't figure. Not good,
Apparently I should try using the ground connection which may make things better, may even make the tuning more accurate. Trouble is they fitted a banana jack for grounding and I'll be buggered if I'm butchering any of my precious supply just to make it work properly! Have ordered some more leads from CPC.

The replacement keyboard hasn't shown up and KMR have been silent - perhaps due to the onslaught of emails I sent about various issues. Still torn about whether to take up their offer to ditch the thing and get a full refund but that's a last resort.

Last week I expressed my frustration with the Easel keyboard in a video
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb4NUK0FoP5/?taken-by=smokyfrog

There's a long story about the envelopes, which I discovered after posting this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bb656fTF9nv/?taken-by=smokyfrog

Short answer is that it doesn't work as the manual (someone really needs to write a better one, for the current machine, one that doesn't claim program cards come with it, that the MIDI is shite etc. etc.). A guy has worked out a fix so if if I keep it I'll get Tony to do something. Tempted to get him to replace the envelope with one that works traditionally and bugger the authenticity.

Obviously still not up to doing a longer review, been close to giving up but not quite there yet. Cos of stuff like this:

So yes the pitch tracking isn't perfect, the envelope is naff, the aux card aliases like a bastard and I still don't have enough banana cables, but it inspires me to play as an instrument, which a bunch of Eurorack modules don't and never will. But the keyboard has to work better than it does.
I got an interesting document about solving keyboard issues from Buchla but Tony has pointed out that the grounding instructions don't improve on the existing grounding, through the mixer. Another user tells me to play without shoes. Willing to try that. Also willing to try both a replacement keyboard and grounding if I can find a grownup to make me a lead. Will ring KMR tomorrow if they don't get in touch.

Oh and our fecking telly died. Same way as my mum's. Seriously, bloody Toshiba, shite! Annoyingly, I can't remember where we got it and searches for the receipt have failed. So we'll end up paying a guy to fix it (hardware, power problem, the Toshiba support guy easily identified, suspect he's heard it a lot).

Almost finished the (short) review I've been labouring over, another module arrived. Eek! Good one though, tried it and instantly bumped up the 'do list'.

No great pix lately, sorry. Took my camera this morning but it told me it was exhausted. Probably the Easel finished it off, which is understandable.