Most of Robert Vander's equipment is now obsolete but that hasn't stopped him from contributing to this month's system feature.

It's strange. While everyone else is looking towards digital technology to give their music a different quality, I seem to be completely out of step. More and more, I find myself becoming drawn to ancient analogue equipment. Admittedly, this is largely due to the prohibitive cost of much of that new technology, but also because I believe, above all else, that it is important to sound different and if that is as a result of using supposedly antique equipment, so be it.

The system I've assembled is one that I would imagine, is unique to me. All of my synthesisers, indeed, most of my recording equipment, is obsolete. I make it my policy to buy most of my equipment secondhand so it keeps its re-sale value and I'm free to purchase instruments purely on the criterion of sound, without having to take brand name into account as one has to if continuously upgrading.

My main monophonic synthesiser is a Moog Prodigy. This is a really underrated instrument, the only well known user I know of being Howard Jones. Mine has had a number of modifications carried out on it. There is now an auxiliary input, a noise generator (external) and the infamous S-trigger has been replaced by a standard ¼" jack socket.

This is coupled to a custom built analogue sequencer that was built for me by Jake Rothman (see this month's project. Ed.). Although it is only 16 step, this is generally quite sufficient for my needs. Each step has a ¼" trigger out, pitch control, filter and sync knob to make full use of the Prodigy's incredible oscillator sync facility. The sequencer also has an internal clock, trigger in, Reverse Sequence button, and a master trigger out. The output goes via a Boss TU-12 Tuner to ensure that each note is tuned to its correct pitch. The real beauty of the sequencer is its versatility — it can control anything from Simmons modules to a light show.

My other mono synth is a Wasp. I'd always dismissed this as little more than a toy, mainly because of its appearance, until I saw one being used with the Stranglers. I still maintain it looks awful but you can get some incredible 'wet' sounds out of it. Not bad for £25!

The Teisco SX-400 is perhaps the least known of my synths. It first appeared in the UK about two years ago and was imported in very small quantities. I believe Alan R. Pearlman was largely responsible for the design — certainly a lot of the technology was made under licence from ARP. The SX is a four-voice 16 memory analogue polysynth with 2 LFO's, and a degree of touch sensitivity amongst its features. One of its most useful facilities is the Unison mode. This gangs up the four oscillators into a fat-sounding mono synth but each oscillator retains not only individual tuning but separate footage as well — very useful. I think the SX is best summed up as being somewhere between a Jupiter 4 and a CS80. I have the output going through a Boss CE1 Chorus as the Teisco's BBD 3 Phase Ensemble, though effective, is rather noisy.

I'm not a great fan of drum machines at the moment. I'm more interested in Systems music like Philip Glass's where drum machines are of little use. I do have a Boss Dr. 55 kicking around though. This has been fitted with separate outputs as outlined in October's ES&CM. Sometimes I use the Dr Rhythm with my MPC Sync Track but more often it serves as a master clock or metronome.

Junk Culture

A patchbay is currently being assembled (very slowly) out of old GPO/Telecom junk but meanwhile everything goes direct to the Teac 144. I've had this for a year now and used to spend hours making demo tapes on it but in the last six months I've decided that the signal-to-noise ratio is too bad to do this seriously, so now I just use it as a musical notepad. I don't do any bouncing — it's noisy enough as it is — so I'm limited to just four tracks which can be both an irritant and a useful discipline. Usually, it's just enough to put down the bare bones of an arrangement on.

I master onto an Akai 4000DS, which leads a double life as a tape echo. I swapped this for a terrible Marlin Flanger Piano (part of my dark past) but as it only runs at 7½IPS, its days are definitely numbered. Cassette duplication is done on a Teac V/4RX which I bought because it had both Dolby B and dbx noise reduction and I wanted to keep my options open. This has been a disaster. I think Teac tried to cram too much into it (including a ridiculous 'Parametric Equaliser'), and the rewind mechanism failed completely after just two weeks. For the moment I'm using its predecessor, a Beocord 1200, again.

An AKG 41 EB is my only microphone, whilst monitoring is via DT100's or a pair of custom (okay, homemade) hi-fi speakers. Amplification is provided by a Quad 303 (excellent) and a loaned and rather noisy Rotel RA-310 Pre-amp which is keeping the show on the road until the arrival of a Quad 33.

I've not done much recording recently. With the emergence of FM and MIDI I've had to think very carefully about upgrading my system. After much deliberation I've decided to buy a Greengate DS3 and Apple II to complement my existing instruments and dispose of my present recording set-up. To this end I've spent the last few weeks frantically re-mastering tapes that I recorded on the 144. When money allows, an eight track, probably a Tascam 58, will take its place.

The track on the cassette, Victoria Would, was recorded a while ago. A friend had just bought an MFB 512 DDM and I just improvised over that. I own no reverb so things can sound a little cold so to give a little life to the melody, the Moogs harmonic sync-bending facility was used. This is controlled from the pitch wheel and unison control and a little modulation is also present. The chords were supplied by the SX400 and were built up note by note to allow harmonic peaks to surface separately. As the instrument is touch sensitive, the VCF was assigned to the keyboard sensor. When the keyboard is depressed the filter resonance can be manipulated once more.