[sdiy] Ridiculous price for Paia synth

[Oren Leavitt]

On 11/23/20 7:44 AM, Benjamin Tremblay via Synth-diy wrote:
> There will always be a place in my heart for PAiA.  I loved getting 
> those weird catalogs back in the 1970s, so very different from the 
> HeathKit catalogs.
>
> When they got into CEM chips the work was really good. They showed us 
> how to get mileage out of these generic chips.
>
Ah yes. I've bought a CEM chips from PAiA when they were new. I liked 
the exploration boards they made for them.


> However, most of their modules and stand-alone synths were clearly the 
> result of a strange design philosophy:
> !) Design the very simplest proof-of-concept circuit. It’s done when 
> it demonstrates the theory/concept of this synthesis feature.
> 2) Spend the rest of your time designing a kit from the cheapest 
> sourced parts, streamlining the assembly/test procedures.
> 3) Write an article for one or more DIY magazines.
>
> A UJT VCO (yeah the Moog used a UJT). A 1-pole lowpass gate. A Twin-T 
> Filter controlled by a single diode. An OTA-based state-variable 
> filter with a switchable bank of capacitors to give it range. Really 
> pretty good quality potentiometers and knobs. Good silkscreening.
>
> And, kits so cheap and weird you just had to buy one to see how they 
> did it: The Hex VCA. The Gnome. The Wind Chimes (really cool and 
> super-inexpensive).

The Gnome was my introduction to Norton amplifiers :)


>
> But yeah. When you’re done learning, what do you with what you have 
> learned? You learned a lot of theory reading through their literature. 
> When it came to straightforward modules like a VCA or ring modulator, 
> the learning was foundational. When it came to VCFs and VCOs, you 
> would have to un-learn the PAiA way. It’s not just that it wasn’t 
> 1V/octave, it’s that corners were cut in ways even the most lenient 
> artist would notice. I’m not talking about nit-picky double-E things, 
> I’m talking about the little things that wreck your mix.

When Barry Klein's "Electronic Music Circuits" came out in 1983 (I 
bought my copy at a Heathkit store!) that introduced me to more 
practical designs beyond the PAiA camp.

Woo-hoo, there is life beyond RC4136s, Volt/Hz and UJTs!


>
> I purchased a couple of their rack-mount mixer kits. They were okey, 
> but always had a pretty high noise floor. The schematic showed me why: 
> The pre-amp stage had a fixed (high) gain for each channel. All that 
> noise was adding up.
>
Yep - I have a 7710 mixer, 6710 vocoder, and a Hot Springs reverb.

The 6710 was another fine example of PAiA minimalism.

> I purchased a full set of the MCVI and MIDI Mux cards. It took me two 
> years to figure out an extra capacitor on the board would make it 
> stable enough to run. When I finally was able to start wiring up the 
> Mux cards to external devices, it was a revolutionary moment in my 
> learning: Golly, computers could control things, for real. 
> http://www.benjamintremblay.com/retro/audio/moretracks/Love_In_Condominiums.mp3 
> <http://www.benjamintremblay.com/retro/audio/moretracks/Love_In_Condominiums.mp3>

I still have my MCVI which still works as a MIDI to CV. The analog to 
digital chip on it for the CV to MIDI feature seems to have died.

Fun quirky stuff PAiA was!

>
>
> Benjamin Tremblay
> btremblay at me.com <mailto:btremblay at me.com>
> 330 Fiske Street
> Carlisle, MA 01741
> 978-831-8315
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/bentremblay 
> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/bentremblay>
>
>
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