Music Thing: Ray Wilson's Weird Sound Generator

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:

Kit Ray Wilson is a veteran tinkerer and synth builder who has been designing circuits for more than 25 years. He designed the fantastically popular Soundlab Mini Synth - a battery powered, two-oscillator analog synth. He'll sell you a PCB for $30, and the parts cost about $60-80.

If soldering 177 bits onto a PCB seems a bit too much like hard work, Ray's new thing is the Weird Sound Generator. It's a much simpler design, with just forty cheap and easily available components, which can be put together on stripboard in an hour. The sound samples here are surprisingly impressive, if you like things which bleep and warble in a more-or-less random way. Obviously the fun starts once you've finished the circuit and start building a box round it, gratuitously adding as many VU meters and LEDs as you can find.

There?s a friendly community of builders at Electro Music, and an inspiring gallery of completed Soundlab synths on Ray?s site Music From Outer Space.