Jim Patchell's DIY Synthesis

Many of you might recognize the name Jim Patchell. For those of you that do not, Jim is about as respected as it gets in the Synth DIY community. He started his first synth project back in 1973:

"Well, this project was started in 1973, or there abouts. I was at Santa Barbara City College at the time. The library there had Radio Electronics magazine, and I would go there to read and do home work. When I saw the article on building your own synthesizer, I was hooked immediately. This was, of course, the legendary Paia 2700. Some of the circuits were build as is, others I didn't like. The VCO was one of those. I used the national semiconductor application notes for the LM324 to build the voltage controlled triangle oscillator. Back then, I had no money to speak of, so everything was pretty much built from salvage parts. The LM324 was a free sample. They were not cheap back then. I did buy some LM741/747/748 type opamps to make some of the modules. All of the transistors were salvaged. Pots were a very strange collection of pots salvaged from old radios (I could kick myself for that misdeed)."


Low Pass Filter pictured. He's contributed quite a bit to the synth community. You can see a bit of his work in the following three sites.

The Jim Patchell Synthesizer D.I.Y. Web Page
Jim Patchell's First Synthesizer Project
A New DIY Synthesizer Project

He is also responsible for the electronic design and PC Board layout for the MIKADO Analog Sequencing System posted here.