8 voice poly to 12 voices

video upload by Craig Barnes

"This is the synth I made last year which was an 8 voice bi-timbral analogue polysynth with AS3340 VCOs and AS3372 filters in matrix 12 configuration. As happy as I was with the synth I thought it would be great to make use of what I've learnt on my last 12 voice DCO polysynth and apply it to this build. So I created some smaller 6 voice cards, made the LFOs in software on the PICOs and rewrote all the controller software. Early days, but it's sort of working, one voice card is slight louder than the other and it's effects don't work. I'm sure there is a lot more to do yet."

Black Pill (BP Synth) build.

video upload by Craig Barnes

"A reasonable description of my Black Pill synth build into an M- Audio Axiom 25 chassis with a Teensy 4.0 based editor managing the sounds.

The github page. https://github.com/craigyjp/Black-Pil..."

"I created a hardware editor for the BP Synth to specifically fit it into the M-Audio Axiom 25 chassis.

The synth was created by Blaine at SyntheTech about 3 years ago. [2nd set of videos here]

To Do list

Replace screen 0 with one the same as the others.

Clean the main screen display

Add the Portamento switch with an LED instead of the LFO wave select.

Connect the transpose buttons to the Teensy so I can manage the transpose.

Make the footswitch input assignable to Arp Start/Stop, Glide on/off etc."

12 voice polysynth latest iteration

video upload by Craig Barnes

"After finishing the second voice board and debugging the filter issues with the first board I've now connected everything up into a 12 voice configuration for more testing and fixing of bugs."

Self contained 6 voice polysynth board

video upload by Craig Barnes

"This is a test of the latest version of my self contained 6 voice polysynth board. it has 6 dual DCOs with super saw, square with PWM and a triangle, a standard saw, square with PWM and a sub oscillator. These are fed into AS3372E analogue filters configured the same as the matrix 12 filters for 16 variations of LP, HP, BP, notch etc. Each voice has 3 ADSRs, 3 LFOs and a noise source."

Roland JX-70 / JX-10 rack mount note to LED addition

video upload by Craig Barnes

"I had finished this project, but originally the 16 patch and bank buttons were dual LEDs. Today I started to replace them with blanks and thought, what if I leave patch buttons 1-6 as dual LEDs and add a simple processor to intercept the serial Comms between the assigner board and the voice boards. Effectively creating a midi to trigger to display the notes as LEDs."

Roland Jupiter 8 from 2x JP-08's

video upload by Craig Barnes

"This is the latest iteration of my Jupiter 8 style synth from two JP-08 boutique synths.

If anyone is interested then here is the code repository with schematics.

https://github.com/craigyjp/Jupiter-8..."

Reminds me of the various custom controlers from Synth-Project.

Completed software and hardware for the Jupiter 8 Controller by Craig Barnes

video upload by Craig Barnes

"This is the final version of the Jupiter 8 from two JP-08 builds, I finished each section off and finally completed the DAC outputs to control the mixer volume and balance."

Craig Barnes Jupiter 8 editor/assigner

video upload by Craig Barnes

"Building a cheap Jupiter 8 from two JP-08 modules I rarely use. I've tried to emulate as much of the original Jupiter 8 onto the front panel, although I've made some concessions because of the way the JP-08 is controlled over MIDI."

Progress on the Roland Super JX 10 Vecoven V4 editor build.

video upload by Craig Barnes

"I've finally managed to lay everything out on the bench and install the voice boards and midi board into the CME UF-70 chassis."

Super JX 10 Vecoven V4 editor

video upload by Craig Barnes

"This is my first pass through the Super JX-10 editor, just wired all the pots, sliders, display, buttons etc into the mux and MCP chips. All programmed up for testing. A lot more to do and test as it doesn't do anything with upper and lower sections yet or send out any NRPN or sysex messages."

Cherry Audio MemoryMode Synth

video upload by Craig Barnes

"This is the Cherry Audio MemoryMode VST realized as a standalone synth. There's a mini pc inside running the standalone VST and outputting to a DAC, the controller can store upto 999 patches."

Five patches created on the Hybrid 8

video upload by Craig Barnes

"I'm not very good at patch creation, but here are the first five patches I've created on the new Hybrid 8 synth. The organ patch is using wavetables, but the rest are just sawtooth VCOs."

Progress on the Teensy TDM synth

video upload by Craig Barnes

"Latest update of the Teensy 4.1 based audio library synth. I've ditched the hardware envelopes because they lacked real-time control and only changed on a fresh key press, so now the Electric Druid Envgen8c chips are back in their sockets on envelope duty. I've opted for log envelopes although I think the AS2164 has a lin/log converter, I need to check."

Poly 61 editor built into the 61 case

video upload by Craig Barnes

"I'd always thought about doing this, so this afternoon I got it installed. Nice tight fit in the lid of the 61."

Poly 61 hardware midi editor (Tauntek upgrade)

video upload by Craig Barnes

"I quickly built this encoder based hardware editor for Tauntek upgraded poly 61 boards, it's fairly simple and uses an ESP32 Dev board and io port expanders."

First test of replacement AX-80 displays

video upload by Craig Barnes

"Finally got hold of an Akai AX-80 to test my replacement displays and after having to replace one ESP 32 because it refused to load a sketch I finally managed to wire up all 3 displays to the AX, I had to replace the AX power supply as my 220v to 110v converters all gave out. But it does mean the power is 100-260v now for any country. Still need to build the second board and buy some more ESP32 Dev boards."

MOscar fully restored (except knobs)

video upload by Craig Barnes

"First test of the restored MOscar synth. It came to me quite dead with a loose MIDI board and a dead -5v rail, along with quite a few weird pots and strange wiring. Anyways I think it's back to normal now with a Tauntek MIDI upgrade as well."

Fixing up a 1985 Oscar clone

video upload by Craig Barnes

"This is the repairs to my 1985/86 hand made Osc Oscar clone, the famous Moog Oscar from Sound on Sound June 2004. I finally received it back after around 38 years apart. It's had some refurbs and mods and travelled extensively. Europe and the states and eventually wound up in Berlin. I received it dead with no boot. MIDI board was loose, but it couldn't be that simple. No sound from the synth and after getting it to the panel mode and tweaking a few knobs I eventually got it to make a weak sawtooth sound. Lower half of the keybed was dead so I replaced the 5x 4051 chips that read the keyboard and the 7 that read the front panel. Then I removed the aux input mod and upgraded to the Tauntek midi board. A little scratchy in places but nothing that can't be fixed."

Korg DW6000 rack mount conversion with editor

video upload by Craig Barnes

"I bought this DW6000 for £100 a few years back, after fixing a few issues and adding an editor it didn't warrant taking up a keyboard space, so I'm converting it to a 19" rack. First thing to do is build a condensed front panel."

Polykit-16 with added performance modes

video upload by Craig Barnes

"When I first built this synth although it was bi-timbral I never really made the operation so you could easily use the bi-timbral modes, it had patch setups, but not performances to take advantage of the dual sounds, so this week I went out if my way to add the performance mode."