Original Sequential Circuits Collectibles for Sale, Pete Townsend’s DX1, More: Synth Journal
The best of the rest of this week’s synth news.
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Get your hands on a whole clutch of original Sequential Circuits collectible documents and more in this week’s Synth Journal.
Synth Journal
Wine Country Selling Sequential Circuits Collectible Fabrication Packages
Collectors, take note. Back in the 1980s when the original Sequential Circuits went under, some of its employees spun off a new company called Wine Country to service Sequential instruments and basically steward the outfit’s legacy. I used to take my Prophet-600 to Wine Country for repairs back in the 1990s. After all of these years, Wine Country is closing its doors and letting go of old material, including original Sequential Circuits collectible fabrication drawings.
Sold as a set, the fabrication package contains drawings, documents, artwork and PC films for the Prophet-T8, Prophet VS keyboard and rackmount, Prophet 2000, Prophet 2002, Studio 440, Prophet 3000, Prophet 3002, Six-Trak, TOM Drum, Prophet Remote and more. They vary in weight from 25 pounds for the Studio 440 to 38 pounds for the Prophet-T8.
“These original documents were stored in a special hanging file storage vault in SCI’s Engineering Department bearing SCI Property Tag #1837,” says the Wine Country website. “Since 1988, this storage vault of original drawings has resided with Wine Country Sequential, and the contents of this vault are now available for sale as a complete set.”
Wine Country is also selling other Sequential Circuits collectibles like a Prophet 3000 unpopulated bare PC board, program data cassettes for the Prophet-5, Prophet-T8, Prophet-600 and Multi-Trak, brochures and more.
Interested parties can visit the site (link below) and email an offer by June 30.
DayDreamer Synth 1
Homemade sawtooth polyphony. That’s the tagline for Synth 1 by DayDreamer, an open-source and wooden(!) desktop six-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer. I’m tempted to make jokes about how it sounds wooden but it doesn’t at all – the only thing woody is the case (which also makes it fairly sustainable).
Synth 1 has six VCO oscillators, each with its own tuning knob. It also offers six VCAs, a Diode Ladder lowpass filter with resonance, a white noise generator, a digital to analog envelope generator and LFO, portamento and a PT2399 bucket brigade delay. In terms of voices, you can play it in polyphonic or paraphonic mode, with one, two, three or six voices.
Synth 1 sounds pretty good, especially when you consider the price, which is only $299. Find out more at the DayDreamer homepage.
Error Instruments Noise Therapy
Next up is Noise Therapy, an ASMR FX generator from Error Instruments. Billed as an experimental audio device, it’s BUILT for sound exploration and real-time manipulation with self-oscillating feedback, real-time circuit bending, and effects processing with distortion, delay, filtering and noise.
There are different ways to interact with the sound. You can use the touch- and light-sensitive sensor for unpredictable results and the modular-style patch bay to reveal happy accidents. There’s even a Mooog-style knob. No, that’s not a typo.
Noise Therapy costs €120 and is available from the Error Instruments site.
Physical Audio Tetrad
Let’s get physical… modeling that is. Tetrad from developer Physical Audio is of a much more experimental ilk than many other physical modeling instruments, like Expressive E Soliste, for example.
Created in collaboration with composer and transmedia artist Gadi Sassoon, Tetrad starts with four oscillators of varying types, including Basic, Chords and Modal chords, Free and Flex modes, sends them through a Quad AM processor that acts like a kind of sequencer, then a Granulator, and four physically modeled plate resonators. The result is an utterly unique experimental synthesizer that also supports MPE.
Physical Audio Tetrad is normally priced at $99 but is available now for $59 from the company website.
Liquid Sky Dada Noise FX Cube
Looking for a self-contained Eurorack FX rig? Liquid Sky in collaboration with Erica Synths is selling the Dada Noise FX Cube, a specially curated portable modular effects processing system “built for live performers, modern DJs, and sound designers on the move.”
The set includes 12 modules, including Erica Synths Black BBD, Black K Phaser, Quad VCA 2, Black Stereo Reverb, Black Stereo Delay, Pico RND, Pico Input and Output, plus two Joystick 2 modules, and two Liquid Sky d-vices passive multiples pre-installed in the Liquid Sky DJ Modular Flightcase. You also get an LED gooseneck light, 20 patch cables and a hidden geartracker of your choice for iOS or Android.
Costs $3,371 USD at the Liquid Sky site.
Love Hultén Synth 17
Love Hultén is at it again. The genius designer has this time made Synth 17, a personal experiment with an eight-voice module from Knobula, 17 individually controlled stepper motors and a Keystep modified for capacitive touch. The look is based on circuit boards.
Just feast your eyes on the demo video. Simply astonishing.
Sampleson Tactile
Plugin company Sampleson has an interesting new instrument available now called Tactile. An “ambient VST instrument,” it freezes audio, letting you drag your cursor across the waveform to elicit washes of sound. You can layer two sounds, producing dense spectral-freeze and granular soundscapes.
To capture the audio, there’s a built-in recorder, and you can create movements either manually or via automation.
Tactile is available now for the introductory price of $29 from the Sampleson site, with the cost increasing to $49 in the future.
Patches From Pete Townsend’s Yamaha DX1
Finally, I’ll leave you with this playthrough of patches from Pete Townsend’s Yamaha DX1, which is housed at the Pete Townshend Studio at the University Of West London.
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