AW: Re: [AH] modular polyphony?

[jhaible]

Hi Troy,

I was reading AH archives and found your mail. I'm not subscribed
to AH from this account, so I'm asking you to forward this mail to the
AH list. (I've made a CC to synth-diy already.)

>Some nutcase (wink) here had the idea of using 5-pin
>DIN plugs to make
>connections on a pentaphonic modular. I wonder if he
>every got anywhere?


Now, that nutcase would be me. (;->) I brought it up, and it was intended
to be a shared project with contributions from other people. Not easy to
keep people motivated over a long span of time, though.

What I have done in the mean time, is the following:
I tried the whole concept on a single voice for a test.
What concept ?  Rather small, but effective, circuits (as you have to
build everything N times in hardware). Ultra stable VCOs without
expensive or strange parts. (You don't want Autotune in a Modular,
do you ?)
So the idea was build a monophonic non-modular synth first (which I
wanted to do anyway), and test the concept for the PolyModular
at the same time.

The results so far: The monophonic synth is finished (apart from the
enclosure), and I like it better that I ever expected. The VCOs are
extremely stable, and the filters sound as fat as intended though they
are only built from 3 transistors and one opamp each (plus passive
components). So all went well - I have all the basics together
to make the PolyModular synth a rather risk-free project.

Last year, a synth manufacturer showed interest to make a commercial
polysynth out of that. Not modular, but using the same efficient technology
to keep costs down. For various reasons, this project was cancelled.

As for myself, I don't have the time to do the PolyModular as a fun project
at the moment. I haven't completely shelved it, especially as it would
only be marginally more expensive than a monophonic Modular. (Every
good Modular uses the largest amount of its cost for the front panel, jacks
and pots, and you'd only need them once for N voices of a Polymodular.)
Maybe some time I will take the idea up again. Or I won't.

Meanwhile, what is left of this project is my JH-720, which is my
favorite little monosynth right now. (Pictures of the JH-720
"under construction" are at
http://www.synthfool.com/diy/jh_new_picts.html)

JH.