Doepfer

hi folks-
i'm posting as a favor for my friend peter b.  he is a young but very 
talented synth designer here in baltimore, md usa.  he has just put 
two synth kits up on his webpage.  i bought one myself and soldered 
it together.

what they are are very strange experimental synths that are small, 
can run off battery (or wallwart 9VDC) and have even a built in 
speaker for very remote wilderness freakage.

the two varieties of kits operate on the same idea.  the 
user "interface" on each is over a hundred brass pegs, which are 
androgynous....meaning they can be inputs or outputs....there are 
no "signal" connections or "control" connection so to speak.  one 
gets sounds by patching all the pegs together with alligator clips, 
or any conductor you wish.  also using the ground share inputs you 
can interface many different external devices with them, provided 
they are between 0 and 9 volts.  i understand that it may be possible 
to export control voltages to the outside world as well, but these 
must be buffered by a preamp, which is an easy circuit which peter 
can show you howto do.

again, these kits are for the experimenter, but i think for folks who 
use their modulars to get crazy sounds for sampling, you can have 
here something quite small that can make the wildest voices patterns 
and analog farts imaginable which will make your sampler hate you, 
but make you happy.  the overall sound and approach resembles crazy 
circuit bending, but way more flexible and intuitive than most 
homemade "bent" contraptions.

the kit i did was the "fourses in the zihai".  it combines four 
oscillators, which are constantly crashing into each other and going 
nuts.  i took me about 25 hours of labor, cause i'm a careful 
solderer.
they are reasonably priced and cool as shit.  please check them ut 
and pete's website at
www.ciat-lonbarde.net

tell him mr borax sent you.
---tom