Rainboard video
How to make your own. (Warning: big job.)

After years of threats, the Therevox ET-4 is finally available.
And yes, it’s another Ondes-style controller.
(Unlike the French Connection, it has a built-in two oscillator analog synth. And $1475 is a bargain.)

This defies explanation.

All the way back in 1972, Tony Furse managed to get funding to build a polyphonic digital/analog synth. That was the Qasar.

He built precisely two prototypes–the finished machine would have been far too costly for the era, so no investors came forward. Tony persisted, though, and developed it into a primitive sampling machine with dual 6800 microprocessors (brand-new on the market) in 1978. That machine, the Qasar M8, eventually was commercialized as the Fairlight CMI. (More history here.)

It’s got a blog, it’s been mentioned on Gizmodo, Makezine has done a piece on it. They’ve been talking it up for at least 4 months. So when does it ship?

If you’re interested in one, go here and donate.

Seen on another Deviant Art account.
More in his gallery.

Showed off at NAMM: video
More pics.

There’s your alternate controller for the month…..

From Dave Wright, of course.
Video here.

Plus: it’s digital but worth mentioning for its
huge DIY potential: the Roninsynth.

And here’s your first deviant synth for the new year:
a horribly-mangled Atari 400……

This guy took an ancient (1980 or so) paper-tape reader from a Heathkit computer and rewired it so it would control a simple oscillator bank made with 555 timer chips. Then he made punched tapes for it, by writing a QBASIC program. I’m afraid to ask how long it took him.

Nervous Squirrel strikes again.

Cock-a-doodle-doo.

He also made something called a “mucky sailor“.

Courtesy of Make magazine: a MeeBlip synth, built into a vintage cookbook.

Nick Collier has made a Flash animated version of his “Beast” synthesizer.
Try it–all you can make is glorious anarchy.

He apparently pulled the voice board out of a perfectly good Moog Voyager,
installed it in a Modularworld case, and wired it up like a modular.
Am I missing something here?

The work of Moritz Wolpert. More here.

First, Russian DIYer Dmitry Morozov, better known as vtol, has a website full of his colorful instruments. Nice panel art! He apparently makes limited issues of some of them for sale.

Then, Flickr user “jugger-naut” built a tube synthesizer in plug-in module form.

And Joe Paradiso built a hybrid synthesizer into a CAMAC crate, to be controlled by a PDP-11 minicomputer, in December 1979. Don’t throw it away, Joe, it’s a priceless historical artifact!

Mike Zee is a musician and prolific DIY builder in Poughkeepsie, NY. (That’s like saying Sean Connery is an “actor of some repute in Scotland”, I suppose.)

His main site for custom work is here. His cabinetwork is so beautiful, it will make you cry. Be warned, you will be exploring every link there. He has schematics of almost everything he’s built — clever designs, easy to reproduce.

He has a Soundclick page if you want to hear samples of his music. And he has a YouTube channel.

Seen on Matrix, with no information. It was, as it turns out, based on a Texas Instruments sound-effects IC (probably an SN76477). It appears to be built into an old tube tester cabinet. In case you didn’t know, Raes is a notorious Flemish artist, founder of the Logos Foundation—and dedicated nudist.
Here is a list of Raes’ DIY instruments.

The technology to do this has been readily available for at least 30 years. What gets me is that very few actual working musicians seem to be capable of doing a decent one-person-band. (She also appeared on Conan O’Brien last year.)