On my “can-I-do-that-scale”, these valve amplifies by the Serbian company NAT Audio are off the meter. literally. I don’t even know someone who knows someone who could come close to this degree of craftsmanship and beauty. These guys win. It’s too bad these images are hidden deep within their site on static pages…
The “Magma”.
The “Transmitter”.
The “Xenon”. That blue stuff you see in the tubes… yeah, that’s plasma.
David Ingebretsen has a popular blog that I’m sure many in the synth community and the folks at Electro-Music have heard of, Analog Realities. However, what i prefer is the synth build photos from his personal web pages. Specifically his amazing work on the [Nyle] ‘Steiner Synthasystem’. Absolutely amazing and humbling work. David’s also got some great details of other builds he’s worked on such as Jurgen Haible modules, YuSynth builds, and others. Especially nice are the high resolution photos he provides. A few of my favorites are below. Click through to go to the originals on David’s site.
This is a great shot of the synthasystem. All of the details can be found on David’s site.
JH Tau Phaser
JH Frequency Shifter
Not much to this post except ridiculously high resolution images of the inner workings of the Korg Electribe ER1. Click the images to be brought to the hi resolution version(s), all of which are approximately 6500 x 3500.
Upper PCB: Top Side
Upper PCB: Bottom Side
Lower PCB: Top Side
Lower PCB: Bottom Side
Enclosure (This has obviously seen better days)
Not at all DIY audio in any sense. Not even close. If ever has anything deserved an are-you-fing-kidding me this is it.
Clearaudio – Goldfinger v2 MC Cartridge.
This thing is fucking massive and awesome and scares me. From the DIY Audio projects photo-gallery. I might need to make a new category for this blog just for this thing. If there’s such a thing as a bong for smoking crack this is probably what it looks like.
The LoudestWarning Blog is another nice DIY audio and synth blogspot blog with some great photos of custom home-grown synthesis and audio projects. No need to re-hash all the great stuff on the site but I will say that the picture of blue knobs is right up my alley. It’s organized, repetitive, colorful, and who doesn’t enjoy a substantial collection of knobs?
The DIY Audio forum’s photo gallery is rich with hundreds of amazing projects the DIY audio community has built over the years. I could repost and talk about every single one of them but I really try to avoid it. While browsing I came across the following build and for some reason it stood out from the crowd. The wooden enclosure is a nice departure from the typical aluminum and stainless steel boxes that you typically see.
You can read about DIY-Audio forum member Vortchun’s build here
Gur Milstein and Meir Arosh are the men behind Analogic ACS: the ACS is the ‘Analog Control System’, a modular analog sequencer designed for a high degree of flexibility and compatibility with analog syths of all walks. They also offer their products on a DIY basis if you prefer to do it yourself, modify and tinker. These are some great looking machines and one of the more interesting aspects of ACS is that they will custom make you analog synthesizers and instruments to your specs.
I’ve had this post drafted for a couple of weeks because I wasn’t at all sure where to begin. On Cikira’s front page it boldly states “Cikira talks about Gas”… then she attempts to dispel myths that her site is a joke, that she’s not rich, that she’s not a man… and it goes on. I would love to meet this woman. Something tells me the conversation would be insane. Not to mention her massive collection of gear. See below…
No doubt she’s a legend in the synth DIY and collector world (married at NAMM and given away by Dr. Moog himself) but for those unfamiliar with all which is Cikira… definitely peruse her site.
For those looking for unique tools and software she? they? in conjunction with Redmoon (I’m not clear on the relationship here) have written custom software for the Mac called Maxwerk written by Amanda Pehlke (Cikira) using MAX. I can’t offer any thoughts on this as I don’t have a mac. If anyoine has info please post in the comments.
After making the last post about the Electro-harmonix Stereo Memory Man I realized that I didn’t post any pictures of the circuit board. As far as I’m concerned that’s the difference between Cosmopolitan and Larry Flynt’s definitive ‘Barely Legal’ magazine. So here we go… a nice high resolution shot of the innards of this beast.
The main processor is Analog Devices ADSP-BF531, the low-cost entry point for the Blackfin Processor family. According to Analog Device’s website there are three versions…
the ADSP-BF531, ADSP-BF532, and ADSP-BF533, offer all the ease of use and architectural attributes of the Blackfin processor. These three processors are all completely pin compatible – differing solely with respect to their performance and on-chip memory – thus reducing risk and offering the ability to scale up or down depending upon the end application needs.
It also utilizes ISSI’s IS42S16800A 8Meg x16 128-MBIT SYNCHRONOUS DRAM.
