Synth.nl 24/7 on Bohemia Radio

Since yesterday the music from my 'AeroDynamics' album is playing 24 hours a day 7 days a week on rotation on Bohemia Radio. An independant radio station that streams around the world. Tune in and catch some some of my songs you might not have heard before. Not everything from the album is on my website or MySpace page. Check them out and if you like them think about buying the album ;) I don't know how long these will stay on. Not forever any way. You can listen to this station on their website. Do Enjoy!

http://www.bohemioradio.com/index-2.html

AtmoSphere Album Work

The last weeks I did a lot of work in the studio. I haven't seen much of the outside world. I'm still working day and night on my album. I also did two studio sessions with my very good friend Hanz. He gives me a lot of input on my tracks, he also played two lead lines on a track that will be on the album. In the picture on the left you see what my screens looks like. The left two screens are attached to my audio PC running Cakewalk Sonar 7 Producer Edition. You can see the rough arrangement of a track I'm working on at the moment. I think it will turn out OK :)

I'm creating a lot of data at the moment as well. Each song consists of about 50 tracks and is that generates about 5-7 Gbyte of data per song. When I'm done I'll export everything to WAV for the remixing and mastering sessions. That will give another 5-7 Gbyte of data. This data is stored on my audio PC but after every day of work I make a backup to two seperate fileservers that are hooked up to my gigabit ethernet network. Both fileservers have a RAID 5 filesystem so this way I'm quite sure the data is secure when my harddisk would crash or something. When I'm all done I'll also backup everything on DVD. Sounds a bit paranoid maybe but I have seen a lot of dataloss in my IT carreer. So this paranoia is based on actual horror scenarios I have seen with my own eyes. OK back to work :)

Building Apollo Studio (Part 3)

Last week I looked a bit around on the internet for studio furniture that would fit the new Apollo studio we will start building soon. I did find some very nice idea's. The furniture you saw in the 3D model was just an idea. In the picture on the left you see this one has a nice big desk and 19" cabinets left and right as well on top as below the workspace. That is definitely what I'm looking for. It has also a nice layer on top to put monitors and screens on it. This looks promising I would just need to have the left and right part twice. But I guess that should be possible to build together.

In the picture on the right you see the one I used as an example in the 3D model. I like this one as well. It has more space to hold 19" equipment on top but less workspace. I have to make a decision in that. Of course I have no idea here if it is possible to add an extra left and right part in this model. The first one looks a bit more suitable. But I will go around for this. Maybe I can even find someone to make this on order to make a perfect fit. But at least I have some nice examples now :)

I also found this very nice 19" cabinet that would fit perfectly on the side of the studio. They would only have to be a bit smaller and lower. But I like this design and the way it is tilted back a little. Also they look solid enough to be able to put some heavier stuff on top as well.

So now I'll go to my regular suppliers and ask them to look out for something like this. And hopefully stay in my budget. I'll keep you posted when I know more.

MS20 on loan

My friend Chris also brought his Korg MS20 with him. I will use it to make some sound effects for some future albums. We already recorded some of those last night. It is a very nice machine. It does lack a bit of modulation on its own, but since it is (semi) modular we hooked it up immediately to the PAIA 9700S and Cwejman S1 MK2. That worked like a charm actually :) I will do a bit more intensive work with it after my album is finished. But I do like it a lot. I'm considering to look maybe for one for myself. They have become a bit expensive though, but probably that will only get worse since they are quite popular. As you can see I did find a nice spot for it for now in my analog corner. I hope I can keep it for a while.

A Smile in the Studio :)

While sorting the pictures we made yesterday I found this one. We made it by accident but it really looks like a nice smiley glowing in the dark:) It is actually a close up the Boss RE-20 Space Echo pedal :)

In the picture on the right you see it a bit farther off next to the Moog Little Fatty. You might recognize it a bit better there. Both pieces of equipment are quite nice to see in the dark by the way.

I still like the RE-20 a lot for jamming on my analog synthesizers but time after time if switch it off when I'm going to record something and use the UAD software version instead then since it is a way better emulation of the real thing. But for jamming or live performances on stage I can really recommend you to go for one of these Boss RE-20 pedals. They are real fun and not very expensive.

DIY MS-DOS Sequencer

This is a very old DIY project I wanted to share with you. This is actually a sequencer I build myself a very long time ago. It is a 286 PC with a 40 Mbyte harddisk and it runs MS-DOS 6.22 with Cakewalk installed. It has a build in keyboard, 9" screen and a midi interface. I just never used it for what I intended it to use. I wanted to use it for midi recording, but just didn't get to it back then. It still runs like a charm and I use it once in a while as a little sequencer to output some midi lines.

It has cost me a lot of time to make all the wholes in the frontpanels etc. In the picture on the right you also see the self build power supply under it. It is kind of a museum piece now in my studio and as long as I can keep in running I won't dispose of it. The diskdrive is not in the best shape, I will have to change that some time. I'm actually surprised it still runs. I don't even know how old it is, but at least 10 years maybe even more.

New AtmoSphere Studio Pictures

Since I changed a lot since the last time we took pictures in the studio it seemed like a good idea to renew them. My good friend Chris, who also made the previous pictures, came by last night to make some new pictures. We tried to create the same ambiance we did last time. I like these warm darker pictures. They represent the mood I like to work in myself at night. I just uploaded the new pictures on my website so I'm not going to post more here now. You can find them here: http://www.synth.nl/studio.php. I will post posts with pictures later explaining what you are seeing.

Sampling: Rain and Thunder

The last weeks we had quite some thunderstorms here in the Netherlands. I have been sampling these kind of weather sounds for the last three years. So when everybody ran inside for shelter I went outside with my recorder :) These sounds are one of the things that inspired me to create my coming album 'AtmoSphere'. I just love the sound of rain and distant thunder. It is very calming in some way. I will be using a lot of these samples on my new album. They will be used in a subtle way but will support the music for sure. I hope you will like it as I do. To get you in the mood for 'AtmoSphere' I've put up one of the samples I recorded this year on my website. You can listen to it here:

http://www.synth.nl/samples/thunder2008.mp3

AtmoSphere Album Update

At the moment I'm working day and night on my new 'AtmoSphere' album. My deadline is set for the third week of august and that looks far away but I still have a lot of work to do. It will hold 12 tracks in total. In the picture on the left you can see my progress so far. You can also read the track names there. Most tracks are done in a base version that I'm detailing now. Tracks 9, 10 and 11 need still more work on the arrangment side. In the last week of August we will start the remixing and mastering stage. I'm afraid that I will not have much time to work on my DIY electronics projects the coming 4 weeks. I'll have to catch that up when my work is done for the album. I'll try to update you from time to time.

Building Apollo Studio (Part 2)

Yesterday work has started on the new studio project. For now we are only breaking stuff away. The garden is completely torn up to make room for construction later in August. Yesterday evening I started to brainstorm a bit about the setup I would like in my new Apollo Studio. I used Google Sketchup for this. A very neat 3D tool that is actually free to use. In the picture on the left you see a top view of the room that is 7x4 meters in total. This is not final at all yet, but it was merely to get an idea of what I could fit in there and how it would look in the end. I also did already some rough planning for the acoustic material that will go in there later on.

I think the most important thing is my workplace. I spend a lot of time there and would like as much equipment up close as I can. I would like a lot of 19" spaces next to me. I'm not sure though that I would be able to find a studio desk like this. But there is always the option to do some custom building. On the desk I will put a near field monitoring set to mix on. My current monitors will go on the ceiling to just listen to music in surround and also judge my music on less suitable speakers. I will start looking for some furniture manufacturer as of next week. If you have any tips for me, please mail me. I guess it would have to be one from Europe though to save a lot of shipping costs.

In this picture you see the other side of the room. I planned a desk there to for my modular projects. And left and right of the room all the synthesizers. I have seen special rails I can put on the wall with hooks to stack them as high as is necessary. That is a system I will use for sure to be flexible for the future. As you can see I also reserved room for my Eminent 310. It is still in the office, but it will come to the studio in the new setup for sure. Well this is still quite rough. I'm sure I will post an updated version sometime soon. But for now I'm happy with how it can become. It took me two days work to make this model, but now it is easier to show especially the furniture manufacturers what I would like and give some exact measurements without guessing. So I think it was worth it for sure. It was nice for a change to learn something new like 3D designing as well. I never did it before. I must admit though that my wife helped me here and there. She is very experienced in the mean time with Sketchup. OK more later. Back to making music again ;)

Groove Press info on AeroDynamics

Today I received the newsletter from my record label 'Groove Unlimited' and saw that they added some nice 'Press information' on my first album 'AeroDynamics'. Here you can read the text:

Synth.nl is new in the world of Electronic Music. Behind this modern and recognizable artist name is the Dutchman Michel van Osenbruggen. On his first album ”AeroDynamics” he manages to mix two of his big passions into a very interesting musical whole: Formula 1 racing (well, Michel doesn't race himself but he watches the races with great love and anticipation) and Electronic Music. The 12 tracks on ”AeroDynamics” are not only inspired by cars but also by planes where Michel has a special feeling for as well (he was once an F16-mechanic), especially the aerodynamics of the machines. Cars and planes go fast. “Fast” is also an idea the listener to ”AeroDynamics” might have because most of the compositions have a certain “drive”. The music is rhythmically done cleverly and played with much emphasis on melodies. Let’s say, this could be the music that Jean Michel Jarre might have created nowadays. That can be heard very well on tracks like “DownForce” that has a great base melody, “Drag”, “Turbulence” in which also modern day Tangerine Dream greets and “Modena” that has an euphoric overall feeling. In the relaxing “Stall” the rhythms are scaled down a little. In contrast, fans of danceable music are also invited to ”AeroDynamics” because a lot of the numbers have moments where the feet cannot be held on the ground. Within the world of Electronic Music which is primarily one of ambient and Berlin School sequences, Michel’s work is a welcome new and fresh style.

You can find it on the Groove website along with more reviews here:

http://www.groove.nl/cd/g/gr-146.html

P.S. You can also buy the album from this website. World Wide delivery and payment in different forms including PayPal. Just ask me if you have questions.

Here is the sales URL:

http://www.groove.nl/jump2.php?attnum=6001

Working hard on AtmoSphere Album

I get a lot of questions what I'm doing at the moment. Even though I'm only reporting some progress on my electronics projects I'm actually working very hard on my new album 'AtmoSphere' that will be released the 11th of October. The deadline for me is nearing. I have to be finished the second week of September the latest with all material. After that I will some remixing and mastering together with Ron Boots from Groove Unlimited and then everything will go to the company that makes the CD's. So the coming weeks I will spend a lot of time in the studio. The electronic projects are more kind of the break I need sometimes from the music. Of course I don't have inspiration all the time either. And I also have a job and a family so busy busy times. But I hope you will like the end result eventually.

Poly 800 Modding (Part 2)

Today I finished the PCB for the Hawk-800 Mod I'm working on for the Korg Poly 800. First thing to do was to make 27 wire connections with the blank wire that was supplied in the kit. You have to be careful here since some of them are quite close together and you have to make sure they don't touch each other. It was quite time consuming but not difficult. Most important is to make sure the wire is as straight as possible.

Also one wire connection has to be made on the bottom of the PCB. The insulated wire for this is supplied in the kit as well. You have to solder this one after all the IC sockets are installed since you have to solder the wire to the pins of two of these sockets. The manual is very clear fortunately on all this. After this I put a drop of glue from a glue gun onto the wire to secure it. I only took the picture before I did this, so you cannot see it here.

Here you see the completed PCB. As you can see not many other components on there than IC's. In the top right corner is a battery holder for the memory backup functionality. This battery is not supplied in the kit. I will have to pick it up from my local electronics shop. The empty sockets will be filled with wire connections to the main PCB of the Poly 800. I will open up the Poly 800 soon to see how I can install it. This will be the first time I open a synthesizer myself. I'll update you soon. Not sure yet when I'm going to do this though. We'll see.

Formant (Part 3)

After the first initial study of the Elektor Formant setup I bought. I decided to completely rewire it. In the picture on the left you see the backside of the Formant completely stripped now. The main reason for doing this is that I didn't like the kind of wire that was used in some places (flat cable) and inconsistent use of colors of the wires. I hate that. Especially because two power buses run through each other One being +15 and -15 Volts and the other being +5 Volts. You don't want to mix them up by accident. For the audio signals coax cable was used. I think that was a wise choice, but I will renew that as well because I want to change the functionality of the modular. Make it less prepatched. I looked more like a semi-modular now.

In the picture on the right you see what came out. It is not even that much wiring, but it did take me about an hour to neatly remove it without doing damage to the card edge connectors on the back of the modules. The coming week I'll pick up some roles of new wire in different colors. I will need that anyway for my ASM-2 and Yusynth projects. I want to use the same colors there so I won't make mistakes easily. Better safe than sorry I guess. I'll also have to pick up some mini jack chassis parts to add some extra patch points on the front panels.

The next thing I did is take the power supply out for closer inspection. I noticed immediately that one of the fuses was blown and after measuring the other two I found that both the +15 and -15 Volt fuses were broken. They are the 2 Amp slow type. I didn't have them in stock so I'll have to pick them up as well and see what happens when I put in new ones. I'll get some extra ones because I don't know what made them break. Could be a short circuit in the wiring, or a broken module or the power supply itself. This is another reason why I wanted to take out the wiring. I will use the short circuit protected lab power supply I bought recently to test the modules one by one.

I also had a look at the bottom of the power supply PCB. Not the best soldering I have ever seen but it looked quite OK for such an old project. I did resolder some joints that looked a bit weird. I also removed the wires that were still attached to it. I was amazed that multiple power take off points are available on the PCB that were not used at all. I think it is better to bring the power to the seperate places from a star topology than to make one long bus that the original builder of this project did.

The Power components I found on the heat sink that was loose in the cabinet belong to the power supply. That is the three 2N3055's power transistors that are on there. There is also one 2N5558 on there. I have no idea yet what that one is for. On the PCB there are clear points were to hook up the 2N3055 neatly marked with E, B, C for Emitter, Base and Collector. The power transistors seem to be in order at first sight, but I did measure them yet.

On the bottom of the heat sink the Emitter and Base are also neatly marked with a pencil. And the base is unmarked but there are extra nuts attached to the neatly insulated housing so I know where they should go. I also took the transformer out of the Formant case. I can rebuild the power circuit now and test it separately. Always an exciting job because you never know if something is going to blow in a power supply with 2 broken fuses. Well I'll update you on that soon.

Moog Updates

Last week Moog Music introduced new software for the Moog Little Phatty Stage Edition. I was bit surprised about the last one. They just introduced the Little Phatty II with some new features like for example an midi syncable Arpeggiator and LFO midi sync capabilities and also and USB midi port. But now you can just upgrade your original Little Phatty for free with these new features as well. Very nice Moog! I like that. You can even buy the USB midi port as an addon, but I don't care for that. Midi on an analog synthesizer is already luxurious I think :)

Updating the Little Phatty was quite easy. Moog provides a couple of update tools for various Operating Systems. You just start it set the right Midi ports and it starts updating. In the picture on the left you see that it is running software version 2.0 now. I played around a bit with the new features and it works like a charm. You have to go a bit deeper in the menus to set it all up, but this is all quite intuitive. Especially the LFO sync is a welcome feature for me. You can look at the Moog Music website what else is all new in this software version.

Also a new software version for the Moog Voyager RME was available I saw on the website. Updating that one was a bit more complex. You get 4 sysex files (Bank A, B, C, D) that you have to send to it with some sysex tool. I used SendSX for that. A little tool that is quite useful for these kind of tasks. You have to set the Voyager first in update mode and then start sending bank A. It did ask me for Bank C and D but not for B? Strange. I did send that one as well and then it asked for bank D again. I don't get the logic in this, but well it seemed to work.

Here you can see that the RME is running software version 3.4 now. It was released in June so I missed that back then. The changes in this version were a bit less radical, but still nice. You can again see them on the Moog Music website. I did encounter a little problem after updating. I could hear the stepping suddenly when changing a parameter like filter cutoff. Very annoying. After looking in the manual that came with the update I found that I had to change the parameter that shows the value on the display when you turn a knob to off. Very strange that this has influence on that. But well I rather not hear the stepping than that I see the parameter on the display. Maybe Moog can fix this in a future version. Well all in all this took me about half an hour and both my Moogs are now completely up to date again :)

Again Some Studio Changes

Today I cleaned up the studio a bit. It got a bit messy from all the electronics projects I did in there. I also moved around some stuff again. I'm still finding the best spot for all my gear. I found a nice place for the Formant in my analog corner. It is on the floor with the keyboard on top. This way I can move it around easily to work on it and can also play the keyboard. I did some more work on the Formant this morning as well. I will tell about that in the Formant Series part 3 that I'm going to post later. My analog corner is getting quite crowded now. I'm happy that we are going to start building the Apollo studio soon, so that I will have a bit more room again.

Another thing I did is swap the Oberheim OB12 for the Roland JP-8000. I love to play leads on the JP-8000. I like how the keyboard plays and also the sound is very good. I'm going to use the JP8000 for some leads in songs I'm working on right now. It is very analog in look, feel and sound actually. I put in in my digital corner right behind me. I have got some kind of a 'U' setup now there with keyboards on the left of me, in front of me and right to me. Very nice when jamming late at night. I agreed with my friend Chriz that we are going to make new studio pictures soon and also new movies for the website, because so many things have moved around since the last time we did that. I'll update you on that of course.

Formant (Part 2)

Yesterday evening I picked up the Formant from the seller. I stayed there a lot longer than anticipated but we had a nice musician to musician talk about a lot of things. It is always nice to also meet new people while buying new gear from them. The setup was a bit smaller in size than I expected which was a nice surprise. Here you see the Formant keyboard on top of the setup. I think from the size of the 3 octave keyboard you can estimate the width of the setup. The first thing I did is study a bit how all the cabling was hooked up. There was a lot more pre-patched than I expected. I guess I will change that a bit since I want to hook it up also to my other modulars later.

When I studied it closer I was surprised about the fact that the PCB's of the modules were not fixed to the front panels. A lot different than the Yusynth modules I'm working on. There is a whole metal construction in the wooden case to hold the modules. Also the whole inside of the case is covered with tin foil. This is done for shielding purposes I guess. Another thing I was a bit surprised about is the stuff that was laying around loose in it. From the loose components and the wooden housing I could tell that there used to be a back panel, but that is missing now. It was probably ripped of by force and took a lot of components with it.

In the picture on the left you see the power supply that is fixed to the bottom of the casing. It is the original Formant power supply which is nice. In front of it you see a rather big heat sink with power components attached. I guess this was somehow connected to the back panel once. I will take the power supply out soon for closer inspection and try to get it working again. I didn't try it on yet because I didn't want to blow the fuse in my house ;) I think it is wise to study it a bit more first. I'm quite sure it won't work.


Another thing I found lying around is the receiver module for the keyboard. This gives power to the keyboard and outputes the Voltage Control and Gate signals to the modules. I will incorporate this one again but I will also build in a Midi2CV module for the Formant so I can hook it up to my midi setup. All in all the Formant was in a bit worse shape than I had hoped for. I'm going to study some more on the schematics and documentation and than decide from there on were to go. I'll keep you posted on this project as usual.

Yusynth (Part 6)

Last week I started working on the random modules. These are actually two modules together on one PCB. One side is a noise generator and the other side is a sample & hold module. They are ideal for making sound effects. On the left you see a picture of the component stack that will make this module. You are getting used to this habit of mine by now I guess. I just love the fact that this little pile of components will later actually do something useful. This time I got the right type of capacitors this time the first time :) So we are making progress..

On the right you see the finished PCB's. As you can see I made two of them. Construction of these was quite easy. These modules do not have that many components so it was not so difficult to find the right holes for the component this time. I did encounter a little problem though. I forgot to drill one hole :) And it is difficult to solder a component without a hole ;) I used a small 12 Volt hand drill with a 1 mm metal drill to make the whole. This went quite smoothly. It will probably not be the last hole I forgot during my drilling sessions at Bird Electronics.

In the picture on the left you see all the modules I have finished now. 4 LFO's, 4 VCO and 2 Random modules. But I still have a lot to go. I think I will start on some filter modules after this. I also started investigating the options I have for front panels. So far I haven't found a good solution yet. I did hear Bride Chamber is going to produce some Yusynth front panels, but I'm not sure if they are going to do all of them. And I would like to have some consistency in the whole modular setup eventually. But there is still time enough to figure this out. OK enough for now. More later.

Synth.nl with Stall on Sunday Synth

Today my song 'Stall' was played on the 'Sunday Synth' show by Bruce Gall. Stall is song from the 'AeroDynamics' album I released last year. It was a very nice show again. If you like synthesizer music I can advise you to listen to this show that is broadcasted every Sunday from 10-12 AM UK time on AR FM. You can find the website at this URL: http://www.arfm.co.uk/. Bruce played me on last weeks show as well with 3 tracks. So he seems to like my album. Well lets hope he will play me again soon. I've been getting quite some airplay the last year. You can find a list with radio stations that played me on my website here: http://www.synth.nl/media.php. If you know other radio stations that play my kind of synthesizer music that are not on this list. Let me know or let them know about me.

Poly 800 Modding (Part 1)

My friend Hanz tipped me on a very interesting site about a DIY electronics kit do modify the Korg Poly 800. This mod is called HAWK-800 and it turns the Poly 800 into a more sophisticated machine. It seriously updates the midi functionality to start with. You can find a complete list of features on the website here:
http://patrioticduo.tripod.com/hawk800/id15.html. After reading this I decided to order mine. As you can see there is also another kit coming that will be based on this one. And a very nice thing is that the kit holds an EEProm so you can update it when new features come along. Very nice work I think!

The kit arrived last week. And as you can see it is quite complete. It even comes with the necessary blank wire and flat cable. The documentation for construction is on the website I mentioned before. It will be kind of a retro fit kit build in the P0ly 800 itself. The documentation is very precise about where and how to fit it in the Poly 800. But first I will have to build the PCB for this kit. It looks quite easy compared to the other projects I have going on. I guess it will take about one or two hours work at the most. I'll build this one soon and keep you updated on the progress like always.

ASM-2 (Part 6)

Today I did the construction of the PolyDAC Midi2CV converter PCB. As I said in the last post I ordered the complete kit from Elby Designs inclusive all the necessary components. After checking all the parts I found out that I had one resistor too much and came a 78L05 short. I will contact Elby to ship it with my next order. You can see the checklists that come with it wich are very handy. It also says which part number is which value. So it is perfect to take as a guidline for contruction.

My oldest daughter Joyce helped my out again today. She is 7 years old and really fond of electronics. Last week when the new parts arrived from Elby she was very excited and asked me a couple of times to wait with soldering so she could help. She usually looks up the part numbers on the PCB or in this case on the silk screen print out Elby supplied. This way she could look up the next part while is was soldering the one she looked up before. After that she points out the location to me for the next one. It really saves me time :) She also loves computer games so I guess she'll grow up to be a computer/electronics nerd just like daddy ;)

It is so relaxed to have the silk screen again for component orientation and I don't have to worry about misfitting. Despite that I did put one resistor in the wrong place. I had to take it out with the desoldering pump. That went reasonably smooth. Further I found it to be a very easy PCB. I was only doubting a bit about the orientation of the Crystal. But I think it should be mounted correctly now. There was one opto coupler supplied that was another type than stated on the documentation, but I found on the internet this was a perfect replacement with even the same specifications so that should also be OK .

In the picture on the right you see the finished PCB. There are only some connectors missing to connect the front panel components later. They were not included in the kit I ordered. But these are exactly the same as on the ASM-2 PCB. So I can get those at my local electronics shop too. All in all a nice way to spend the Sunday afternoon. Next thing is to look at a power supply for the project and order the front panel from Elby Designs. But before that I'll probably try to test this PCB because my friend Hanz is interested in one as well for his modular. If this one works OK I'll probably build another one for him. More on the ASM-2 project later.

MySpace Blog Milestone

Today I noticed some nice figures. To begin with is this post #100 on this blog. I didn't realize I already typed so many. On my MySpace page I don't post so much, but I have a lot of subscribed readers there. Today it reached up to the magical number of 1000 subscribers! Which is quite a lot. I'm honored that so many people keep track of my music activities there.

I also have many friends on MySpace at this moment there are 63,662 friends on my MySpace page that did 188,463 profile views and 128,469 plays on my tunes. I also got 5102 spontaneous comments on my music. Amazing :) Well thank you all for this. MySpace is a great place to do promotion for my music. I love it. If you haven't seen the page yet, you can find it here: http://www.myspace.com/synthnl. You can also find the blog there.

Formant (Part 1)

I have been planning to build a Formant modular for a long time as well. I found all the documentation on the Internet and was already reading myself into this material. But I also saw that building these projects take a lot of time take keeps me from producing music. So I looked several times to buy a used set. But most of the times they just didn't fit my needs. Until very recently. I found a very nice set on a Dutch website. They guy that sells it even lived very close to me. At first I started bidding, but later I just mailed him what he asked for it and decided to go for it. I will pick it up on Monday if all goes well.

As you can see it is a very nice set. I has four VCO's, two normal VCF's and also two 24 dB VCF's, two dual VCA's, one noise module, a RFM module (some kind of equalizing module), two LFO's, a COM module (output) and seven ADSR envelope generators! So a lot of modules. I heard the sound of the Formant before and it is really nice. It is also very old by the way. The original design was printed as a DIY project in the Elektor magazine of May 1977! I'm not sure though when this one was actually build. The current owner didn't build it himself either.

I also like the fact that the keyboard is also included in this set. You can see the keyboard in the picture on the left on top of the modules. I was especially not looking forward to building this one my self. Another thing is that I like the fact that the orginal front panels and knobs are used on this one. But why did I buy this when I like DIY so much? Well it is not in perfect order. A lot of the wiring is broken I understood. I'll see monday though in what state it is. So this will be some kind of a restauration project.

You can see some of the broken wiring in the picture on the left. I will probably completely redo this. And after that see what else is in need of fixing. Well I have all the schematics and most modules are present more than once for comparison. So I think it will be doable. I got this pictures by the way from the current owner. I hope he doens't mind that I used them here. I can't want until Monday to hear this synthesizer in action. I'm also thinking of maybe building some more modules in the future, but I can off course also hook it up to the other projects I'm working on. That is the fun of modulars :D