Photo 1:
This is my main keyboard stand. The stand itself is a triple-deck QuikLock. The two keyboards visible in the center and lower decks are a Roland Juno-106 (upper) and a Roland JD-800 (lower). The JD-800 serves as the master keyboard in my setup.
The top deck shelf is made from a piece of 1/2-inch oriented strand board, left over from a roofing job. On the shelf are (left to right): an RC-100 remote controller for the Roland sampler (shown in the next photo), an old Panasonic monitor which is the display for the sampler, a Boss DR-202 drum machine, and a Fostex X28 mixer and four-track recorder. I don't record on the Fostex much anymore, but it still functions as my main mixer. Off to the left of the shelf, sitting on top of a CD case, are a Hewlett-Packard 3312A function generator, and a DoD FX50 fuzz box.
This shot is of the floor underneath the keyboard stand. The large item with the keyboard and all of the knobs is an EML Electrocomp 101, serial number 0708. (From that serial number, and the presence of some features that were adapted during the production run, I figure that it was probably manufactured around 1977.) It is shown with the keyboard plugged in, but about half of the time I remote-contol it with the JKJ Electronics CV-5 MDID-to-CV converter, which is the gray box sitting on its side on the floor. The large black stomp box in front of the CV-5 is a Moogerfooger MF-101 filter and envelope follower. The white stomp box with the two pedals is a Boss GigaDelay. Yes, I have to sit on the floor to play any of this.
The EML sits atop a pair of Syquest removable disk drives, which sit on top of a Roland S-750 sampler. This complex sampler has a built-in LCD display, but it's much easier to drive it using its video output, which is the monitor on the top deck of the keyboard stand in the first photo. I also have the RC-100 remote control, which is next to the monitor. With that combination, I seldom need to touch the controls on the sampler itself, which is why it is on the floor in such an inconvenient place.
This is the beginnings of my modular synthesizer. (You can see it to the left of the EML in the previous photo; it's sitting on the lower shelf of a TV stand.) My conception of a modular is that it will be composed of a number of "function blocks" containing modules to perform a certain set of functions. Each function block will have its own power supply, so that the blocks can be moved around as needed. This is the first function block to be completed; a second is nearly complete and when I get it finished, the contents of this one will be rearranged. At the moment, it contains (left to right): Synthesis Technology MOTM-890 mixer, MOTM-101 sample & hold / noise source, Synthesizers.com Q130 clipper/rectifier, Q126 voltage controlled switch, Q106 full-range VCO, and a DIY voltage adder/scaler. Other modules that I have, currently not mounted, include:
Here's my DIY 19-inch rack. The rack rails and supporting struts (the struts are not visible in the photo) are made from 2x4 dimensional lumber. The rails aren't pre-drilled; I drill a hole wherever I need to mount something. Everything is mounted with about a 1/4-inch gap between modules to improve ventilation. The platform is 1/2-inch plywood, and the whole rig rolls on four 3-inch casters. The top shelf is 3/8-inch plywood.
A Midiman 12x2 submixer sits on the shelf, which also serves as a place to put the headphones and hold my clipboard of cheat sheets. The mounted equipment, from the top, consists of:
There is an empty space at the bottom is for an amp. I've been using an old Kenwood KR4070 stereo amp (which I bought new in 1979), but lately it's having power supply problems, and I had it out on the bench at the time this photo was taken.
My computer is a Macintosh G4 1 MHz dual processor. The sequencer software pictured is Sagan Technology's Metro, version 6.2.1.3 as of this writing. I've been using various version of this software since 1992, and I've never found anything else that seemed as comfortable. I've gone almost totally to hard disk recording, and I use Metro for both MIDI and audio. The beer is an Anchor Porter.