I landed one week ago. Last weekend, Thomas came over and I offered him the extra board. He's in for the build. Also, I found a beautiful Power One power supply that I don't even remember having, so I'm in business for electricity.
Then I couldn't find my solder. So I went to Radio Shack. 9 dollars for half a pound of solder. I felt sacked, pillaged, and looted, but now we're starting the project.
Also, I have my beautiful controller keyboards, which I invented. I have extra housings that I think I could use for a modular housing. It would be pretty sweet to have my keyboard and synth match each other in beautiful purple heart wood. The downside is that I will have to re-engineer my almost perfect layout by just an inch here and there. I'm hoping not to compromise too much.
However, if the give and take starts to look grim, maybe I'll use two of the cases, or otherwise just build more cases. This is to be the perfect modular synth. I don't intend to compromise much.
Aside from that, I'm reunited with my Wavestation, and my keyboards.. along with some fancy Yamaha Sampler I barely remember buying, and my dad's nostalgic old Korg Poly-800II. I'm contemplating playing at a church again, just to get out and performing. I'd probably play my bass instead of synths, but I guess that's cool too.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Thursday, December 24, 2009
The purpose of this blog is to document the building and design of what I hope will be the perfect synth for me.
So far I have boards for:
8x Buchla Resonant LPGs (electro-music.com, Buchla Licensed Run)
6x Buchla Function Generator Units (Ditto as above)
3x Juergen Haible Living VCO (3xVCO)
3x SN Voice (Kit)
1x Dimension C Clone (Kit)
2x Attenuverting Mixer
I'll be returning to America in a few days. My plan is to meet up with my friend Thomas and build the SN Voice Boards first. Originally I was going to make a three voice polysynth, with everything patched using triple wire cabling, and lots of 3x Ganged Pots. The SNs were going to be the first block of that monster synth.
I drew many full-scale drawings, and started making mockups of layouts with knobs and jacks in place, and my design gradually evolved over time. I remember loving the Oberheim Four Voice Synth I had and I decided to go with an individual voice polysynth.
I still wanted everything modular, so I decided to lay out individual "channels" consisting of a VCO, a Lowpass Gate, and a Function Generator. Then, I'll use a five channel dual polarity mixer to combine three such channels. I'll build two synths with 3 channels each. Thus my system can function as a two voice, a six voice, a three voice (each voice using two channels) or one modular synthesizer.
With the TINIEST bit of normalling on my connections, and plenty of attenuation, I have settled on what I believe is a good design.
Phase 1, Warm up the soldering irons with the SN-Voices, and help Thomas assemble a cool synth from two of them, and maybe a lag and ring modulator.
Phase 2, Get the parts I need for the other boards. I'll offer Thomas the third Living VCO to contribute to his synth. Same with the extra two Gates. He'll be started on a pretty rocking modular at that point and I'll have someone to solder with for awhile. If he's not interested, I'll put them in panels and sell them to buy more parts.
Phase 3, Build the Gates and EGs, put them in panels
Phase 4, Build the Oscs, put them in panels
Phase 5, Build the Attenuverters and Headphone Amps.
Phase 6, Assemble the whole She-Bang and figure out a way to control it with MIDI
The last touch will be to add six Blacet Miniwaves to the system. They go between the Oscs and Gates/EGs/Output.
So far I have boards for:
8x Buchla Resonant LPGs (electro-music.com, Buchla Licensed Run)
6x Buchla Function Generator Units (Ditto as above)
3x Juergen Haible Living VCO (3xVCO)
3x SN Voice (Kit)
1x Dimension C Clone (Kit)
2x Attenuverting Mixer
I'll be returning to America in a few days. My plan is to meet up with my friend Thomas and build the SN Voice Boards first. Originally I was going to make a three voice polysynth, with everything patched using triple wire cabling, and lots of 3x Ganged Pots. The SNs were going to be the first block of that monster synth.
I drew many full-scale drawings, and started making mockups of layouts with knobs and jacks in place, and my design gradually evolved over time. I remember loving the Oberheim Four Voice Synth I had and I decided to go with an individual voice polysynth.
I still wanted everything modular, so I decided to lay out individual "channels" consisting of a VCO, a Lowpass Gate, and a Function Generator. Then, I'll use a five channel dual polarity mixer to combine three such channels. I'll build two synths with 3 channels each. Thus my system can function as a two voice, a six voice, a three voice (each voice using two channels) or one modular synthesizer.
With the TINIEST bit of normalling on my connections, and plenty of attenuation, I have settled on what I believe is a good design.
Phase 1, Warm up the soldering irons with the SN-Voices, and help Thomas assemble a cool synth from two of them, and maybe a lag and ring modulator.
Phase 2, Get the parts I need for the other boards. I'll offer Thomas the third Living VCO to contribute to his synth. Same with the extra two Gates. He'll be started on a pretty rocking modular at that point and I'll have someone to solder with for awhile. If he's not interested, I'll put them in panels and sell them to buy more parts.
Phase 3, Build the Gates and EGs, put them in panels
Phase 4, Build the Oscs, put them in panels
Phase 5, Build the Attenuverters and Headphone Amps.
Phase 6, Assemble the whole She-Bang and figure out a way to control it with MIDI
The last touch will be to add six Blacet Miniwaves to the system. They go between the Oscs and Gates/EGs/Output.
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