u/SecretsofBlackmoor

Was chatting yesterday about gear. It dawned on me a lot of modular users are very strict about their approach and only use modules.

Do any of you keep a non modular poly synth around for chords and pads?

What are you using to complement your mono rack?

I have several I use with my modular gear: Korg Poly800, Sonicware Liven 8 bit warps, and an old Ensoniq sampler.

I've been using a SQ-64 with some modules and discovered a problem people are likely misdiagnosing and then fixing by wiping their entire machine.

Power Issues I had in the past

I will add that mine was not working well with the Power unit it came with. It would get a scratchy looking screen on power up and remain that way. But my power supply is not a Korg brand unit. In my experience low cost Chinese knock off cables are not always within proper tolerances, I have had lots of these cheap imports cause me headaches in the past because the plug tolerances might be off by microns. When I switched to using a USB with the SQ-64 it just worked perfectly.

Not long ago I wanted to take some extra modules and build low budget extra synth. The only answer was a Behringer VCA and ADSR.

I was in IDIOT MODE and assumed everything would be the same

Those modules actually aren't bad if you just want to dabble like I do. The thing is, the ADSR is designed in an amusing way.

1 - If you do not pay attention you might assume it is set up so the knobs top to bottom are ADSR, but actually they are ADRS. When staring at a rack full of modules this is easy to overlook.

2 - If you aren't fully versed in all things modular you may be caught out by the writing S-trigger at the bottom. These days most ADSR's are V trigger. I had no idea of the difference until I got the Behringer ADSR and was having issues with triggers. It didn't help that all my other ADSR modules do not say V trigger on them.

I mention this because this is what caused my issues tonight, or rather, my non issue.

SQ-64 can assign individual trigger voltages per channel

I managed to get past my mental and emotional collapse of things not working when I discovered I needed to change the trigger type from V to S for that one ADSR.

Tonight I was messing about and who knows what I did, but things stopped working as I was patching around. I started doing all kinds of things to figure out what was wrong. Later on I discovered I likely just got lost in my patch cables and nothing at all was wrong.

Testing to resolve the problem also involved power cycling and lots more moving cables about and chaos ensued.

Gate LED Stuck on - Unit Must Be Broken!

But, during this process I became aware that my gate trigger light was on the whole time. I had never noticed this before and assumed something was wrong with my sequencer. This was supported by a quick search on the web for a gate light being on problem.

The web is in IDIOT MODE too!

Gate LED being stuck on appears to be a "known Issue." Well, it's a user issue not an equipment problem.

I found lots of posts by people saying their SQ-64 gate was stuck and that they had to do a SYSTEM RESET and lost all their data. I decided that before going so far as to delete everything I would do some more testing.

I started to mess around and the gate was stuck open so I grabbed this silly LED and fiber optic tester I have and just plugged that into the Gate Output. So glad I bought the rather silly looking thing because the fiber optics are curved so I could see the glowing lights as I was testing while seated in front of it.

Don't Wipe Your Sequencer Right Away!

If you have a stuck Gate LED on your Channel the solution is simple - Change the trigger from S to V.

In my case, I just had not noticed the gate LED was stuck in the on position the whole time. Since I am using S trigger it is supposed to stay on all the time. Additionally, an S trigger output will appear to misbehave when patched into a V trigger ADSR.

I'm not sitting by my Korg right now, but I think the channel trigger is assigned when in global mode by pressing a channel button and using the associated knob.