I agree about those multicoloured LED’s deal breaker for me. I was lucky enough to get an early Bodyssey with the white LED’s.
The amber LED’s on the Marvin are cool… enough of a vintage incandescent vibe going on without it looking too busy. Especially when the brightness pot is rolled back a touch
I had a notification set for when they came in stock but I was kind of caught of guard. So even though I knew I wanted it I didn’t have to time to re-think it through. It seemed like a no brainer though honestly and I appreciate your views on it. I definitely feel like it’ll be a worthwhile purchase.
That actually seems to give you some nice control over S&H if it works throughout the range.
Thanks for the diagram, I may keep it handy when I first start to use it.
I ordered both Regular and Gray early on to get in line, while i decided between the two, and spent a month or so to decide before canceling one order. The colors didn’t bother me, especially given you can adjust the brightness
There is a use to the colors too. The five colors are not picked at random as i note up-thread, and working out the color’s meaning helps to sort out more quickly differences with sliders in groups.
The assortment of colours kinda fries my brain, it’s not an aesthetics thing, i knew that they were themed, but given e.g. they don’t change colour when you route osc3 to where osc2 would usually sit it’s not only ‘busy’ it’s potentially ‘misleading’ if you scan the colours - that aspect would jar with me as much, if not more as the various coloued leds would dazzle me
I find the orange on black very agreeable though and the layout can seem more obvious with those blocked in names, but i’m a sucker for the blue (because gr300) and i only used the blue interface on Arturia’s 2600 until they dropped that skin - my affinity for it has no connection to the history of the Marvin, but i wonder if Roland were borrowing inspiration from the Marvin with the gr300 colour (bizarrely there’s a gr300 preset in the Arturia plugin which is not too bad) and the gr300 came out just after ARP made their avatar guitar synth
Haha - yes, I had them on order since early June and they came last week. Only unpacked for quick testing and now they’re back in box, awaiting a studio overhaul not this but next weekend.
I somehow almost always end up with twins - OTs, AKs and now these guys .
Am I understanding correctly that if I order from Thomann to the US, then I just need a different outlet cord like the one below and the included power supply will work fine otherwise?
Just checked my Blue Marvin PSU. It’s 100-240VAC so you should be good to go. Input cable is a Telefunken or ‘Figure Of Eight’ the same as the standard Elektron PSU’s (and a ton of other gear)
Regarding build quality… what were the issues you’d seen? I’ve got quite a few B synths and drum machines and I’ve not yet come across and issues with mine apart from the wobbly octave switch on the Bodyssey. Well, my Bodyssey was a B stock and the only ‘issue’ I could find was one of the oscillators was out of tune and needed spanning against the first oscillator. No sweat, just popped the rubber bungs out of the front panel and tweaked it. Never drifted etc since.
I wish I had more time to play with it but I’ve only gotten an hour on it tops.
The blue is very bold in person, it looks really nice. The yellow fader lights go perfect as well.
Sound wise I can hear lots of potential and I think it sounds really good.
The sliders lead you to making a lot of interesting tuning offsets that you might not make on a regular synth. Lots of great patching options too.
I like the spring reverb in my limited use of it, dark sound but I like that about it.
I’m going to build a rack case for it before it gets a permanent spot. I was thinking similar to the original 2600 shape. Maybe a few extra U for some accessory eurorack to go with it. I was also thinking of wrapping said case in a bright yellow tolex
Squeezed in an hour to do the basic Arp 2600 style case design (had to do a quick render in yellow lol).
I’ll still need to make some adjustments when the Tolex arrives so I can leave space where it will fold over between the pieces of wood.
The opening will fit the B-2600, still need to add rack rails and probably bring the ports to the outside somehow.
A lot of times I’ll just take some measurements and build it. I know I have less chances of screwing up or not thinking of something if I do a design first.
After missing the boat on the last tranche of Blue Marvins at Sweetwater, I got impatient and ordered the standard model which arrived yesterday. This morning Sweetwater finally shows the Gray Meanie as in stock.
As they say, measure once, build twice. Just don’t put the Tolex on until you are sure.
There are things to discover after you build too.
Looks like there might be room there at the bottom for some high efficiency small speakers. The original were ovals but this is only being Future-Retro, which is better in my book than trying to be purely authentic.
I’m trying to remember if the original fed back from speakers to spring ?