[sdiy] PAiA P9700S modular

[Eric Brombaugh]

I just finished building one of these. It took me about 2 weeks of 
evenings to do all the assembly but I've still got a bit more 
calibration left. I have a lot of experience with kit building and 
soldering though, so I'm not the best judge of the level of difficulty 
for beginners. I would say however that the quality of the kit is very 
high - instructions are detailed and sensible, components are decent 
quality although not the absolute best (think Ford, not Ferrari) and 
PCBs were easy to assemble. The most difficult part of this kit is 
probably the fly-wires from the PCB to the panel controls, and that's 
mostly just a matter of tedium - cutting wires to length, stripping 
them, etc.

I made a few mistakes in the process, but they were easy to debug and 
all were obvious when I reviewed the checklists in the assembly manual - 
things I'd missed in haste. If you're methodical, read and follow the 
instructions carefully and have decent tools (temperature regulated 
small-tip soldering iron, good cutters, needlenose pliers and wire 
strippers) then you should have excellent results without too much pain.

My thoughts summarized:

Pro:
* Good documentation
* Good complement of basic functions (Midi-CV, VCOs, VCAs, VCFs, Noise, 
Ringmod, Modulators)
* Lots of modulation sources that work either as Attack/Decay transient 
generators, or as LFOs with widely variable waveshapes.

Con:
* No Multis!
* There have been some complaints about the VCOs tracking accurately to 
1V/Octave.
* Sine output of VCO A still has a fair amount of higher harmonic content.
* VCFs tend to be a bit unstable at high-Q, with a tendency to break 
into square-wave oscillation. There are some mods to mitigate this though.

I think it's a great starter for someone interested in modular synths. I 
can't imagine that any other DIY approach would be much easier or more 
cost effective.

Eric

Ezra Jacobs wrote:
> Does anyone have experience with building the P9700S modular by PAiA? 
> For those that don't know this kit, you can find some info here:
>
> http://paia.com/p9700s.htm
>
> I'm thinking about building one, but because I have no previous 
> (serious) experience with soldering, I'm not sure if it will be a good 
> choice.
> Should I go for a PAiA FatMan (or another DIY-synth) instead? Any 
> advice/experiences/other input is much appreciated!
>
> Thanks in advance,
> -Ezra