These pages will mainly focus on synth DIY, but will also include details about my work on commercial synthesizers.
I design, build, modify, and try my best to understand and explain. For more information, click on the respective titles.
My Youtube channel, featuring some of the circuits and synths mentioned here.
There are a "few" standard components that are good to stock up on. A lot of parts are also interchangeable and some can
be combined to save you from buying a third part. My list is an attempt to give the beginner a shopping list. We might jump
into actual circuits and stuff to think about later.
Some info about the M500 and a couple of simple mods I did to improve the range of sounds.
Some notes on controlling the ISD1820, both with control voltage and a resistor ladder keyboard
Make your own silicon Mellotron today!
The 2720 was sold in kit form by Paia in the 1970's. Designed in the early 1970's (as the Paia 2700) to be cheap and available,
which means that the designs are unusually simple. My 2720 is in good condition with only 2700-series modules and only small mods.
My only work on this machine has been calibration and cleaning up some corroded jacks.
Ray Wilson of Music from outer space (MFOS) designed the Noise toaster to be a beginner friendly simple DIY synth. He also wrote
the book Make: Analog synthesizers which focuses heavily on this synth. I learnt a lot building this as my first real synth. I have
made a few improvements and extentions to the design which will be documented here.
My second DIY synth, the original Soundlab using some of the suggested modifications from MFOS. It is working but the VCO:s needs to be
calibrated, the case put together, and the mod depth for the filter and amp adjusted.
A collection of simple synth circuits designed with my very limited understanding. They are meant to be easy to understand and
VERY cheap to build using only common parts.
Most of the time when you build someone elses kit, populate a PCB, or just follow a schematic you realize stuff. Sometimes there are
errors, but more often I find that you can substitute various parts. Or improvements/addons. Instead of keeping them to myself I share them
here if the project doesn't get it's own page.
A collection of stuff I've found online and want to keep available for everbody. I've built and tested most of them
Can you build a simple synth using only a quad op amp? I try to find out, but so for I have been forced to use a few transistors as well.
So far we have a VCO (square only), LFO (triangle only), and a pretty nice sounding low pass filter.
I believe that information should be free, but I respect you if you are of a diffrent view. So if you see your design or schematics here,
let me know if you want me to credit you or just remove them. I try to refer to original content as much as possible, but sometimes it's a
good thing that copies exist for the sake of preservation. I do have quite a few PDF:s and schematics, so contact me if you no longer can
find stuff I am referring to. You can reach me through neocities.org (just search for my site there and comment).
This page was last updated on 2022-10-09
