Benge Studios' SS30

From the It's Full Of Stars blog

Ben 'Benge' Edwards seems to write this blog, although he goes by the handle Zagoba for blogging purposes. It's all about his studio and anything that interests him really. The whole darn thing is a dream for anyone who loves synths and recording technology. He's a lucky devil!

http://myblogitsfullofstars.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/stringy.html?m=1

This is a nice little SS30 demo he put up. 

I Dream Of Wires

A great film and well worth watching even if you're determined not to get sucked into that whole different mess of wires.

http://www.idreamofwires.org/


Also a Garry Numan song and a made up (by the NME) band.

Anyway, as I may have pointed out once or twice there are a lot wires in the SS30. A lot.

I've had a couple of sessions since the G boards were brought back to life just rewiring the K boards.

First off, two of the G boards where disconnected from their corresponding K boards.

De-soldering 

Lots of old, seventies solder. 

Finding a good method for stripping wires as thin as these can be a case of trial and error. Luckily I quickly hit upon using these tweezers to just yank the plastic sheath off.

Strip and twist, strip and twist.

Note the wires are tied with fine string dressing.

Ready to solder

And on the other side, another 49 wires from the K boards to the key switches.

The muck was there when we bought it. Also you can see more loose wires to be reconnected. That yellow one should be attached to AT1.

I had cut all the wires from the key switch PCBs on the assumption I wouldn't need them again. It was also to make handling the whole tangle of boards and wires less difficult. Now I decided to reattach them temporarily to make it easier to test things out.

I removed the switches as they were in a bad way.

And the finished job. A keyboard (if your fingers are earthed).