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Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 12:05
by Lady Jaye
Recently I have been busy with clearing up in the attic. I sold most of my doubles, spares and various stuff I lost interest in (modern era GI Joe and other recent toylines). A lot of my stuff was merely collecting dust. I think that's a shame. I rather have somebody put it on display with pride than me having it stored doing f*ck all with it. Toys have feelings as well you know? ;)

Besides that I have sold quite a lot of redundant electronics: synths, FX-units, etc.

SteveD already posted: "Jaye, you have a very large attic!". It's true, our attic is indeed pretty large, but I did not only clean up the attic. I have reworked the collection room as well, so I thought I would share with you what happened to the collection room. In fact it's now a digital studio!

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The shelves above the monitor will be used to display the core of the collection: the original GI Joe/Cobra teams, some Action Force, Micronauts. Not sure yet how and where to put it exactly. Spot the Roboskull in the top left corner. Also parts of the collection will be displayed in the room divider, located directly behind the photographer.

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In the analog corner you'll find the Korg MS-10 & MS-20. Great for super fat bass sounds and weird sounds (eg. R2D2). All audio is routed into a Fostex 19" line-mixer, then converted to 32bit/192kHz digital audio maximum. In daily use 16bit/48kHz is more than sufficient, but nice to have. Above the Yamaha synth you'll find a Roland TB-303 and TR-606.

Recent calculations have indicated that there is around 1.2 light years of cables present in the room. Respect to the inventor of tie-wraps! With these the room would have been a large mess.

In future I would like to add a small booth for recording vocals. Also still on the lookout for new vintage synths. So if anybody has ancient stuff on their attic, please let me know! :D

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 12:54
by Chopper
Looking good, old chap, looking good.

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 13:03
by SteveD
Now that's looking very impressive Jaye! Excellent fun to be had in there, and good to see the core of the collection creeping in too! I know it's a distant memory now, but when i started out collecting I had similar in mind - just a core collection for display in my study. I wanted one of each figure (so basically I would have been buying the ones missing from my childhood collection), that I was going to put in a wall mounted display cabinet in the study. I guess things just got out of hand!

What sort of music do you make? (and no bad gags about "sweet music with the missus" etc!). Based on previous posts I'm guessing some mash ups? A bit of mixing etc?

I'm guessing Chopper is drooling on his keyboard right about now! ;-)

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 13:57
by Lady Jaye
I know exactly what you mean by things getting out of hand!

Quite a few years ago I checked the internet to see if I could find information on some of my childhood toys: Action Force, A-Team & some B-branded stuff. I wasn't planning on selling anything, I just wanted to check. I ran into the old BFTB hosted by Clemens, I found eBay, etc. Then the obvious happened: "Hey, that's cool! I never had that as a child! Let's get that!". You place your first bid on eBay and off you go.

At first my goal was: get the Action Force toys I would have wanted as a child, but never got. That soon became: complete the entire Action Force line, including the UK waves (We never had the last wave with the APC. When GI Joe became big in the Netherlands I was already in puberty, so more interested in tits 'n beer than toys. But via Action Force swivel arms I got into contact again with GI Joe. Again, my goal changed and it became: get every toy I would have liked as a child but never had.

Mind you, I was still into collecting vintage toys. At that time I was buying up complete attics in one go. The collection expanded rapidly and I began trading a lot. I ran into Micronauts and started collecting them, I bought an Atari Lynx, GameBoy, all sorts of cool things. Via YoJoe I discoved that GI Joe was still being produced in the states. The goal changed again: get everything I would have liked as a child if it would have been available when I was young. This opened the door to buy literally everything. Which I did. At that time I was living in an appartment, which slowly turned into a toy shop. When moving house most of the stuff went to the attic. In the computer room I had stuff on display.

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 14:09
by Lady Jaye
SteveD wrote:What sort of music do you make?
Dance music, but my father would say: "Computer generated rubbish produced by spotty teenagers in their wanking HQ." Together with my cousin we do trancy tunes, solo I produce hardcore and drum & bass. Most of my stuff is unfinished, merely a collection of loops that are in dire need of arranging. Most of the tracks are labelled something like '2010-03-26 trying something weird'.

One of my friends is a DJ gaining more in popularity day by day. He gave me the challenge: "You finish a track for a change, then I'll make sure people will hear it!"
SteveD wrote:Based on previous posts I'm guessing some mash ups? A bit of mixing etc?
That's another hobby. I've been DJ-ing since I was 14. I stopped doing gigs over 15 years ago.

Prodigy remix project:

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 15:20
by The Baron
Sweet set-up, Jaye. Do you have any "before" pics for comparison?

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 15:25
by Lady Jaye
Posting edited. Will check for old pics...

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 19:55
by Golden Puma
that's some setup, my cousin is trying to get into the drum & bass scene, unfortunately I think he shares your talent of not having finished any tracks.

I'm sure he'd love to hear any you get finished. Why did you stop DJ-ing?

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 20:00
by Shaunyboy
"We are the music makers, and We are the dreamers of dreams."

Re: Toys out, toys in...

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 20:37
by gung-hoeddie
Very nice Jaye, I'd love to have a room like that, Annie's music room gets in the way though ;-)