Retro Gear With A Modern DAW

[THE INTRANCER]

Many of us have been in the game of creating music a long time, some of us may have had old gear passed down to us, left by Mum / Dad or relatives, we may have bought / borrowed from a friend, bought from a retail / second hand store maybe 15 to 30 years ago and recovered from the demise of the dust and cobwebs found in the shed, under-stair cupboard or worse the loft. If it was electrical, did it even turn on ? Were the chips, capacitors functional, battery working, screws missing, broken keys ect..?

Personally, I do have a few pieces of music gear still living in the loft, some of which belonged to my Dad and is 50 or so more years old now, the first midi keyboard I ever bought from a second hand store in the mid 1990's..that was a Yamaha PSS 760. Sound wise, it didn't do stereo but mono for some reason, and I lost the screws. An accordion and an electric organ that looks to be from the 1960's lives up there also. I'm sure I was hammering on it in the late 1970's. There's also a Spanish 6 string acoustic guitar that dates from the 1960's.

The oldest piece of Midi gear I have sitting in front of me that I can use as a computer midi device, is a Yamaha QY100 Music Sequencer. Small and compact with some cool features.

[BertKoor]

I've got a working Keytek (SIEL) MDP-40 drum machine from the eighties. The "M" in MDP stands for Midi: it sends and receives notes and program changes. You can check out the samples, as I donated it to HollowSun:
http://www.hollowsun.com/nostalgia/cont ... index.html

There used to be a JavaScript implementation doing all the rythms, but I cannot find that anymore.

Then there's two older guitar effects pedals in desperate need of repairs: a 70-ties CryBaby wahwah that acts as a volume pedal only (must be some silly thing, it's like 10 parts only) and a Pearl F605 delay/chorus that only outputs when the input is clipped. Too complex to figure out what part is faulty.

[FapFilter]

QY70.
Sold my original unit from back then in around 2010, regretted it soon after and got me it's supposedly superior bigger brother QY700 via ebay in not so stellar condition.
Apart from it's condition i also didn't feel the workflow, despite having more dedicated buttons. Must have been a combination of improvements to the OS on the later released smaller sibbling and my familiarity with just that unit.
Got rid of it soon and got me another QY70 in nice condition and will never part with it again, even though it's now basically just a toy - a really nice one though

[Scotty]

I run a pair of Korg Oasys PCI audio cards in Windows 98 boxes from 1999 and a box with 3 Creamware DSP cards dating back to 1999. A Moog mg-1 from 1984, Ensoniq DP/4 from 1995 and a old Macintosh SE/30 from 1991 - the rest of my hardware is more recent but that is the old stuff that I still use. These are all routed through my Cubase 10 rig via a pair of RME raydat interfaces and external converters. The SE/30 just occasionally runs midi for my Korg Volcas and other groove boxes.

[pekbro]

I have a Roland SC-155 and an R-8 that I use occasionally. Someone gave them to me
though, I've only had them a few years.

[BBFG#]

Roland R-70

Second oldest piece:
Korg N5.

[BONES]

We still have an Edirol UA-20 USB I/O device that I bought in 2003. My bandmate uses it in his home studio because it does both audio and MIDI. We also still have the MIDIman MIDIsport 1x1 I bought even earlier than that, probably around 2001, and that gets used on stage when we play.

Beyond that, I hate seeing things I am no longer using just lying around gathering dust so I've always been in the habit of selling them or giving them to someone who will actually use them. Over the last 36 years I've probably given more stuff away than I've sold - Roland SH2000 (my fist ever synth), TR-606 (first proper drum machine) two TB303s (which nobody was willing to pay for), ARP Axxe, Korg Delta, Roland RS-09, SH-101 and probably my Korg Mono/Poly, too. I'm always much happier knowing things will get used rather than sitting around in my garage gathering dust and slowly rotting away. The only really old thing I kept was my Electroharmonix Mini Synthesizer, which suffered a battery leak and hasn't worked for 30 years. But it doesn't take up much space and I never bothered to throw it out. It had such a great, raw sound to it. It's spiritual successor is probably the IK Uno I bought last year, except the Uno is far more useful.

[BBFG#]

Ha! Someone gave me a TB-303 in '84 because they overloaded it somehow and it just played randomly. The only thing you could control was the on/off. Couldn't be reset, it was what is was. I got the idea of learning to play with it anyway as a trainer, (because I've actually had human bass players that were just as 'broken'.) Ultimately, it became a great teacher. Think it was lost in the burglary of '98...
But otherwise, I never get why everyone thinks they were great for anything.

But the R-70 I use is most often for creating randomized bass patterns, that when something comes out good and different. I learn how to play it and then put it in the computer using better basses.

[Hink]

Alesis QSR, Roland A-33, I still have a Yamaha RX17 drum machine but no ac adapter, I have an Alesis Midiverb IV I still use too and of course a couple older pedals and huitars stuffs

[thecontrolcentre]

I have a Teisco 60F from around 1979 with CV/Gate connections, connected via the converter in my 1994 Bass Station Rack. My ATC-1 was new in 1997. I have a few 30 year old guitar pedals too, and a 36 year old Ibanez acoustic guitar. My NI interface is over 10 years old now, my samplers are from the 90s ... all still in use. Come to think of it, my hifi amp & speakers are 39 years old. Nowt wrong with old gear.

[AdvancedFollower]

As long as it has MIDI, it should integrate perfectly into a modern DAW. Many vintage synths even have third party VST editors, so you can organize and edit patches directly inside the DAW and use them almost like a soft synth.
For CV, there are MIDI-CV converters, and for effects, it's mostly just audio that you patch in.

I used to have a JX-8P, but I sold it. Didn't want the anxiety over aging capacitors and IC's, and wouldn't have had the soldering skills to fix any problems. So now I only work with plugins, and have anxiety over compatibility issues and old activation servers shutting down instead

[Psuper]

For the sublime enjoyment hardware has brought me over the years, I rarely pull any pieces out these days, its just not worth it except for nostalgia. Poly800, M1, K2000, PMD740, so many effects racks ahh the glory... so much stuff now packed away.

It's a different beast when you grew up with them, pull them out and go "Ya that was great fun, oh the memories!" then remember the billions of hours with V.A.S.T and immediately followup with "Yep, back into storage you go!".

I would still do some vocals on the 4 track due to the native genuine noise, yet plugs do it faster, easier, and no one can tell the difference, nor is it necessarily 'better', just different.

So as sad as it is, they're stored away, likely for the long term this time.

[Tj Shredder]

I still have an EMS Soundbeam and a Peavey MidiBase. Both can‘t be replaced by any actual gear...
My Yamaha CBX-K1 can, but why, it works...
For my Mac Pro I still have an old adb keyboard and an adb Kensington Turbo Mouse connected via a Griffin adb to usb adapter...
My oldest instrument is my violin though...

[Spencer Maddox]

I have a Microbrute.

You could say things are getting a bit Serious.

[carrieres]

Yamaha CS-30 : 1977, Roland SH-1 : 1978, Roland MKS70 : 1986, Oberheim Matrix 1000 : 1987, Yamaha FS1R : 1998