Synth stuff

It’s been a while since I posted anything to do with synths, and that’s largely down to some family issues (my partner not being well, but she’s getting better now) and my mood taking a massive dive. The recent news about Modal hasn’t helped, it’s a huge shame and I do hope that a solution can be found going forward.

I thought it was time to give a quick update on my polsynth, currently known as ‘Delta’. I’ve been thinking it through and I think I got carried away which has meant that some of the bugs are now really difficult to find (read I have no idea). So I’m having a rethink, and what I’ve done is go back to an early sketch I did and revisit what things I feel I want and what things can be put to one side.

So I’ve simplified things, though it’s still quite complex and I’ll begin reworking the voices in the very near future. But for now I’ve designed a front panel PCB, the “voice card” will plug in underneath.

This re-uses a lot of things I’ve learned during my time developing modules, the same letterbox displays as the MuSeq sequencer, the same colour displays as the WTF and Waveplane oscillators, the same switches as used in the sequencer and so on. So this is very much building on what I’ve done and learned before.

Now because I never have just one project on the go at a time, I’ve also decided I would like to make myself an analogue polysynth. This uses a lot of the same front panel as before, in fact everything other than the oscillator section as I’m really happy with the layout. This doesn’t have a name yet, it’s just something I feel I’d like, so may not ever get made.

It’s a lot simpler than Delta, but that’s because the oscillators on Delta are quite complex. Again the voice board plugs in underneath.

Now there’s a long way to go with both of these, the analogue poly more so I’ve only got bits of the voice working at the moment. And with life throwing me all sorts of curve balls I don’t know when these will turn into physical hardware.

I expect people to ask if they can buy one, and the honest answer right now is, I don’t know. I don’t really want to run a synth business full time, also as these would be low volume they would be quite expensive compared to other synths on the market.
I am building these for myself, because they’re things I’ve wanted to build for a while, but who knows what the future holds.