As I write this, I’m hunkered down at our cottage in Michigan during the Covid Virus emergency and missing my synth. I’ve spent the past 2 years collecting modules for random amazing jams and am finally getting started on a couple actual tracks. Whatever mood I’m in changes the type of music I’m creating with…
Category: Synthesizers
DIY Synthesizer – Sigsaly-X
Back in April of 2016, I heard the 99% Invisible Podcast about speech synthesizers. It was an enlightening look at Bell Labs Voder, the first speech synthesizer, which debuted at the Worlds Fair, in 1939. We had speech synthesizers back in 1939! But most of this episode was dedicated to SIGSALY. This was the codename…
Arp Odyssey Repair – Part Two
Continued from Part One. Next step in the repair was to either replace or repair the 4023 filter. I wasn’t actually sure if it was broken or not, but thought it would be worth replacing the chips and capacitors anyway. On reviewing the schematics for board C, I confirmed that the high output line had…
Bell Labs Speech Synth Kit
2018 has been the year of my obsession with speech synthesizers. I’ve been experimenting with the Ginsing/SoundGin IC for awhile and recently created my own eurorack-based synth module. In researching speech synth chips, I came across a very cool Bell Laboratories Speech Synthesis Kit, from 1963, on Ebay. A little beat up, but never put…
Arp Odyssey Repair – Part One
Many years ago, I had repaired a few synthesizers for Bon Harris of Nitzer Ebb. Being a huge fan of theirs I took the opportunity to do the best I could and managed to fully repair a few of them. I managed to repair a very broken EDP Wasp (still my favorite synthesizer), Sequential Circuits…