The panels and brackets came in a few days ago, so I put the bad stereo jacks I had and put the pots in to make myself feel better… Ha.
Even if I were to try and source parts to get this finished, I’m finding even more things that are wrong.
For one, the Rim Shot panel came with 4 holes for potentiometers and only 1 came with the Rim Shot. Why? Well, apparently the other three pots are for a tuning mod that I didn’t know about because there was absolutely no information about it whatsoever in the documentation. That would be all well and good, I’d just have one knob and three holes, except the mounting bracket that’s keeping the PCB from flopping all around behind the panel is bolted onto the panel using the potentiometer. So without at least two, the bracket swings back and forth. I’d do the mod, but these look like a specific kind of pot with a specific kind of shaft, and there isn’t much wiggle room for fudging a few of the parameters.
Another thing, the mounting bracket and the spacers that came with the panel for the Snare don’t allow any room for the noise board behind the panel. Meaning, even if I did have headers, I would still have to buy shorter standoffs to install it into a rack, or the noise board sticks out so far that it would short against any adjacent module.
I love the 909, I love soldering, I applaud hexinverter.net for what they’ve done for the Eurorack community, I think Hex is a genius of sorts… But obviously not the practical kind. These modules have been hell (nearly) from start to non-finish. I couldn’t order the PCBs because the website wasn’t clear when things were out of stock, the BOM and the Mouser cart he put together were both missing integral parts that are mentioned nowhere in the documentation, the panels come from some guy who does a really good job but doesn’t talk to you at all after you order and doesn’t notify when he ships things…
The PCB and the designs are absolutely perfect. I love the attention to detail, the matte soldermask, the incredibly attractive arrangement of the parts, the wide solder pads… For a half a day I was in electronics heaven… for two months I was a nervous wreck.
I think this goes to show that the more minds involved, the more hands that have to come together for one particular task, the greater there is that something won’t get done by a deadline. If Hex offered complete kits from his website that someone looked over before shipping them out, I’d have two wonderfully noisy 909 drum voices. But… things don’t work that way, and I thought that 10 weeks was ample time to acquire anything I’d need to finish, I just didn’t anticipating needing more than I needed (?). This makes me think about work situations, about being asked to get a product ready before a deadline… How much work is actually involve in double- triple- and quadruple-checking absolutely every minor and seemingly insignificant detail before pressing onward. It requires a lot of skill, and probably requires more than one brain to do it properly.
Well, I hope I don’t lose credit, but if I do, I’m not sure who to blame…
M. Petersen Projects 