Announce when you receive your Solaris!

[Toby Emerson]

A wild Solaris appears!

Of course it showed up last week literally half an hour before I had to leave for a week for a music festival.

Everything showed up in excellent condition and the sound is everything I had hoped it to be - huge, warm, and crystal clear.

[BillySynth]

Hi all,
received my White Solaris came complete with a non retracting pitch bend wheel.

The first thing I did when I got home with the solaris was to test
all the knobs, buttons, controllers etc to see if they worked...the pitch bend wheel problem
was identified in a second....just wondering why this wasn't picked up during
Quality Control/Assurance???

I have notified the Australian Distributor.

Regards
Billy
Melbourne/Australia

[auricle]

I got mine set up yesterday It was waiting in Lithuania for a month at my friend's flat. He then kindly drove it to Moscow for me to get it past the nightmarish customs. After waiting a couple of years, I finally have it

Time to start learning how to patch this thing!!

[Astrolab]

Hi There,

I'm Astrolab, from Switzerland.
Two months ago, I received the Solaris and I have to say that it's a magical beast, unique to my ears.
My other big toys are: Yamaha CS-80, DSI PolyEvolver, Alesis Andromeda, Arturia Origin, Roland V-Synth, all Elektron Stuff and the mighty OP-1

I'm really happy with all these "très jolis" synths. All polyphonic, all gigantic, all very powerful, all different.

No bug, no freeze screen. Perfect. The only thing is - and I have to discuss with John, or other users in the same case, about that - the midi messages from the (awesome) Elektron Octatrack.
Midi notes from the Octatrack are delayed, totally buggy and that's completely out of use. That's the only thing that is boring me.

BUT a friend of mine told me that it's maybe because the Octatrack is sending toooooo much midi messages at the same time and the Solaris don't like all of these useless small talks

I hope I'll quickly find a solution. Maybe the Solaris is able to filter some messages????

Anyways, I'll post some pictures soon

Cheers!

[BillySynth]

Happy to report that my Solaris problem has been rectified.

Regards
Billy

[valis]

Great news Billy!

Astrolab, if you'll connect the SAME exact sequence to your computer and watch the midi stream (or record it into something that won't filter it AT ALL) maybe you can identify what needs to be filtered? As I'm sure you know, there's several small hardware boxes out there that can filter out Active Sensing, unnecessary midi CC's (some sequencers will 'update' current parameters on loop edges or etc) and so on....

I haven't noticed timing issues from Logic, Live or my JV-1000 (which I rarely use in production but makes for an easy midi controller/sequencer in my workspace when I don't feel like running a DAW).

[valis]

By the way, just wanted to post a note that after (has it been over 6 years?!) a very long wait I've finally gotten my Solaris! In fact I had the distinct honor of a personal delivery from John along with an in-home tutorial! All owners should be so lucky



Oh and since we also have a love for all things Analog Devices, I got the run through on how to open the case:



& where all cabling goes in the event I should need to say swap the mod wheels & XY cable or something:



Call me a happy camper and that John was willing to give me over an hour of his time made for a really memorable reception of my Solaris!

[BillySynth]

Hi

I think a video needs to be made by John showing how to open the synth and carry out some minor repairs by people who feel comfortable opening up synths/electronics. I know this voids the warranty but most of us don't want to ship our synths back to manufacturers who are located on the other side of the planet.

Regards
Billy

[valis]

I would assume John was an authorized repair representative but I never thought to ask about voiding my warranty... To be clear, I was allowed to do nothing more than hold my flashlight!

Kidding (mostly).

Realistically though there wasn't much reason to go in there, aside from showing me how to not pinch the ribbon cables when making adjustments to the color options on the mod/pitch wheels. (I chose blue & a pinkish shade of violet for now...) I don't think that voids the warranty but it's good to be aware of how to unseat the keybed & how to reassemble without pinching a cable... and it was nice to see more modern SHARCs than what my aging Scope DSP cards have

I'm not sure how much repair you'll be doing without a desoldering station and a good bench to repair on, but I'm purely DIY when it comes to electronics so what do I know . But I'll admit, if I was a stage performer and handy with such things I'd be curious if the mod/pitch wheel lighting kit has potential to run more powerful LEDs as it's built now... for instance this should be visible on any fan's phone pic taken from second balcony in a stadium...

[sam]

Are the LED lit wheels still available as options?

[John Bowen]

Are the LED lit wheels still available as options?

No, sorry.

[oopfoo]

Looks like the last of the second run units are arriving, as I received my Solaris two days ago. Have it right next to the Voyager XL, Taurus III, and modular, and have found it is more than capable of holding its own with analog heavyweights. With the Solaris finally in residence, the big VA sell-off is beginning!

[mambajim]

Congrats Valis and oopfoo....

[valis]

Thanks! It was a long wait but well worth it and well deserved!

Now I've got a 3D model of it to finish lol...

[John Bowen]

I think a video needs to be made by John showing how to open the synth and carry out some minor repairs by people who feel comfortable opening up synths/electronics. I know this voids the warranty but most of us don't want to ship our synths back to manufacturers who are located on the other side of the planet.

Good idea, Billy! I'll see what I can put together...