Music Thing: Boutique Synthesizers

Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:

If you want to be a player in the music geek world, you need to get yourself a boutique synth — something hand-made, ideally in Scandinavia. It should be absurdly expensive, virtually out of production, and using some kind of weird-ass synthesis technology that nobody else has heard of. It must also look cool and sound unlike anything you're going to hear on the radio. Here are a few contenders:

Droid 3 Robotic Sound Module €449
It's got a great name and a great look: Black, with one knob, four buttons and a reversed-out two line LCD. Sound output is 8-bit, and is so lo-fi that it would be perfect for people who don't want the bland polished sound of, say, a 20 year-old Commodore 64 sound chip. Claims to be the first synth ever made in Denmark. The only American owner appears to have travelled to Denmark to collect it.

Resonator Neuronium �2,499

Designed a few years ago by in Germany by J?n Michaelis (who makes the JoMox range of drum machines and synths), the Neuronium is truly boutique. He�s sold 25 units at �2,499 each, and it comes wrapped in a cloud of badly-translated hype. The machine claims to use �analog neurons� to generate tones and sequences. Sample explanation from the website: �Who hasn�t heard about neural nets yet, which as technical pendants to the biological predecessor should teach the actually stupid, static and serial working computers the creative �thinking.� Disappointingly, most of the sound samples sound like crickets chirruping.


Dave Smith Evolver $499
This is the only synth here that you might actually see in your local guitar shop. Dave Smith designed all the Sequential Circuits synths in the 1970s and helped invent MIDI before inventing the first serious software synth. When he got tired of software, he designed the evolver � a fantastic sounding analog/digital hybrid with a built in sequencer, in a little metal box the size of a paperback. There�s also a lustworthy keyboard model, which costs $2,399. Last week it got a new OS, which will make tweaking via MIDI much easier.


AVR-X Synth
Gratifyingly, only five AVR-X synths exist in the world. It�s a home-build project by a group of friends in Link?g, Sweden, with digital oscillators, analog filters and � best of all � wooden panels on the side. They�re hoping to start selling a DIY kit for about �350.

[andy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

Check out http://www.jesusonic.com/

[fabulously @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

#2,
who knows, they must have dozed off. :)

[Joe @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

I bought a Sid Station when it was only $500... which was too much even then (but I was making good money back then from the internet boom and found myself impulse buying quite a bit online). Anyway, they now claim to have stumbled onto 100 more commodore 64 sound chips! Wow what luck now they can sell 100 more Sid Stations for $950 each!
Get one today! That is unless, like me, you smell rat too.

http://www.sidstation.com/sidorder.php

[Kappe @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

WOOW! This thing i freaking cool! Those Danes are the best!!!