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The Vortex is on my short list of *existing* rack effects I still have gas for, along with the Electrix Mo-Fx, and the Ensoniq DP/4.

The screen on my Fantom XR just crapped out, and I will be sending it to the Roland factory to get fixed. I already kind of needed to send it in anyway, to get the sample tools expansion upgrade, so that will be on the bill as well. It's going to cost a bit - $25 for return shipping, $50 for the upgrade, and god knows what for the new screen, but for what I paid for it ($400), it makes more sense to get it up to snuff than scrap it for parts, and it will be worth around $750 when I get it back, though I plan to keep it and put some of the expansion cards in it.

After that, the next rack synth on my list is an Alesis QSR (approximately $200). I used to have a QS7.1 keyboard and loved the sounds, but it was huge and I sold it. I'm definitely looking forward to getting those sounds back in a 1u package, and I'll probably get some of the expansion cards for it eventually too. It also has optical out, which I will be happy to use going into my Fireworx and Eclipse.

The Korg TR-Rack is another amazing workstation synth, the Trinity, squeezed into 1u. Easily found for around $200, while the keyboard will cost $600 or more. Atmospheric ambient heaven, lots of wavestation type sounds, layered soundscape stuff that immediately takes you to alien worlds. I love it and won't be missing the Fantom while it's gone.

NECRO for truth...

It is 2015 and there has been A LOT of recent talk about a racks...
Where are the boutiques?

Who else wants a stereo Octave Muff?

I've got the MoFX (3 of them), and the DP2 and DP4, and the Vortex (x2). All are great rack units. I am a rack junkie super bad. The MoFX has some incredible tricks if you change the delay time via CC controls on the beat, it will shift the pitch and cause a beautiful glissando. The DP2 and DP4 can do some great FX's and the Vortex sucks at any regular but is great at inspirational algorithms that give you new sounds.

Any modular company worth their salt is gonna make a bundle when they put a 19" powered rack and effects line together.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Make Noise or MI venture into 19" territory once they have fully conquered the Eurorack market.

You know what is so funny? This dude at phucking Sweetwater asked me in 2010 what I was spending on for my studio. I said, "dude, Eurorack, you guys HAVE to get into it." Only took them like 4 years to execute...

out of curiousity, i checked mouser for rack enclosure prices...
yeah thats the problem there.
mouser only listed prices for 1 or 2 units, and they're around $80 a piece. for just the enclosure.
not really a diy market price.

i has sad.

BLOOD EAGLE wrote:out of curiousity, i checked mouser for rack enclosure prices...
yeah thats the problem there.

Yes, this is the issue. I'm a huge fan of rack enclosures (I'm not going to post the pictures to prove it), and ultimately I aim to have the fabrication ability to pull them off...

...but at the end of the day, the 500 series "studio" modular format (which is rack friendly) makes the prospect of a high volume 1 or 2u case that does ONE FUCKING THING a labor of love. Small scale builders are better off rehousing for 500 (which is something like a third of a rack unit) unless the design demands the full real estate (most don't, and getting extremely feature heavy can be a risky proposition).

So for the time being we've just got repurposed ethernet switches and that sort of ugly duckling.

The rack pricing for raw units is because of datacenters, which also use the same sizing formats.

So the manufacturers are building for servers to be crammed in the boxes, and they're priced accordingly.

Sure at wholesale they don't cost that if you order a metric fuckton but....

I'd pay the premium for a custom build (which I'm still drawing up what I want in it) for the box, but not quite there yet.

Racks are lame as fuck unless you're the venerable RTF.

That's because *they* were the boutique, cool source of sound when I was a young lad.

Kids 20 years from now will be scratching their head at 500 series stuff.

series 500 I don't get. Yeah cool concept but its all phucking expensive and that's coming from a huge gear-head. While I could probably cram more functionality into a 19" 500-series rack than the equivalent number of 1U rack units, I really don't like the 500-series community vibe. Its sort of like "OMG, my ADC's are so much better than yours; I record at 1-billion kHz sample rate and 4096 bit depth."

I don't see the point myself, it's hipster modular.

Warpsmasher wrote:The Vortex is on my short list of *existing* rack effects I still have gas for, along with the Electrix Mo-Fx, and the Ensoniq DP/4.
.

I was underwhelmed by th mo-fx. The vortex is neat. The encoders are cheap and a little failure prone (but easy to replace thankfully). It's a really really shallow enclosure.
it's sorta "barely rack" I mean in terms of the actual footprint of the guts needing significant real estate