Hammer Glamour exhibition, Madeline Smith, Valerie Leon

I went to an event to launch the Hammer Festival exhibition, where I met Madeline Smith, cover starlet of Marcus Hearn's book Hammer Glamour. Despite the event being run by a PR company which couldn't organise a bum-rape in a Borstal, and who seemed intent on preventing anyone getting books signed or getting photos, l managed a chat with Madeline, who seems a mad as a box of frogs, and got the book signed.
I didn't catch up with Valerie Leon, and there was no sign of the promised appearance of Caroline Munro or Jimmy Sangster, but Madeline was the main attraction for me. And cleverly, I had bought the book for £12.49 from Forbidden Planet, rather than pay £25 at the Hoxton Twat gallery. So in the words of Alan Partridge, 'needless to say I had the last laugh'.

New synth - GEM S3

If the maddest thing I had done recently was to buy a GEM S2 Turbo keyboard, this tops it - I got a GEM S3 keyboard, for £150. It's in better condition than the S2, and has the longer keyboard, but doesn't have the Turbo expansion - so I have to transfer that from the S2 to the S3, tidy up the S2 and sell it. Most importantly, I must actually record something with the S3.
Coincidentally, I also got for a bargain £18 a GEM WS2 module, which will provide the drum and accompaniment features the S3 lacks - cabaret-style entertainment, here we come.

Radio-controlled talking Davros

I got a buddy for my radio-controlled talking Dalek - a radio-controlled talking Davros, for £19.99. But I'm not allowed to play with it until Christmas.

Radio controlled talking Dalek

I finally got a large radio-controlled talking classic Dalek (as opposed to a new type Dalek); it looked like it was the last one in Forbidden Planet, reduced from £50 to £25. It's marvellous.

Another new synth - Gem S2 Turbo

Shortly after buying the Kawai K1 Mk II - see previous post - I went a bit mad. I'd heard some samples from the Gem S2R, and missed one on eBay which went quite high - but then I saw a Gem S2 Turbo keyboard on eBay. It was listed once without any bids, listed again without any bids, so I made an offer and got it for £100, delivery included.
Good points; it sounds like a Korg M1, a Roland D50 and a Kawai K1 all layered together - every patch on it is like a huge swooshy Klaus Schulze pad. It even has Elka Synthex samples as waveforms. It can import Akai samples and use them as waveforms, it has a built-in sequencer, it has a great keyboard with polyphonic aftertouch, and it's built like a tank.
Bad points - it's filthy, scratched, has one silent key and a crackly output, and it's built like a tank. Also the Turbo upgrade doesn't have the optional RAM chips, so it won't retain uploaded samples, but that's probably easy enough to fix. Once I've tidied it up, I'll have to figure out whether to use it as my master keyboard - polyphonic aftertouch is ideal for controlling the Arturia CS80V software. Of course I'd still rather have had the S2RTurbo module, but those seem to be incredibly rare. Now I must stop buying keyboards...

Another new synth - Kawai K1 Mk II

I used to have a Kawai K1 MkII keyboard, but replaced it a long time ago with a K1R module. Though it's very much a 'poor man's Korg M1', I like the Kawai's sample-and-synthesis sounds. You still can't beat the 2 Moon Sky preset...
The K1R module lacks the K1 Mk2's effects and drums, but they aren't much of a loss. Anyway, having sold most of my classic analogue monosynths, I had some space for keyboards, so I picked up a K1 MkII from eBay for a ridiculously low £50.
I won't get rid of the K1R, though, as it now looks as if I might not have space to set up the K1 Mk II after all - see the next post....