George Mattson Announces His Retirement and the Division 6 SWAN II Eurorack System

This one is in via George Mattson of Mattson Mini Modular. Back on September 15, 2007, I posted a little teaser that would eventually launch Mattson back into the synth manufacturing world. He is the man behind the Syntar - the original keytar synthesizer, and the SWAN (Syntar Without A Neck) was the follow-up non-keytar version. It's fitting and an honor that George Mattson is announcing his retirement and a new SWAN here on MATRIXSYNTH.

"Hello to all of my dear synth friends, customers, and associates.

After 45 years of involvement in the synthesizer community, it is time for me to retire.

The community is on the right track with some extremely talented, enthusiastic people that can carry on the vision while I step back and focus on actually learning to play the gear I have acquired throughout the years. What a concept…

I thank all of you for the support and friendship that you have provided to me throughout the years. It has been very humbling and I bow to all of you.

I am currently working on my last system design along with my little brother Scott Rise of Division 6. He will be the “manufacturer” and sales point for the S.W.A.N. II.

It’s basically a 60HP 3U complete system. It has 3 VCOs and two separate voice chains. It contains a sequencer, arpeggiator, and the VCOs can be split to upper/lower priority for duophonic operations.

The main 60HP unit has Basic I/O.

For patching ability, there will be a 24HP expander that provides access to more I/O. It will also have sequencer program save/recall functions and the ability to set MIDI channels via the control panel. The two VCF notch outputs will also be accessible.

The main system VCOs will have continuously variable waveform mixing between triangle, square, and saw outputs similar to the EML 101 style of mixing. Both VCFs will also have continuously variable mode mixing between LP, BP, and HP, also like the EML 101.

There will be a 20HP expander panel that will allow for VC control of the VCO waveform mixing and the VCF mode mixing, along with a couple of cascaded buffered multiples and a couple of cascaded clock dividers/square wave sub generators.

That’s it in a nutshell. I’ve been working on this since May of last year and have been trying to balance my time between this design and getting ready to retire.

Price point? Not enough info yet to determine. Probably under $1K for the main unit.
Release date? June/July? As soon as we can. We may crowdfund manufacturing, but we need to accumulate more data first.

Once I have retired, I will still be doing custom system builds. I can’t totally pull away from this art.

Again, thank all of you for your support, and I’ll see you at Knobcon.

George Mattson"