19" Rack panels for DIY synths?

[Haible Juergen]

	>I've noticed that almost all the commercial modular synths use
small front
	>panels. Does anyone ever use full size rack panels for DIY synth
modules?
	>It would seem to make some sense, you could contain your synth gear
in the
	>same packaging as the rest of your rack-mount audio gear.
	>
	<Can anyone see a disadvantage to this? I suppose that some modules
wouldn't
	>need this much panel space. In that case, simply build more than
one module
	>into the same box, to fill up the space more efficiently.

I have my MOTM modules in the Rack with my 19" gear. MOTM uses 19" Rack
rails
and vertical modules to be fixed to these. Looks nice among vintage 19"
boxes
with its white lettering on black panels, too.

As for *real* 19" modules, there is a problem with the form factor. A
typical
module would just cover 1U height and so you'd have everything in a linear
arrangement - hart to associate knobs to jacks.

I'm going 19" with my PolyModular nevertheless, but I'll probably use larger
panel (3U or 4U height) and include more than one module per panel.
Like a bank of 3 VCOs. As this is polyphonic (4-voice), the electronics is
12 VCOs of course, so I can make good use of the wide space inside a
19" enclosure. See
http://home.debitel.net/user/jhaible/additional_schemos.html
for front panel graphics of the first module.

JH.