Hi everyone my name is Matt I’m form Argentina, just getting started in my journey, I was looking for some guidance and tips, I’m in the process of getting my hands on some hardware, sent a message to family and friends asking for old VHS equipment they might have lying around gathering dust and had some replies regarding vhs players, some cameras and a couple of CRT TVs, was just wondering what I should look for in terms of models, native outputs, bad apples y should steer clear of, etc etc. Also trying to get my hands on a video mixer, the Panasonic ave5 seems to be the cheapest and most common, once I’m up and running i will probably sodder myself a dirty mixer, but was wondering where i can find glitch box schematics I can put together myself since I don’t want to buy them just yet as I’m only just beginning and the prices seem to be pretty steep. Really excited to start experimenting.
Hey Matt, welcome to Scanlines! The analog video equipment that you will find in Argentina uses PAL composite video. Be advised that neighboring countries use NTSC, so I would make sure that what you get is compatible with PAL. You can get PAL to NTSC conversion boxes, but you may have some loss in signal quality.
I have had some luck with CCTV equipment and professional broadcast equipment, in addition to consumer gear. Some things you can look for are: PVM’s (personal video monitors), switchers, special effects generators, quad distributors (have four different feeds on one monitor), etc. Someone who lives in a PAL country may chime in with specific models. As far as bad apples to steer clear of, I am not sure of anything explicitly. However, I would be cautious around consumer analog cameras. Most of the ones I have come across were well abused and barely functioned/died after a short time. Also, older broadcast equipment from the 70’s and 80’s may have failing power supplies.
The WJ-AVE5 is a great place to start. Roland Edirols can also be found for similar prices. The wiki has some links to hardware mods and schematics. Anyway, I hope this helps!
Hola Matt! Que bueno ver más argentinos metiéndose en este mundo de la síntesis video. Yo también soy bastante nuevo en lo analógico.
Los Roland Edirol que menciona @jslarose son practicamente inconseguibles acá. Al ser importados los precios son mucho mas altos que de los de las WJ-AVE5 que podés conseguir usadas.
(here I’m saying that Edirols are super expensive in Argentina, no similar prices at all)
También tenés que saber que la mayoría de teles de tubo en argentina no manejan PAL-B (el standard internacional), si no un tipo de PAL llamado PAL-N. Podés conseguir conversores viejos usados en Mercadolibre. Pero medio que no hace falta si usas una tele que no sea viejasa. O un proyector también.
Muchos vendedores de glitch boxes y efectos tienen las esquemáticas en sus websites, aunque quizás el link esté en letra chica ah.