Getting a Buchla Easel
 

So, I sold my Prophet 5 in order to purchase a Buchla Music Easel. Been wanting to get into Buchla synthesis for some time now.

I will give updates once it arrives.

Just had to tell fellow 'Slutz, you are the only people that 'understand.' :)

Hate to be a downer, but unless you're getting it second-hand, you might be in for a long wait:

Don Buchla Takes Owners of His Former Synth Company to Court - Create Digital Music

"Without any real first-hand knowledge of the situation, it’s still hard to imagine the Buchla company continuing to operate successfully under the shadow of this lawsuit – least of all if the document’s allegations are true, and it was already unable to pay suppliers or fill orders."

OT for a sec: God, that whole situation sounds depressing and horrible. I rewrote some manual stuff for Don Buchla years ago, as an internship project in my instructional writing program. I didn't know him well, but he's a good guy. Hope this works out somehow.

Sorry for the side track.

Yeah, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I'm just glad I got mine already. Most fun synth I have, and sounds amazing

damn that sucks! Why do so many synth companies end up in massive legal issues that result in the owner/startup person not only loosing his business, but the trademark of their own last name?

Blame shady attorneys.

They are top-engineers. Not top-businessman. With only very few exceptions.

Dang that sucks, I'd like to have one of these eventually. As if 4k didn't put it far enough out of reach, legal troubles don't exactly help. Maybe I'll go for an original... oh wait that's 33k. Hope you enjoy yours.

Thanks for the head's up. I wasn't aware there were legal problems. As far as I knew the company was under Don's control still.

As great as the P5 is, I say that's a really nice trade. I've been wanting a Music Easel myself. Report back and let us know what you think diddlydoo

Sounds like steve jobs' storry.

Hope they sort it out. Shame the company starter and the whole concept maker is in a situation like that. We dont know what happened though.

It kind of resembles roger lynn's story with akai. But then again we dont know what happened between BEMI and Don but would be very dissapointing for him to walk away with not being paid for his work.

You need to check out the threads on the easel re-release at muffs - seems to be a lot of issues with quality control on the new ones.

issues with quality control on the first numbers not anymore.

yeah mine didn't have any issues and I got it in november

"Steve Job's" story? Steve Jobs was the con man, not the one whom was conned.

May I suggest a Doepfer P6 case with hand-selected modules from different manufactures as an alternative?

None of the Doepfer cachet, but probably better build quality and probably less money. Oh...and no waiting list.

A Buchla is a Buchla. When you want a Buchla, most likely nothing else is going to do because of it's esoteric modules.

i hope to join you in owning an easel sooner than later.

Can you guys post some sound clips of your Easels? Being that most of us won't have access to one anytime soon. diddlydoo

Arent there already some alternatives in eurorack land?

Also it's incredible a company with such expensive products have so much financial problems.

Buchla is buchla. You either get that or you don't. You can match the functionality in euro, but it's going to cost you the same amount. Then you'd have a mismatch of modules not an instrument like the easel

Hmm, think Laffer Curve...

Exactly. Also, the Easel is a Semi Modular, not a modular. So it's actually a self contained instrument with the flexibility of a modular system.

I'd hold off on buying anything from BEMI until the lawsuit has been resolved.

I don't get the Buchla thing. I appreciate he is a genius and basically invented the synthesizer, but there is a reason Moog is Moog, and Buchla is Buchla. That's just me though, and I only desire to make and listen to sounds within the confines of Western theory.

I think a lot of Marc Verbos' new modules look pretty neat and sound quite good as well seemig to marry some of the east/west coast modular stuff. He makes some pretty madd techno.

Guys like Subotnik refused the use of any keyboard and found the idea of using electronic instuments for "old music" to be silly. Yet....you look at the touch pads they have out now...they may not be ebony and ivory but c'mon, its a friggin keyboard.

I would absolutely LOVE to have one, or borrow one to mess around with just for the experience. The newer stuff they are coming out with looks neat, but its my understanding Don Buchla had very little if anything to do with them.

This is the typical sad case of the elder statesman getting discriminated against for being old, and getting pushed out by shareholders and board members. Nothing new really.

There is a documentary about Don Buchla that I saw a was released at some film festival recently. Don't think its out on DVD/Bluray yet. There is a long triler for it out there if you look.

?? the Easel design with the touch sensitive "keyboard" has been around for decades.

I agree, I mainly stick to east coast style synthesis in the eurorack realm. I don't really get all those other things like function generators (ie. maths) and waveshaping/folder dual sine oscillators. The thought of people having a complete system without a single filter boggles my mind. mezed

Errr.... let's not confuse Western music theory (based on the division of the octave in 12 tones) with West-coast style of sound synthesis (based in modulating the oscillators at audio rates to achieve complex spectra).

Actually, if you're more into subtractive synthesis (harmonically rich oscillators into filters and VCAs), then you're doing East-coast synthesis. If you also quantize your pitch CVs into chromatic/major/minor scales, then you're doing Western music using East-coast synthesis. freshflowe

There's nothing special about not having a filter, and such a thing does not necessarily leads to non-Western music. The DX7 doesn't have filters and it's mostly used for Western music. The filter is only used to shape the spectrum of a sound, which can be also achieved by other means (like FM or Waveshaping).

You should try challenging yourself to record a song using no filters at all. Start with harmonically-simple waveforms like sines and triangles, and use controlled modulation and distortion to add harmonic content.

Sorry for the confusion I meant "east coast subtractive synthesis" IE. typical signal flow of OSC's-mixer-filter-VCA with LFO's and ENV somewhere in the path. I am all over the board before my morning coffee it seems. Thank you for the input though, it was rather informative. I have a lot to learn that is for sure.

No problem. Actually the distinction is a bit ridiculous and not clear at all, especially nowadays that most synths let you combine multiple types of synthesis.

Likewise, most synths these days can be used for both Western and non-Western music. There are CV quantizers and MIDI-to-CV converters that can work with the 1.2V/oct Buchla standard, and many synths can perform microtuning.

I'd say the Buchla Easel is very balanced in these regards. You can either use the keyboard and "tune" the synth to A-440 (or whatever), or not. You can use it as a basic subtractive synth (VCO->VCF->VCA) or not.