About Midwest Analog

It was a very sad day when Midwest Analog Products announced their closing. For years, MAP had been providing very low cost projects, books and selected components from their website. Apparently, the time required to run the business wasn't worth the small profit they were generating, and the owner decided it was time to close the shop.

Before the announcement, I had only purchased two items from MAP: The ADV-Kick analog bass drum module and Thomas Henry's "Electronic Drum Cookbook". The ADV-Kick was an interesting module (and designed directly from info in the Drum Cookbook). It is missing a few controls that I felt were important, but it was a good deal, and worked well (There's some info about it in my Modular Synth section). My luck with the ADV-Kick made me decide to purchase 2 more kits in MAP's final clearance sale: I bought the MTS-100 and ADV-MIDI.

The ADV-MIDI

The ADV-MIDI is one of several MIDI boxes that was available from MAP. It's an 8 channel MIDI-to-gate box designed primarily to control analog drums. It runs on a pre-programmed MC68705P3 and came with a detailed assembly manual. Here's a brief list of the specs:

• MIDI In and Thru (x2)
• 8 drum outputs with LEDs
• 24ppqn clock, start, continue and stop outputs (DIN-sync)
• +5V, 5mS trigger outputs.
• MIDI channels 1-16 and omni mode
• Polyphonic operation (8 "simultaneous" drums)
• Sequential mode (notes 36-43) or GM mode
• Runs on 9VAC or 5VDC

The ADV-MIDI was a complete kit: everything was included except for the faceplate and power supply.

MAP Quality:

The kit quality is fair or good. The PCB has no silkscreen or solder mask, and the holes are not thru-plated. The lack of a silkscreen is going to make the assembly a little slower, but there was a parts placement diagram included that will help.

MAP always tried to sell inexpensive kits, and they chose some cheap components to attain that goal. I will not be using the included jacks and switches, since I have some that are better quality. I used MAP's supplied jacks on the ADV-Kick, and have already had one fail... so I'll just use the ones from my own stock. All told, you get a lot for the $80 kit price, and I got it for 20% off... so about $65. Not bad.

The End Result:

I built my ADV-MIDI kit and put it in a 3U FracRak panel from Paia. Due to the sheer number of jacks, I've had to switch to 1/8" to squeeze them all in. I think I might permanently swap to 1/8" for all future projects, since I really enjoyed the flexibility of being able to add more inputs and outputs to a module. Unfortunately this means I'll eventually need to replace the jacks on all of my modules, but I'll just make some adapter cables / multis for now.

Another first for me was using a paper faceplate rather than the labor-intensive hand engraving that I've done in the past. I bought some assorted funky colored paper and clear contact paper from my local office supply store. I printed the panel legend, and applied contact paper to both sides. Next I trimmed the label with a paper shear, and glued it to my pre-drilled panel with 3M #77 spray adhesive. The last step before installing panel components was to trim the holes with an Exacto knife. I think the results look nice (although a bit obnoxious). All told, I spent about $50 for the paper, contact paper, spray glue and paper sheer. If we assume I'll get 100 faceplates from my materials, the total cost is only about $0.50 per panel including tools... not bad.

As you can see in the photo, I've added a daughter board. The main function of the board is a 4013-based clock divider to allow me to change the clock speed from 24ppqn to 12ppqn for connection to DR-110 sequencers. The daughter board also distributes the trigger signals to both the 1/8" jacks and the 9-pin DSUB connector on the front panel. I also added series diodes here so I can "OR" signals together with a multi. Unfortunately bringing 8 triggers in and (2x) 8 triggers out of the board resulted in a mess of ribbon cables