Tasty Chips has introduced the Saw Bench Synthesizer – a portable and affordable monophonic synthesizer, with a 100% analog signal path
Features:
- Small and portable, yet ergonomic. Focus on hands-on controls with good grouping and spacing.
- A four-pole diode ladder VCF, with high resonance and even self-oscillation
- Separate ADSR envelopes for VCA and VCF
- LFO with 3 waveforms, plus a Sample & Hold, for VCF
- Frequency Modulation for deep growling bass sounds
- Manual controls such for Env and LFO enable, waveform selection, ADSR mode /
- LFO switching
- MIDI controls of all digital features (envelopes, VCF cutoff, LFO, etc)
- Sturdy metal casing.
Here’s a video demo:
All sounds in the video, by Pieter van der Meer, are from the Sawbench synthesizer, except for the drum sounds.
Note: While the specs mention a ‘study metal casing’, Tasty Chips hasn’t posted any pictures of this on their site yet.
The Saw Bench Synthesizer is priced at 99 EUR incl VAT. See the Tasty Chips site for details.
Sounds tasty
Although the guy in video must have had allot of coffee to build that fast
Great! Shopping time 🙂
This looks really cool, but whhhhhyyyyyyyyyyy would you release something like this and not include voltage control?
these things need cases too or else the circuits pick up buzz and would get blasted by volumes if you’re running them in a live scenario. it makes it easy to just design and sell it as a circuit board without a real company to finish the product and manufacture all of what that entails. DIY will always be DIY
Tried to order one but it is not on the webstore. There are no links for putting it in the shopping cart.
Interesting, but a couple things;
1; Why not use the arduino to generate an extra oscilator? Fine, you’d theoretically loose the “100% analog signal path”, but that’d still be there if you wanted, and it’d open it up for thicker, more complex sounds. If I was doing this, I’d probably add an LCD, a couple of buttons, and maybe a rotary encoder. Wouldn’t add much to the production price (You could even leave them off, and have them as an optional extra)
2; What’s with using a whole arduino? there’s plenty of PCB space above where it is, and it’s an open-source design; you could just add the uC to the mainboard. If you picked carefully, and used something like an atmeg32u4, running the leonardo bootloader, you could get USB HID midi, and maybe USB mass storage emulation, which you could use to transfer presets or waveform data. should bring down the cost a bit too; full arduino boards are pricey compared to the chips.
3; I can see on the board that they’ve left the connections for the arduino showing, so you could add sheild etc. and expand the capability. Good idea, however there’s a slight problem; There’s a great big button stuck through the middle of where you’d be plugging them in…
4; I agree with welp; CV’s would seem like a good idea.
However, saying all that, it seems to have a pretty good sound, and is a logical next step on for them from their arduino piggyback synth. price isn’t too bad either.
Also, just had a look at their website; Looks like they’ve got something similar, but bigger, lined up for the future using the DUE. Should be interesting.
I dont see anything indicating that it couldn use CV’s maybe if they release a schematic we can see for sure
This is an ARDUINO SHIELD!!!!
how awesome is that ? !!!
How does it _sound_??? Some of you won’t be happy unless the designer starts by smelting ore. *Of course* the thing employs a micro-controller.
MIDI over USB?
F@#$ing useless.
At least in my hardware setup. I don’t want to have to buy a whole ‘nother box just because they didn’t put a real MIDI port on this thing.
It’s not a consumer product. If you want hardware MIDI hack it in there.
We’re doing a Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/844778849/the-saw-bench-synthesizer