Synthesizers

Gracie and Roland Jupiter 6

Gray and white cat sitting on top of a keyboard synthesizer (Roland Jupiter 6) on a hardwood floor.

Gracie stands proudly atop a vintage Roland Jupiter 6. As the quality manager for Synthetic Dreamscapes, she always has access to some of the best instruments (including a few of ours that we have sent in for repair).

The Jupiter 6 was a somewhat scaled-down version of Roland’s flagship Jupiter 8 polyphonic analog synthesizer. But it did have a sound of its own, perhaps a little edgier, and it sported one of the earliest MIDI implementations. We at CatSynth enjoy its sound indirectly through Cherry Audio’s Mercury 6 virtual instrument.

Gracie and PPG Wave

Gracie shows proudly shows off a PPG Wave. Clearly putting her paw of approval as Quality Manager for Synthetic Dreamscapes.

Submitted via our Facebook page. You can see all of Gracie’s features on CatSynth via her tag.

With wavetable synthesis very much in vogue again, it’s a good time to look back at the PPG Wave, which was the OG for this type of synthesis using large palettes of small, carefully crafted waveforms to create rich timbres at the oscillator level, before the signal goes to any filters, amplifiers or such. Gracie is fortunate to have one of these originals to play.

Milo and Custom DIY VCS3

Tuxedo cat sitting next to an analog synthesizer, a modern version of the Synthi VCS3 built from a kit and custom parts.

Milo proudly sits next to a freshly built version of the classic (EMS Synthi) VCS3. Submitted by Keith Winstanley via our Facebook page.

As mentioned, this is not an original VCS3, but a modern custom build that Winstanley recently completed.

It’s one I’ve been building on and off for about 10 years, just bought and installed the Ghielmetti patchbay, pin park and Predtopatch socket 🙂 It has a lot of features the original hadn’t but using original components and circuitry 🙂

We hope that Keith and Milo have a lot of fun playing their new instrument!