A beautiful calico cat sits behind an (also beautiful) Buchla 208 system. From macron_electron via Instagram.
The 208 is really just the top half a Music Easel, i.e., the synthesizer without the touch plate controller. Recently, my interest in Buchla gear at HQ has been rekindled, first by the announcement of the still elusive Red Panel series at NAMM, and then by the demo that we got from Thomas DiMuzio at his rehearsal for the Outsound summit.
Milali has found a most peculiar napping position and location beside a Korg Prophecy synthesizer. From Caroline Sommer via our Facebook page.
A bit more on the Prophecy from Vintage Synth Explorer:
The Prophecy Solo Synthesizer was unveiled in 1995, and was a purely monophonic solo/lead synthesizer. It employed DSP synthesis first developed for the Korg OASYS synthesizer, with algorithms for producing realistic analog timbres, VPM (Variable Phase Modulation) tones similar to FM synthesis, and physically modeled brass, reed, and plucked string instruments. At your finger tips were tons of real-time control over traditional analog editing parameters like filter cutoff and resonance, envelopes and the arpeggiator. It had a pitch wheel, a mod wheel, an expressive dual action ribbon wheel, six effects processors and more!
http://www.vintagesynth.com/korg/prph.php
Video by Tim Kaiser of his cat with the 4093 Quad Oscillator and his cat.
The 4093 Quad Oscillator is a popular lo-fi DIY circuit based on the 4093 NAND gate. They look very simple to make, so we at CatSynth plan to make one ourselves at some point. Big Merp will love it 😸
Lilly scampers on top of a Eurorack system that is still brimming with potential. From coresect23 via Instagram.
I managed to order one of the new Rick & Morty Pocket Operators from Teenage Engineering, and it arrived at HQ yesterday. I decided to film the unboxing and initial attempts to play it for CatSynth TV, but Big Merp decided to get in the act. You can see our fun in this video.
The Pocket Operator is a tiny synth from Teenage Engineering that comes in several models of which the Rick-and-Morty-themed version is the most recent. Once I fully get the hang of it, I will do a proper demo, probably in conjunction with the modular or Field Kit.
Syd sits atop an Ekeltron Analog Keys synthesizer. From Moustafa Elsayed via our Facebook page. Moustafa describes Syd as “my best musical buddy when I am playing”, a description that makes us smile 😻.
From Tim Cox via YouTube:
I was just on an airplane with my 0-Coast hooked into a battery pack with patch cables everywhere and the flight attendant was super cool with it and everything.
So I jammed. I even ordered a sparkling water during the set. It was refreshing. AUM + BLEASS Reverb + Perforator + Vatanator for the steady beat. I don’t want to pay for SoundCloud pro right now so I put some psychedelic cat footage over top and I think it works. Let me know what you think!
We at CatSynth love it and are in fact inspired to do another cat-centric synth jam of our own 😸
Big Merp jumps up on the ledge behind the modular synths (the main system as well as the RackBrute). Also present are the Deptronics Thunderbell, Moog Mother 32, Roland Boutique VP-03 (with owl), and the Korg Volca Beats.
Poor Merp has had to wear the cone of shame since his surgery on Friday, but as this picture shows, by Wednesday he was feeling much better and back to his regular mischievous self. So we decided to liberate him from the cone.
He seems much happier without it 😸
Eggo the cat sits atop a Korg DW8000 synthesizer. From Sam Oliver via our Facebook page.
Eggo the waffle kitty, aptly named from Stranger Things, is having a rest on my vintage 1985 Korg Dw8000 which happens to have a small piece of a much larger stranger things pop figure collection
“Stranger Things” has definitely brought some of the mid-1980s synthesizer sounds into mainstream consciousness – although those sounds and instruments have been popping up again in music for some time now. Around 1986/1987, the DW8000 was Korg’s “out-of-my-league” synth, the big flagship compared to the Poly800 v2 that I was initially looking at – and I thought the graphics for the waveforms were pretty cool. Of course, this is the time period when the Yamaha DX7 and their other FM synths were dominant. Ultimately, I went for analog/DCO and FM options in my first synths, but recently I have found myself rather curious about the DW8000 (and its rackmount version the EX8000) again.
