Gear Fever is the page for my gear posts and the place to #AMA about video tech old and new.

I’m always on the lookout for unloved gear that’s busted or just confusing its human. Sometimes these kids do the darnedest things.

A couple years ago I picked up a Leader vectorscope along with a few dozen other random pieces of old-school video tech that someone had gathered for an aborted art project. When I got around to testing the vectorscope I found it wasn’t locking to subcarrier, so the phase just spins around semi-randomly. I fed this with my LZX / brownshoesonly modular synth to see if I could get some good images out of the whirling dervish.

I played with the vectorscope phase knob to change the tempo of the spinning while choosing different palette combinations with the Color Chords module. The results were interesting enough that I made the first video in the above playlist.

I found much stronger imagery once I turned the vectorscope’s gain knob. It probably hadn’t been touched in a decade, so the pot was very dirty. I made the second video after a few rehearsals, turning knobs on the ‘scope and my synth.

Chris Bennett asked me what I used to feed the Color Chords, so I decided to make this post.

Here’s the synth that feeds the broken Leader Vectorscope videos above:

So, there it is, Chris! What… you can’t see what’s patched to what?? Nor can I 😉

For this patch, it’s not so important what’s feeding Color Chords (mostly ramps feeding Staircase); I am shaping the circular pattern by playing with the 3 layers of color.

Any other questions?