Linn 9000

Anyone ever use one? I'm messing with a friend's and it's pretty dope, you can see where the 60 inherited most of it's good stuff, and it sounds great at 8 bit 27kHz.

elmacaco wrote:Anyone ever use one? I'm messing with a friend's and it's pretty dope, you can see where the 60 inherited most of it's good stuff, and it sounds great at 8 bit 27kHz.

Yep ... have used one with all the fruit on several sessions.

The model known as the F9000, the cloaked phoenix that crawled from those smouldering ashes of products never produced by Linn. In this case, the "Linn Midi Studio".

I currently have a very "sick" Linn 9000 in bits on my repair bench.

Seems some one ratted it for parts along the way.

One day it'll be schmick again.

Rohan.

Nah, the Linn Midi Studio is much different physically than the F9000.



That's the midi studio.

The One I am messing with has some Farat mods and documentation, circa 1989. 18 pad sampling, (instead of just 4 user sounds) SMPTE, and a few other tidbits. This one has some problems too, the Hihat pad won't take a sample, just weird noise, some pads won't save samples with the function 2 button, some will. But what does work is really cool. it has the best pads everm really good resposeiveness, the faders in drum tune more are really cool, but I'm not sure if you can sequence it. All in all the 60 kills it, but it is still a class machine for it's time.

I just had a look inside today, the forat mods are extensive, componants all over the PCB's, IC's on top of IC's (memory), little flying wires connecting different points on every voice board, I used to think the Linn 9000 mods Forat listed were expensive, but they earn every last red cent when they do it, fixing it with schems would be a chore. I'd say send it to forat and throw yourself upon his mercy. Or buy the service manual and see how far you can go. These things were really pushing the boundries of what the current technology could do, and the forat mods do so even more.

Does yours have any forat mods? How functional is it?

Ive never had a chance to play around with one of these, I just curious what the sliders control.

elmacaco wrote:Nah, the Linn Midi Studio is much different physically than the F9000.?

Physically yes.

Feature wise...

Most of the feature set intended to be in the never released midistudio forms the basis for what became Forat's F9000 or Forat modified Linn 9000.

elmacaco wrote:Does yours have any forat mods? How functional is it?

The "one on my bench" has no Forat mods, no floppy ... It's an original with the last software version before Forat purchased the remaining stocks and tech IP from Linn.

Not worth sending to Forat. I'd sooner find another fully loaded F9000 that works than over-capitalise on fixing this piece.

Rohan.

the price at Forat's website for this thing is crazy! whats a FAIR price for a LINN9000 or a F9000? this thing looks illfuknmatic, but looks arent everything now are they?

Well, the F9000 has crazy modifications, this isn't a simple firmware change, I'll try and get some pics up of the guts so you can see how crazy the work they did is. I got one with mods from 89, so maybe now they got new boards or something easier to work on, but these guys earn the work they do. It looks like it would take weeks of full time dedication to get a Linn 9000 to a F9000. Seriously, that kind of work is on some west coast customs shyt, you gotta pay a brother to put that kind of sweat into anything. but there are hardcore dudes who've been using it for years and they want to keep it viable, many pro's used and swear by it. Kool and the gang used one and taught wyclef on one. I gotta find that interview again.

But as for what it is, the 60 is really the culmination of these concepts, the sampling on this thing offers limited editing or any kind of compatability, loading is slow and somewhat complicated, the sequencer it tight but the screen is small and the interface not too dissimilar to a DMX with 32 tracks.

Even the F9000 I would doubt could really touch the 60 in a serious way, since the 60 hardware wise was what Roger Linn could come up with with Akai's resources, that's why we got 4 midi outs and two ins. I'm gonna look for some F9000 reviews to see what its really got under the hood.

it does sound good and it is fun to use, but for running a studio from it, or using it to write sample based music, kinda hard. Like your Toms pads are 4 pads, you load one sample and it spread across those 4 pads, not sure you can split them singly on the F9000, but here I don't think you can.
The COnga is two pads with the same thing, one sample, two tunings. The Crash is the same. Not sure if you can load a sound to replace the tuned copy, gotta try that. The HH decay slider only works on the HiHat pad like the unexpanded 60, (Thanks God and Roger Linn for 3.10e!!!!) screen not big enough for muting status and soloing, track number, midi assignmnts to be seen easily. hence I know it is most popular with Drummers who use it as a drum machine, just hook up their beats on it with custom drum, sounds. I gotta see what sample editing is like, if it's even possible!
Also each pad has a different memory alocation, like 8k for some pads, 16k for most, 32 for some, and 48k-64k on the crash pads, you you can't put a sound anywhere.

It's cool for what it is and as a part of history, and it would be cool to have one around like it would be cool to have a linnDrum, but I think even an SP-12 offers more, and I am pretty sure that and the 1200 was the competition that really killed Linn Electronics, cuz they did it all first, the Emu saw it, probably bought one and figured out how to to it cheaper. and they stopped production in 1986.

but overall, it is an amazing invention, like the first moog synth, very limited compared to even the 60, but revolutionary like few other machines. This one really started it all.

anyone know any 8 bit rack samplers??

As a part of history this thin

I think the ensoniq mirage is 8bit or 10bit and it is RAW. Maybe like 2-3 seconds max on that thing. Definitely not pretty, samples sound like they came out of a sega genesis.

yeah, I hate the interface though, I guess a user friendly 8 bit sampler is kind of a paradox huh?