Hi all!

So, first off, I bought one of these recently and wow, it's fantastic! It turns the synth into such an expressive performance instrument! Even just this, an oscillator and a VCA sounds lovely, never mind once you add a filter, divider, etc... :)

I led a small workshop on Saturday, getting people into synths, and it seemed everyone preferred the ribbon controller to the keyboard. (They even preferred to control the Roland 100m with this than its own keyboard.) It's simple to set up -- it's velocity sensitive and has aftertouch right out of the box, to the extent you don't even need any envelope generators -- plus it looks a bit like a violin fingerboard or guitar fretboard (especially once you put on little circular stickers down the side to show where the notes go), and it's just plain fun.

Seriously, I'd wholeheartedly recommend this to people. I got it for playing string and pad parts on with lots of portamento, but I think I'm going to be using it for a lot more. It's great!

OK, so on to the issue I've been having with this particular unit: it seems to intermittently think a note's being played when it isn't, forcing the gates to stay open when they shouldn't. (Yes, I checked the position hold switch is off, changed the threshold to rule that out, even unplugged the ribbon controller itself and switched it off and on again, no dice.) It first did this just before a talk I gave in which I was trying to demo with it, ack! It seems to break for about, say, half an hour at a time, then work again, then break again, then work again... at least, that's what it was doing on Saturday when I was getting some people into modular synths. It was fine before then, in my studio, although I've only used it a few times so far.

Is there any part of the circuit that's likely to fail in this particular way Is it something the trimpot might help with My partner's a dab hand at soldering, so we're happy to try to fix it ourselves. It seemed like it might be a short circuit of some kind, but we had a quick look at the circuit board and everything looks fine.

Anyway, don't let that put anyone off. This is a fantastic, totally underrated module. (Like the vocoder modules.) As far as controllers go, this talks to the synth on its own terms, in its own native language, in a way that polyphonic-looking, non-portamento-enabled, strict-semitones-only, sometimes-not-even-velocity-sensitive keyboards tend not to. It just feels *right*. It's expressive pads, strings, fretless basses and slide guitars, all rolled into one.

Thanks,
Zoë.