GliGli’s Overcycler, an affordable and ‘cycle-over-the-top’ synthesizer?

Supporting member Solidtrax wrote in to let us know he has a review up on GliGli’s Overcycler. You can find it on his site here: https://solidtrax.nl/gliglis-overcycler-review/. You can a couple of video in previous posts here.

From the review:

"The Overcycler is available as a DIY and pre-assembled kit. The DIY kit consists of parts and a pre-assembled circuit board, you only have to do some soldering for the panel, but it’s only through-hole (ie. all the surface mounted parts are soldered already), which isn’t that difficult even if you aren’t a solder-head.

At the moment of writing the price is around €264 for the DIY kit and €314 for the pre-assembled version (ex. shipping). Fabrice and I got in contact and after some discussion, I quickly decided to go for the pre-assembled version so I could help Fabrice with tasks like writing the manual and adding some new factory patches...

But what makes this synth so special and why did Fabrice wanted to create this synthesizer? Well, the manual gives a bit of history, as apparently this project has been a long time in the making:

Quote from the manual: 'This project started about 10 years ago, when I wanted to make use of spare SSM2044 voltage controlled low pass filters I had laying around. The goal was to make a synthesizer that had a very strong character, while staying focused on polyphonic sounds, and the SSM2044 was perfect for that because even when strongly over-driven, it never sounds aggressive. It went through 3 major revisions until it became the full-fledged retail synthesizer it is now. As new SSM2044 are becoming rare, the synthesizer uses SSI2144, which are modern surface-mounted clones, and also embarks LM13700-based voltage controlled amplifiers.'"

Check out the full review here.