Restoring The Fostex Model 350 Recording Mixer

Last week I got me a really cheap Fostex 350 Recording mixer. My plan was simply to get something temporary to replace my borrowed Mackie Onyx 1620. Not that I thought this was a good replacement but something to keep me going. Already when I saw the ad for the Fostex it looked dirty and it was without any guarantees of working condition. But I thought it was worth the chance since it was not far away and it costed only about $50.

When I got it home it sounded all but good. Loads of noise from the pots and switches. To be honest I wasn't that pleased even to the low price and instead the Traynor 6400 that I got more or less for free ($15 extra) caught my interest. But that one wouldn't do as my everyday mixer.

Therefore I got into restoring the Fostex to some kind of usable condition. I took of the cover and all the controls and gave them a proper cleaning (fortunately I do not spend every friday night showering an old Fostex). The insides of the mixer also got quite some amount of contact cleaner to get rid of the noise. All had to be done from the top of the mixer since the bottom was covered with a giant circuit-board, glad I didn't have to do anything with that.

When both the inside and outside seemed fairly clean I simply put it together and connected the most important gear. It took a while to tort out where to set all the switches and even where to connect my amplifier and the iPhone I use for recording. But when I finally figured everything out, after consulting the manual, it really sounded quite nice. Compared to the Mackie it sounded kind of thick and it handled all the frequencies of my Solina String Ensemble through my DOD Phaser. Something I never really got that good in the Mackie. I'm really looking forward to record something with it to see how it can affect the final mix. Haven't thought to much about analog/digital or preamps in mixers before. But thinking about it, why wouldn't it matter.

Right now it feels really nice to be limited to 8 channels and it sure looks like a dream after cleaning ;-)

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Traynor 6400 & Fostex 350

Since my borrowed Mackie mixing console had to return to it's original owner I have been looking for cheap alternatives. So this weekend I replied to a classified ad on two consoles for about $70 together. And a couple of hours ago I picked them up.

The one that actually caught my interest was a Fostex 350 Recording Mixer. Not in it's best shape, but I gave it a try. 

The Fostex 350 Recording Mixer

After running through it quickly most things seem OK and I just have to dust it off to be able to use it. 

The second one a Traynor 6400 Mixer Amp wasn't that interesting at first but after connecting it to my new Malmsjö Combo Organ it really got me. A match lade in heaven.

The synth of the Malmsjö Organ and the Traynor 6400

It certainly looks and sounds as if these two were meant for each other. The built in reverb and quite powerful amp of the mixer brought the organ to life. Haven't checked all the possibilities of this one eather, but a proper clean up is a good start.  

6400 Mixer Amp Made in Canada

The in and outs of the 6400

The 6 channels of the Traynor 6400 Mixer Amplifier

The quite descent eq of the 6400

The sound of - The unknown Malmsjö combo organ!

Last week I got me a new organ again (you can read about how I got it here). This time a combo organ with synth part by a Swedish company called Malmsjö. However the organ might actually be a re branded Viscount, more about that in a later post.

The organ in itself sounds pretty much like an ordinary but quite good Italian organ. I haven't tried to many Italian ones but the Piano sounds are not far from but better than for example the GEM Instapiano. The organ sounds are a bit behind my favorite Philicordas but the bass and percussive sounds have quite some punch. I made a brief demo of the organ parts of it:


The most interesting part of it is the Synthesizer found on the bottom right of the organ called "Synth Effect". Actually it works mostly as some kind of filter for the piano (incl. spinett and clavi cord) sounds. With High Freq, Low Freq and Mid Freq buttons. Two simple envelopes ( kind of soft / hard attack) and a selector for square ore sine wave for the filter. Apart from these on/off selectors there are four sliders for Frequency, Amplitude, Response and Intensity.

To be honest though, whatever I do with the different knobs not much seems to happen. Might bee that all functions are not 100% working but since I haven't found any other demos or examples it's hard to tell. The Intensity slider however goes pretty fast into feedback on most settings and that might indicate that not everything is as it should bee.

I made a demo of this part as well:



As you can hear it's no Mini Moog that you get in the bargain with the combo organ, but it's a quite nice addition since you can mix the sounds freely and you also get a separate output for the Piano/Synth part.

I'm still trying to find out what the model is called and maybe if I find out more I'll be able to get more out of it.

I'll get back with some detailed photos to help trace it in a later post:

The unknown Malmsjö combo organ

There are quite a lot of used organs in the classified ads in Sweden. And normally I do not pick up a new one if it's too far away from home. However I look for organs all over the country and check them out a little extra if it seems to be something interesting.

When I discovered my latest addition to the collection it first didn't seem to be something special. But I have been curios about Malmsjö since the Swedish organist Nils Dacke uses them and this was a combo, which is always a bit more interesting. Therefore I asked for some more pictures and one of the pictures i received was this one:

I think you can see why it caught my interest the "Synth Effect" part. Was this actually a swedish combo organ with a built in synth? I starterd searching for information on the piece but found nothing, really nothing, on Google or elsewhere. It was really cheap (about $80) but located 350 km from my home, and not in a direction i normally travel so it was a bit to hard to pick it up and eventually I simply let it be.

But about two weeks ago the seller contacted me again and said the organ still hadn´t found a new owner. So I started looking for alternatives for the transport. Finally I put out a question on Facebook if anyone was going to do the trip from Värmland to anywhere near my hometown. And it worked, a friend of a friend was going to do the trip in just a week and was kind i enough to help me with the transport. And yesterday it arrived in my studio. I was quite eager to try it out, to see if there really was a synth and if so how it sounded.

At first I couldn't figure out how to get any of the synth effect features working. But finally I found out that the Piano part was the basis of the synthesis. And the synth effect was practically a kind of filter for the piano sounds. I guess you could call it a synth, but it's not quite a built in Moog or Arp.

More about the organ and it's sounds here

I stumbeled upon an Analogue Sequencer

A couple of years ago I bought a pretty cheap Yamaha AN200. Although Virtual Analogues in general and Groveboxes in particular hasn't been my area of interest I couldn't resist it thinking that it could be fun for the kids at least. They had actually just started to show some interest in some of my drum machines and synths. The Grovebox however didn't catch their attention for more than a couple of hours as they were fiddlin around with the preset techno rhythms.

Since then it has mainly been standing around in a corner in the studio just getting some attention every now and then when I needed some thick polysynth sounds. Actually it does sound quite good, but being bit of an orthodox when it comes to synths and organs I can't get the right feeling with the multifeature knobs.

Last week however I dug it out to try and use it as a sequencer for my Doepfer MS404. Don't know why I haven't thought about it earlier but I came across the idea after using my Roland TR626 as sequencer for the MS404 on my track DSTS. Even I realized that the AN200, even though beeing bit of a technobox, would be wiser to use is a sequencer instead of the TR626. One of the drawbacks, as I see it, with these multipurpose boxes is that you have to walk through the manual to get anything out of it. I mean with the Yamaha CS5or the Boss DR55 you just turn the power on and you know what to do. Anyway I sat down with the manual to the AN200 in the sofa this Wednesday to try to get a grip of the realtime and step programming features and pretty soon it came up to me...

It works just like an analogue sequencer!!! AN ANALOGUE SEQUENCER!!! I have had it for more than two years and hadn't discovered that feature yet (actually I think this was the first time I payed any attention to the manual).

Ever since I saw the Doepfer MAQ16 sometime in the mid nineties I have been dreaming about having an analogue sequencer of my own. And in the last years with cheaper DIY kits and the DarkTime I have been pretty close to ordering one. But someway with two kids, two cars and a house there is always something with higher priority in the households budget.

But now I actually own one, or at least a machine that works just like one. In the eight step mode (12 and 16 is also available) it is pretty straightforward and as long as you use it on an external synth instead of the internal VA you don't need to mix up your filter or osc settings with the pitch or the gate. I made a short demo of how it works on my Youtube-channel and hope to get a new track out on SoundCloud with this set up soon.

Another Philicorda GM760

Today I picked my second Philicorda GM760 up. Got my first one a couple of month ago but not all features were working the way they should. It was mainly the percussion-function that I wanted do get in shape, but I haven't managed to fix it yet.

The new one were on the way to the dump and didn't have the power cord so I simply picked it up hoping to get some use of it. To my surprise everything seemed to be working just fine when I connected it and I really look forward to getting into it a little more this weekend. Might even be able to sort out the problems with the first one now that I have one with the functions in order.

The two GM760s beside each other in the studio.

Philips AG7500 combo organ / AG7600 tube amp

Today I dug out my oldest Philicorda from the corner of my studio. The AG7500 is one of Philips first organ models. Released in 1963 it's packed with tubes both in the oscillators and in the amplifier. The amp,which also holds the spring reverb, is a separate unit mounted under the organ in the wooden stand.

One of the most elegant instruments in my studio

My AG7500 has found its place in the corner since it hasn't been working properly ever since I bought it a couple of years ago. But today I gave it a try do fix at least some of the issues on it. The organ was out of tune, the reverb wasn't working, several of the keys didn't trigger any sound and others didn't return after pressing it.

I started of with opening it up to see if I could at least tune it and get a little better response in the keys. Tuning it worked out right, but the other issues were a little harder. I didn't actually understand where the keys made contact or how I could adjust the response or the springs of the keys.

The right part of the organs inner seen from above. The twelve square silver pieces are for tuning the oscillators.

The left part of the organ seen from above. Input and output conectors to the right an the voicecards with lots of small lamps/tubes. 

The left half of the keyboard with the autochord part. Over that is the voice and vibrato selectors

The right half of the keyboard with volume, balance (between chord and solo sounds), selector (for the inputs) and chord mode switch.

Power unit and production label

The AG7600 organ amplifier
The amplifier part with the spring reverb is an interesting piece in itself. It has a 5 pole DIN output and a 5 pole IEC input connector and I guess it could work quite well as amp for any kind of instrument. This means my next project with this little thing is to build a cable or modify the amp to make it possible to connect a 6,3 mm instrument output.

Production label of the amp

Input, output, reverb amount knob and speaker outs of the amp

The insides of the tube amp

Since I couldn't get it running properly I wasn't able to  make a sound demo of it, but you can find some nice clips by others on youtube.

Philips Philicorda GM 760

I bought my first Philicorda around 1995 and then traded it for a Fender Telecaster about a year later. Probably a good deal then but ever since that day I have been looking for a new one.

A couple of years ago I then finally got hold of a AG7500 via a friend at work. It didn't seem to be working. But after a little soldering on the cables I got it running. However not playable in a traditional way. This one still stands in a corner waiting to be looked over.

About a year ago I then found my second one, a GM751. This one could not be tested where I bought it but since the price was more than right I took the chance. It sounded terrible when I first connected it at home but after a few hours connected everything fell in place without even opening it. This has been running smoothly ever since and has become my favourite organ.

A couple of weeks before Christmas I went to pick up my third Philicorda organ. This time a GM760 it's a spinet model with two manuals and bass pedals. And I didn't have the opportunity to test this either at pick-up but since it was completely free it wasn't much to talk about.

When I connected it at home everything, apart from the bass pedals and the percussion (fast, slow repeat) sounds, seemed to be working. The organ has a really warm organ sound with a marvellous plate reverb that is also possible to use on for example drum machines, synths or guitars when you use the Philicorda as an amplifier for external instruments via the connectors on the back side.

5 pole DIN input and output connectors on the lower left back side

I made a short sound demo on the parts of the organ that is actually working. First it's the clean sound then with vibrato and reverb added.

The problem with the repeat function didn't bother me to much until I saw this video where the repeat function is used (around 3 minutes into the clip) and I really loved the sound of it.

Therefore today I downloaded the service manual and opened it up to see if I could find some simple solution to the problem. I can tell you right away that my skills in electronics and in Dutch are about equal and it took me quite a few hours to get an idea of how things could be working in the Philicorda. The attempt to fix the percussive section was without any success. But I took some pictures of the cards, components and wires inside.

Compared to other organs there are plenty of space and pretty easy to get an overview of the things. Philips has also made several smart solutions with hinges and such that makes it quite easy to access backsides of the circuit boards, keyboards etc.

Here's some close-ups from the GM760.

The knobs to the left of the lower keyboard. Manual, Volume, Pedal & Balance.

The knobs to the left of the upper keyboard. Selector, Repeat, Reverbeo & Vibrato.

The far left part of the panel over the keyboards.

The voice selectors for the lower manual.

The first half of the voice selectors for the upper manual.

The second half of the voice selectors for the upper manual.

One of three circuitboards each containing four notes, loceted behind the speakers in the bottom section.

The power and amplifier part and perhaps something more that I can't recognise.

What's it all about

This blogg will mainly be about what's hapening in my studio. About my new and old gear, vintage synths, drum machines and organs.

I guess I'll start of with going through my current gear which consists of some Boss drum machines, a couple of analog synths, some Casios, and way to many home organs from Philicorda to Electone.

From left to right: Casio CZ101, Farfisa Foyer, Yamaha Electone D65, Philicorda AG 7500, Yamaha CS5, Solina String Ensemble, Philicorda GM 751, GEM Rodeo 49, Roland TR626, Yamaha AN200, Casio FZ1.