PIMP MY RANE!

As wondrous and pant-wettingly awesome as the Rane 56 is, its looks don't make you oooh and aaaah - more along the lines of "it's a bit grey innit tho?". It's like the Darth Vader of the mixer world - designed to intimidate with minimal effort, and that it does. But wouldn't it be nice if you could imprint your personality on the 56 and make it your own? Well now you can with Project VoidFill's clear faceplates.

Huh? how does that work then?

These faceplates are made from a tough clear plastic. All the holes are machined to a nice smooth finish so there's no chance of snagging your clothes or slicing a hole in your hand. Now you might think that being plastic, that these plates might have a tendency to scratch and wear through constant use, especially with crabbing. Well as a testament to their toughness, I've had one of the plates on my Rane for 18 months and there's only the slightest amount of surface marking. Even if you scrape your nail really hard, it doesn't leave a lasting mark.

So how do you go about pimping your Rane? It's really simple - using the supplied skratchworx template, make up some pretty picture, print it, cut it out and fix it under the clear faceplate. Simple. So let's break it down.

The Design

Obviously, this is the whole reason for this process - to put your mark on the 56. So to help, there are a couple of downloadable templates to use - one in Illustrator EPS format and the other in Photoshop. The design is entirely down to your imagination but you also have to remember that the mixer needs to be useable after you've spewed up your nightmarish imagination into a design.

It could just be a simple need for colour and clearer text - maybe you want to make your 56 look more like a Vestax - or it could be that you want to express some sort of repressed childhood nightmare in mixer form. This is all about personal expression.

Some things to bear in mind - if you use the templates, be aware that the plate is bigger than both UK and US A4 paper sizes so you'll need to find a suitable joining point perhaps run the design short down the sides so it fits inside the faceplate lugs. You could however be lucky and have access to an A3 printer in which case you'll have no problems making it fit.

If however you're using one big flat piece of handmade artwork, then you're probably not limited by A4 size anyway and can draw, paint or bomb any suitable substrate. A note on substrates - I've had a quick and nasty design printed out on normal paper and it works just fine without having to cut out holes for LEDs. Paper is thin enough to allow the glow to come through. In fact, thinner paper makes for a nice diffused glow, but may be hard to see in brighter light conditions and is also dependent on the design. Thick black ink over LEDs isn't going to work so well. So if you're putting a design onto something thicker than normal paper, you'll need to cut out the LED holes as well.

The paper finish is important as well. Normal inkjet paper is fine, but using a glossy photo paper can in time stick to the faceplate. Indeed the same is true of some inks and paints. Just think carefully about what your artwork before spending a lot of time creating, printing and cutting out.

Cutting Out

To be honest, this step is actually a huge pain in the arse but as long as you follow a few simple steps, it'll all work out fine. What you will need is a very sharp craft blade - the finer the better, ideally a scalpel. You have to cut some really sharp curves and a big blade (like a Stanley knife) just doesn't work so well and will leave you with polygons rather than curves.




If you've used the supplied templates, you'll have a clear guide as to where to cut and it should be a straightforward matter of carefully cutting everything out. For those who are using a hand made piece of artwork, the best thing to do is lay the plate FACE DOWN on the back of the artwork (the plate isn't symmetrical) and mark the holes and slots through the template with a pen or pen. And then it's the no so easy task of cutting out neatly.

Good luck - take your time with the blade and it'll all look good. Don't forget that a few slips of the blades here and there is hidden by the plate and some controls anyway.

Fitting

The easy part. If you haven't already done it, remove all the knobs from the Rane and keep them safe, including the 4 fixing screws. Put the artwork on the Rane, place the clear faceplate on top and put all the knobs back on. Finally fix in place with the screws, but not too tight - it is only plastic after all and could crack if over-tightened.

And that's it!

If you want to see how your artwork will look from the template, check out this master image that I've used to create these test images. Here's how to do it for those not so hot in Photoshop:

• Copy, paste or place your artwork into a new layer in the master document

• Right clicking the layer name, rasterise this new layer

• Free transform this layer and right clicking, select "distort"



• Using the guides on the image, drag the corners so they click to the guides.

• Right clicking on the "blank layer" icon, hit "Select Layer Transparency".

• Invert this selection and hit delete.

The finished image:


Yes I know there's a hundred ways to do this technique but it works and is very straightforward. You could just as easily use layer masks to do the same thing and for ease, I've also left the cut-outs as a path.

If you want a clear face plate, hop over to Project Voidfill and order yours today. It'll set you back $35 including shipping inside the US and $40 worldwide.

If there's enough interest, I'm happy to host people's creations on skratchworx for download. Let's try and start a library of faceplate designs.