Monsterbase has landed

As someone with decades of experience in the area of electronic music, I can say with some authority that smoke pouring out of a modular is usually a bad sign. More on that later.

Those of you who have been following my twitter account already know I have procured one of the first monsterbases to hit the United States. Apparently, they arrive not packaged for individual sale, and analogue haven has the unenviable task of packing these huge things up.



I've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the monster base since it was announced at the Winter NAMM show as I've outgrown my frame and desperately required some room to expand. Another monster case is out of the question - I don't have the space. The monster base is the perfect solution - zero footprint - it occupies the same space my monster case presently occupies.

Overall, I'm delighted. And relieved. More space. More modules. More modular. This is a good thing.

The design of the monsterbase required some creative placement of bus boards, which prospective customers should be aware of. The first, flat row of modules suffers from a lack of depth to keep the overall size down. I applaud this decision. However, this means some modules, even some of Doepfer's own, like the A-154 sequencer controller, may not fit in the front row. Cwejman modules would be right at home in the front row.



The bus board itself is moved up, completely away from the row of modules to maximize the depth available. This means two things. 1) you may need longer ribbon cables. and 2) you can't easily drop a module in the front row - you'll need to take some modules out of the second row in order to access the bus board to plug in the ribbon cable.

A poll was run on the Doepfer mail list regarding the horizontal width of the monsterbase. The original design would have provided equal, clean lines from the monster base to the monster case. However, an overwhelming majority of Doepfer users wanted the ability to stack to two Doepfer portable cases side by side on the monsterbase. This required making the monsterbase a little wider. Personally, I find this a little offensive aesthetically, and of dubious real-world utility, but I'm apparently in the minority.

I have a pair of used Analogue Systems modules I've been waiting for the breathing room to put in. Also, I was slightly unsure about the arrangement of the power adapter and wanted the bus board to contain no other modules just in case the thing blows up. There seemed to be conflicting information on the web about the orientation of the adapter, and I contacted Analogue Haven for advice. I turned on the power and... **FOOM**. My instinct was to simply trace -12v and line that up from the bus board to the adapter to the module, but I was unsure if the adapter board itself did some extreme pin juggling, so I settled on AH's advice.This resulted in a copious amount of noxious magic smoke.



The damage seemed to be minor and I was able to use the -12v tracing technique to properly power the other module. So, I have to find a replacement component for this piece of charcoal on the module PCB, and hope that is the extent of the damage. So, in summary, my advice for connecting the AS adapter board is to use a multimeter to test voltage before connecting the module, or, trace the orientation of -12v. And, as the adapter board PCB is in line on a floating ribbon cable, I'd advise taping the contacts on the adapter board with electrical case to prevent accidental shorting.