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J.P.'s Gear Review v2.0 - Ep. 14 - Let's talk about vintage synths

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  It's been a hot minute since I had some time to dedicate to write about music stuffs on here. Since it's been so long, might as well make it special. Today, we will not be discussing about pedals, but we'll be talkin' synth . A very specific vintage one. It's going to be a story of rejection, rescue, and subsequent recovery, blood will be spilled, tears will be cried, and cold sweats will be had. Without further ado, let's dig in. First, a bit of history about the Korg Polysix The PolySix was one of the very first affordable polyphonic synthesizer on the market. Released in 1981 and commercialized for an unknown number of years (my Google-Fu failed me on this; if you know when it was discontinued, please edit the Wikipedia page for it), it made direct competition to the Roland Juno-6 that was released only a few months later, and was targeting the common mortal who couldn't afford a Sequential Prophet 5 or an Oberheim OB-X. At a price tag of $1095US in 19

J.P.'s (non-musical) Gear Reviews - The Xbox Elite Series 2 Controller Saga

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I know, it's been a while. Work has been crazy busy in the last few months, and blogging and gear reviews were moved to the backlog until things calm down. I hope to be able to make at least one gear review during my vacations that will happen Soon™. In the meantime, please enjoy what I dubbed The Xbox Elite Series 2 Controller Saga™. - I'll be the first to admit it: I didn't do all the research I should have done before buying one. In my defence the one I gifted my father last year works perfectly, so my experience with them has been positive. Until May of this year... Ordering from Xbox Design Lab Towards the end of April, I decided to splurge and get myself a custom Xbox Elite Series 2 controller. I owned an Elite Series 1 in the past and I really liked the weight and design of the controller, and modularity of the components. Except this time, I wanted it purple . I hopped on the Xbox Design Lab  website (shortened to XDL in the rest of the post), picked the colours of

J.P.'s Gear Review v2.0 - Ep. 13 - Audio interface upgrade!

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  Happy New Year! This article was supposed to be published before Christmas, but it slipped my mind... - It's December, it's the season of giving, and my audio interface decided to give me problems. Lovely. Over the last few months, my main audio interface - a PreSonus AudioBox iOne - started to show some signs of fatigue. It started by cutting out the first half-a-second of any sound played after it was silent for more than a few minutes. Then, the mic preamp started to not be as loud as it was originally, to the point where I have to max out the gain for my condenser mic to be loud enough to be heard. Finally, it sometimes decides to just not be detected when plugged in. All these issues started to get me slightly irritated, so I started to look for a potential replacement. The idea was not to buy one ASAP, but you know...  sales happened . Out with the old: PreSonus AudioBox iOne The interface I was using until December 1st, 2023 was purchased over five years ago, in Septem