Collaborate Disseminate
Somehow, an Elka Synthex analog synthesizer made it onto [Mend it Mark]’s repair bench recently. It had a couple of dud buttons, and some keys produced the wrong tone. Remember, …read more Continue reading Repairing a Legendary Elka Synthex Analog Synthesizer
Variable-speed playback cassette players were already the cool kids on the block. How else are you going to have any fun with magnetic tape without ripping out the tape head and running it manually over those silky brown strips? Sure, you can change the playback speed on most players as …read more
Continue reading Reel in the Years with a Cassette Player Synth
Ever wanted to make some seriously trippy retro graphics to go along with your lo-fi hip hop beats? Now you can, with [teafella]’s aptly named Hypno Video Synthesizer, a Raspberry Pi-based video synthesizer that digitally emulates and extends analog video workflows through colorization, shape generation, and feedback, patching the modifications …read more
Eurorack has taken over the synthesizer community, and hundreds of people are building their own eurorack modules. [Michael Forrest] designed and built his own Eurorack sequencer module that doesn’t use weird things like capacitors and chips to store a signal. Instead, he’s doing it with stepper motors and some clever engineering.
The basic idea of a Eurorack sequencer is to somehow store a series of values and play them back repeatedly. Connect that sequence to a clock, and you get the same pattern of sounds out of your synth. This can be done digitally with a circular buffer, in the …read more
Every restoration project involves various levels of grit, determination, gumption and doggedness. But [Darren Glen]’s restoration of a Jupiter-8 is an absolute labor of love. The Jupiter-8, launched by Roland in 1981, was their flagship “polyphonic analog subtractive” synthesizer and was used by many legendary acts of the ’80’s. The synthesizer was rugged — built to withstand the rigors of travelling everywhere that the bands took it. More importantly, it could produce a wide range of sounds that came from dedicated and independent controllers. These, plus a host of other desirable features, makes the synth highly coveted even today and …read more
[Ben Bradley], a member of Freeside Atlanta, built a capacitive touch Jankó keyboard for the Georgia Tech Moog Hackathon. Jankó Keyboards are a 19th-Century attempt to add a more compact piano keyboard. There are three times as many keys as a traditional piano but arranged vertically for (supposedly) greater convenience while playing–an entire octave can be covered with one hand. But yeah, it never caught on.
[Ben]’s project consists of a series of brass plates wired to capacitive touch breakout boards from Adafruit, one for each of the Arduino Mega clone’s four I2C addresses. When a key is touched, the …read more
Continue reading Controlling a Moog Werkstatt with a Capacitive Touch Jankó Keyboard
