SteveCastellano.com

What I really wanted was a K2000, but in 1991 I knew that the salad days of the Korg M1 were drawing to a close. I sold the M1 privately and bought this direct from our product rep for $25 more than I received for the M1.

A rack version of the SY77, this unit covers all DX generation FM sounds, with effects and samples. Not many digital synths at that time had resonant filters, so this one was head and shoulders above the rest for analogue emulation. The samples are mostly crap though. So are the internal effects, come to think of it.

In 1992 I was recording with a band at Kensington Sound in Toronto and the TG77 was my main axe. We had booked a graveyard shift that ended at about 3am. Spadina Avenue was clownishly wide then, before the LRT tracks went in and they abolished angle parking. I’m wandering down the middle of the deserted street, trying to hail a cab, carrying something that looks like it could be full of either stolen diamonds or C4, and I get stopped by a Metro cruiser. I explain to them that everything is cool, but I guess I’m not very convincing.

“Studios are open at this time of night?” the cop asks. I tell him sure, off-hours are often cheaper rates.

“So what’s in the box?”

I’m a little tired, and not looking forward to explaining as much as I suspect I will have to, but I answer, “A synthesizer.”

A wave of comprehension creeps across the cop’s face. “You mean a Moog?”

When I staked out my first 20 MB of server space on the internet, the biggest hurdle I had to overcome was a towering absence of content. In this respect as well as so many others, I failed to distinguish myself from millions of my self-styled webmaster peers.

I did, however, have a metric pantload of keyboards. And while that may not have set me apart from the masses of keyboard enthusiasts who I had already read about on the web, the keyboard collection was certainly the most interesting thing about my apartment.

Well okay the junkie prostitute upstairs was a pretty good conversation starter too.

At about the same time I decided to use the gear to pad out the web site, it occurred to me that none of the gear I owned was particularly rare, and most of it was already documented on sites dedicated to that sort of thing. As a result, I chose to document the instruments not with their specs and manufacturing dates, but with personal anecdotes about how I found them, or what I did with them after I bought them.

I used to have links from the museum to technical information on other sites. But at this point I’d like to think that anyone visiting the museum is clever enough to track down that information on his or her own, even without the handy links page that I’ve been slaving over all these years. And because I’m not currently selling anything (though multimeter t-shirts are on the drawing board), I’m free to over-estimate the intelligence of my readers with impunity.

As I compile the old entries into the new format, you’ll see them bubble up to the front page now and then. Until I finish converting them, the navigation link to the left and the museum directory link at the bottom of the story entries will take you to two different places: the former to the old museum, and the latter to the new one.

And now, a brief poem based on a page from an obscure vintage electronic instrument manual. An ode, if you will.

When my monosynth sounded off kilter
I berated the fellows what built her
I was at my wit’s end
Till I RTFM
Which suggested I backflush the filter

If anyone is interested, I’m sure I can come up with some very clever annotations.

I’m pleased to announce that when the new MSN search engine launches, SteveCastellano.com will still be the #1 Steve Castellano resource on the planet – the first place most folks here on God’s Green Earth go to fulfill all their digital Steve Castellano information requirements. And it’s all thanks to you, my faithful readers, because apparently most of you are msnbots.

Edit: And the 41st place ranking for “Roland S-50 Manual”, though merely by typing that I’m skewing the odds.