My first synthesiser (from hereon unimaginately referred to as synth 1), looking back, is a bit of a mess. Five separate (and tiny) stripboards, bad grounding practises, bad power distribution, poor VCA design, limited sonic potential. It really is a miracle that it all came together and works (albeit in a very haphazard manner).

The current synth that I’m working on (from hereon referred to as synth 2) is going to be a rehashed and greatly updated version of synth 1, refining both the functional properties of the synth and also much of the technical mishaps that occured in synth 1. The first and most notable issue is grounding/power. In synth 2, these fixes will manifest in the form of reduced VCO bleed and removal of the erratic power behaviour (presumably induced by the dodgy virtual ground circuitry – ‘fixing’ this erratic behaviour in synth 1 is accomplished by reducing and then reapplying the supply voltage, which I assume drains the power caps. I am still unsure why that fixes the issue, but I know that by altering the design of this part of the circuit, the issue disappears).

The second series of alterations will be functional, altering the patchable blocks of circuitry. The addition of slope generators (perhaps replacing the square wave LFOs…?) will offer much improved sonic potential, especially as they can double up as variable pulse-width square LFO’s, accessed by a different output socket.

Attenuators seem like a much needed addition, which should allow for some of the subtlety that was largely impossible in synth 1. I am unsure whether these will be placed on each output (less likely) or as patchable sections of the instrument (more likely).

A noise oscillator or two will also be present – these seem very useful for modulation and a variety of creative applications. However, having a noise oscillator does start to raise the question of filters, as noise oscillators have a tendency to be rather 1 dimensional without any tone shaping possibilities.

VCAs – although I know that the VCAs from synth 1 are very primitive, they do have some unique charm to them. One thing that I feel is missing from their function in synth 1 is output sockets for each VCA, rather than them being hard patched directly to the main out.