30 thoughts on “Vermona 14 Analog Synthesizer At NAMM 2015”

  1. The thing looks a bit like a Gleeman Pentaphonic, although I’m sure its a monobox.
    Either way, sooo much neat stuff coming out this year. I’ve already considered selling my soul to Beelzebub to buy all this stuff…now I’m considering selling my mum & her dog to him too!

    1. Left is for Modulation stuff (VCF Mod, LFO, Velocity, Vibrato…)
      The black ones on the right are the Envelope Genererators (ADSR) for VCF and VCA

  4. Its interesting to see so many new synths of all kinds come with a CV/Gate option. Its enough to make you buy Eurorack stock. Items like this and the Pro2 are carving out a certain niche for a host synth with its own voice, plus nerve-center capabilities. Its the next layer of involvement without building a pure Tower of Doom modular. I like the tone of this synth, which is creamy-with-an-edge. It cries out for some delay & reverb. POOF, instant Hawkwind. 😀

    1. I think the market has a lot of products, but much of it doesn’t add value, same square/saw from a generic circuit with the odd tweak. I like modular because it isn’t that, if you want a standard square/saw then you can have it, but also have some DSP, DCO, wavetable, sample or granular – or all of them, after all it is modular. And I wonder why so many of these synths don’t have basic FX build in, how much cost compared to value would a simple addition after the amp be, to add overdrive, delay and reverb?

      2. Kuwa, your point is good, partly because its so central. I know many people are monosynth-crazy because DANCE, but then again, who is to say there’s jack wrong with starting out in small steps or keeping it simple for other reasons? I simply got restless with the old saw/square/sine triad and kept moving up until I found the right spot for me. I came to prefer softsynths over a pile of hardware for the added power and convenience, but I still play them with actual keys. I’ve enjoyed some strictly-modular music, beginning with Wendy Carlos & Klaus Schulze, but I’m becoming curious to hear what comes from people who have a Pro2 and a lesser rack of modules. One CV/Gate is good, but four is getting serious. Its not just blooping along on one synth and its not a full modular, so in theory, we may see a new style emerge that’s a little more detailed in some ways.
        As to effects, my first Moog only came alive when I ran it through a delay pedal. Dave Smith got the P-6 right, with digital effects than can be totally removed from the analog signal chain. Never buy a no-FX monosynth without budgeting for FX. You can’t be a real space cadet until you have Baby’s First Reverb.

  5. It sounds amazing and looks like a great product, but I expect the pricing would be comparable with a sub 37 which has more features?

    Cosmetically I’m not a fan of blue (any other colour please) and would like a dark varnish on the wood ends.

    In the end there’s only so many monosynth a person needs.

  6. Sounds and looks like a buzzy-er version of the Little Phatty to me. Arp functions look a bit more intuitive but if this doesn’t come below £900 think the sub 37 might be the better buy.

  7. Not too bad, but with how much this is likely to go for, it just seems that the Sub 37 would make more sense, better value for the money.

  9. the presenter is not in focus a single second. most of the video, the audience is enjoying search for focus. thank you for trying.

    1. The worst one I saw this year at NAMM was a 10 min video, from a well known podcast maker, a full HD video of a soft-focus presenter, doing a demo of soft-focus hardware, in front of crystal clear background shot of NAMM – at least the days are gone of bouncing upright phone video with a sound demo muffled by a harrowing jazz band, thanks to auto-level. I find it odd how people can respect skill and ability in recording sound, and have high standards in that, yet have a total disregard for skill and ability in making a moving image.

      1. The struggle is real.

        There’s a lot of mediocre video coming out of NAMM every year, and it’s because it’s done by synth technology writers who do video interviews once a year, of 4 guys per hour, in a room with 30,000 people who are trying out 5,000 musical instruments – and the demo guy got the new gear from Japan two days ago.

        1. Turning up at a gig and playing badly isn’t good form, it would help to practice and enhance that performance before hand, and stating that you don’t practice and only perform once a year isn’t an excuse to an audience for being bad – we don’t have excuses to be consistently poor over time, and shouldn’t aim to share that consistently poor form with others. And everyone is justified in mocking someone that turns up at a gig and uses an excuse of lack of practice and performance for being of such a poor standard. And some may be so bad at video that their taste is out of wack, that they can’t be objectively critical of their own productions, and how bad they are. And only by having negative feedback would they be aware of how bad it is – like when a child is banging away on a guitar and not knowing the difference between noise and music, yet thinking in their own head that they have just played a song on a guitar.

  10. What’s so exciting about this?

    This has a nice big physical interface, but is very limited synth compared to the Sub 37, or even the BassStation 2. The MiniBrute doesn’t have the second oscillator, but is still a much more sophisticated synth in many ways than this.

    The Vermona 14 is way less synth a Pro One, which is incomprehensible to me. We are 30 years on – where’s the creativity and innovation?

    1. Maybe it’s not much of a synth by today’s standards, but people are sick of complex synths that you have to dig through menus to use.

      This is a nostalgia synth, like the new Odyssey or the reissued Moog modulars. It looks and sounds like something from the 70’s. That’s what a lot of people want, because we missed out on this stuff the first time around!

      Dave Smith’s synths make a lot more sense to me, because the got the retro vibe, but theyre actually very powerful, modern synths.

      2. I agree this would be a great first synth if it comes at the right price. But the competition is hot these days, choice between this and an odyssey I’d have to go the odyssey because I know it has stable tuning, and I know it’s history in the music world, therefore it’s versatility.

      3. One thing you *won’t* miss is a synth that drifts by a major third if you breathe on it. Another is tearing at your hair because you lost an S-trigger, much in the same way we more modern types lose it over an iLok or USB stick. You also won’t miss unpredictable J-wires or carbon-impregnated sponges that lead to sputtery or dead keys. However, you may still enjoy crackling pots or broken solder leads that create all sorts of merry hell. Compared with those issues, I’ll butter my current ones and call them a crossiant. One plus with small runs of boutique-ish synths is that pretty much everything gets tightened by hand. A little added toughness is never a bad thing. I’ll casually suggest that this is one of those synths, from the look and sound of it.

  12. Vermona makes top quality products and I think this synth will surprise a lot of people when they get there hands on it. I think it’s sound beautiful and it has a total different sound than the Moog SubPhatty. What I don’t like is the blue color. Make it black.

  14. “I see a blue synth and I want it painted black…”

    It’s coming into a pretty crowded market, but choice is always great. I imagine the *main* difference in sound comes from filter design in these two-osc monos. I like the idea that some of them are now coming with multiple ffilters to choose from.

  15. I’m picking up a Mono Lancet and a Retroverb Lancet this week. The 14 appears simple and nice, which is what I like. I’l probably get one, but I also wish it were black land ivory like all the other Vermona gear.

  16. I will definitely get on of these cause it reminds me of the old Steiner Parker synth sound “not fm but metallic and crisp but fat and analog like a 2600. And that fucking arpeggiator is dope and much better in genral than most. AWSOME . What does it cost ?!peace christo

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