How far to your nearest neighbor?

I’m curious to know how many of us depend entirely on forums like this for resources in the modular diy or general modular realm. As for myself, I know musicians of different sorts within 10 miles of my home in a small American town. Some of them use expensive midi key setups, and most are of the general 3 or 4 piece band variety (bass, guitar, drums, etc…). But my nearest resource for diy modular is, for all I know, right here at this forum. So, hello from Huntsville, Arkansas, USA. I’m Aaron. Do you have any neighbors in the modular world?

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Check out (and welcome to…) this Kosmonauts map:

Kosmonauts - Google My Maps

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That is too cool! Thank you. It seems I am indeed isolated…for now…muahahaha!

I have just gotten involved in Eurorack and making electronic music in general, so I don’t know anyone here in DC who also does this stuff. I’m more involved in the electronics of it right now, but yeah, like you this board (and a Discord) are all I’ve got.

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Somewhat, but not even in the top 10:

stevie2’s nearest neighbor is HAGIWO at 1544 km (959 mi)
HAGIWO’s nearest neighbor is stevie2 at 1544 km (959 mi)
craigyb’s nearest neighbor is Cukier at 1077 km (669 mi)
Shiro_pb’s nearest neighbor is ElectricalMusineer at 971 km (603 mi)
Deadman_Hologram’s nearest neighbor is Vampyre at 684 km (425 mi)
Hanged-Man’s nearest neighbor is Swoop5994 at 642 km (399 mi)
Rusty’s nearest neighbor is Cukier at 562 km (349 mi)
256byteram’s nearest neighbor is handsomegenius at 540 km (336 mi)
Flounderguts’s nearest neighbor is heckseven at 539 km (335 mi)
Cukier’s nearest neighbor is Amix9 at 516 km (321 mi)

Right! I did see @HAGIWO out in the ALONE! for real. I’m pretty sure I have gotten help all the way from Japan to be be truthful. Domo harigato, neighbor! :grimacing::robot:. I know I’ve had contact with @Sussmayr up in KC no less. A relative stones throw from me.

I’m totally new at this as well (3 years ago I got my hands on an akai rhythm wolf). In fact my musical training has been entirely vocal for most of my life. I have “limited” training in percussion I know “some” guitar chords…both “could” amount to “Jack squat” but have proved useful in my overall understanding of music. As far as my synth experience goes, it is the most recent, most limited (total time spent), most self taught, and most original, and most fun I have had making music. It has also, collaterally, required that I learn new skills like soldering and schematics reading. I don’t really even sing anymore…but I am interested very much in sampling my own voice for synthesis processing purposes. So it has expanded my former horizons in ways I can’t yet describe. My first diy synth was made following Sam on a Atari punk build on youtube which lead me directly to LMNC. This forum is indeed MOST resourceful.

I’m so new, the only thing I know how to do is make APCs so far :sweat_smile: Gotta start somewhere, though.

As for neighbors, I live in a highly populated area North of Detroit, Michigan (US), and as far as I know, there are no practitioners of the DIY modular scene near me. A few musicians, yes, guiters, drummers and the like, but nobody into synth that I have found. There is a group about an hour away called the North Coast Modular Collective that I have been meaning to reach out to, but it’s really a matter of having the free time to dedicate to the hobby and craft.

What’s funny is there probably are other analog fans nearby, but the suburbs, dense as they are, are also so insulted. Neighbors don’t really talk to each other much, and everyone just kinda keeps to their own little fenced-in worlds. At times, when learning something new like how sythesizers work and how to make electronic music, I struggle without anyone to bounce my uninformed ideas off of so I can correct my understanding as I learn. Youtube is great and all, but it lacks the feedback of working with a mentor and trying to stay on a single path of learning the basics without getting distracted is tough when all your resources are online.

Isolation can happen even in crowds, I guess!

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That’s what’s been great about this place. My electronics knowledge was pretty basic back in 2019. I mean, it still is, generally, but I’ve learned a lot about what goes on in synth circuits. Unfortunately some of the people I learned the most from (cough @fredrik cough) aren’t here any more.

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Being stuck in the kind of town I’d rather not be, where being myself is not safe due to the demographics, and driving being a logistically complex luxury, I just do everything 100% online with packages showing up in my mailbox straight from China. I don’t even have physical access to commercial hardware modular gear. For all I know, the stuff I’ve been building is 100% incompatible with the real deal and and just happens to work for me.

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Word. There is only ONE radio shack in a 50 mile radius from me. They are EXPENSIVE! I get everything online, too. As far as whether or not my rack will work with anything on the commercial sent end, I have successfully clocked my diy 4017 clock divider (posted in this forum somewhere…) with my Akai rhythm wolf. That’s as much commercial interfacing as I’ve done.

Most of the stuff you see here conforms to some pretty common conventions… to the extent that there are any conventions anyway even among professionally designed commercial modules. 5 Vpp is common for audio signals but Sam’s not the only one whose VCO uses the 0-4 V, 0-8 V, 0-10.5 V outputs of the 3340 directly. Control voltage amplitude ranges vary, so do on levels for gates, and on levels and widths for triggers. (Almost) everyone uses 1 V/oct but no one agrees on what voltage goes with what octave. So even with commercial modules there’s some will-it-or-won’t-it going on. 100k input impedance is usual (with exceptions), and outputs are pretty much never above 1k, so that helps.

I have a Moog Mother-32, a BeatStep, ten or so Eurorack modules built from commercially available kits (except the µZeus PSU which I bought assembled), a couple of Eurorack modules of my own devising or some other amateur’s, and a lot of Kosmo modules likewise, and they generally all work pretty well together.

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Your designs are A+
I’m loving the reliability.