Ed DMX's lovely studio

MT reader and dude Ed DMX has a new site about his studio, stuffed with cheapish-but-culty gear: A Pro One, an Ensoniq ESQ1, old Roland vocoder and lots more. It's really nicely done, with stories about all the gear and loads of sound samples (Sample quote: "Recently I sold my Korg MS2000 because it was ruining the nice 80s vibe of my studio and also because nearly all the sounds it made were rubbish."). Makes me want to buy an ESQ1 - huge late '80s synth, digital oscillators, analog filters, cool vacuum-flourescent control panel, and they seem to go for under £150. There's also a fantastic interview with Ed on the Gutterbreakz blog, where he talks about gear like a real person talks about gear, rather than some tortured artist trying to express his soul. And no, he doesn't have a Oberheim DMX, but he wants one for his coffee table... (Thanks Peter, Nick and everyone else who sent this in)


Comments:
Ed DMX is litterally one of my all time faves,and i'm so glad to read about him in MT.and of course getting inside his studio is awesome as well...
 
The ESQ-1 rocks. Years ago, my first performance on stage with a keyboard was at a high school music night, with me playing my (at the time amazingly new) Yamaha DX-21 and my friend playing the ESQ-1. I was always kind of jealous because it even had a sequencer in it.
 
You should get an ESQ-1. I got one and it's hard to not get good things out of it. It also has a very easy to use interface for creating patches. Multi mode and the sequencers are not as easy tho...

For the price, it is very hard to beat. Not too hard to fix too : http://www.buchty.net/ensoniq/index.html
 
It has digital oscillators and uses analog filters. It doesn't have knobs but when you edit sound it basically goes this way : Press the soft button near the screen corresponding to one of the 10 params displayed then adjust the value with the data slider. Every section of sound design has its own button.

In short, it is awesome for the money.
 
skip the ESQ-1 and get it's bigger badder brother ther SQ-80
 
Nobody rocks the beatbox like the DMX does.
 
Yeah the synth sounds are interesting... and a compression example, hmm... but for my money the best thing on that site is the scratching and the vocoder! GO DMX!
 
Wow, this turned into an ESQ-1 love-fest pretty fast. One of those underrated pieces of gear for sure.
 
ESQ-1 was my second-ever keyboard. In 1986 I was rocking a Juno-106 and ESQ-1 rig on a 2-tier A-frame like the one shown. I heart the high school days.

Check out this pic from 1991. Still had the ESQ-1 but the Juno was replaced with a D-50. Don't worry, the Juno was at my brother's house and it's back in my arsenal. You were worried, admit it.
 
Yeah, that's an Apple ][+ in the pic also. I was still programming on it in 1991. *shamed*
 
Great, great post. Gotta love the studio's practicality vibe, AND you know that gear is well-loved and pushed to its limits. Conversely, there's no shortage of synthdorks who keep pumping loads of cash into their modulars/studios but haven't recorded or written a lick of music in eons - but I digress ... :-)

And, yeah, £180 seems a tad high for an ESQ-1. Agreed though - highly underrated synth in 2006.
 
Makes me want to take my SQ80 out of storage. Although for some reason I have a soft spot for the ESQ-1, even though it's basically an SQ80 minus the disk drive, less memory, fewer waveforms, and no polyphonic aftertouch. Better color scheme though. And the filters are awesome (but noisy).
 
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