Dubreq has announced that the Stylophone Gen R-8 analog synthesizer – a hybrid of the classic stylophone and a subtractive synthesizer – is now available.
While the Gen R-8 synth looks at first glance like a Stylophone, it offers dual VCOs, a touch keyboard, an LFO, modular patch points, a 16-step sequence with banks, MIDI support and more.
Features:
- Full analog signal path
- Steel enclosure
- Dual VCOs with Saw, Square and PWM (oscillator 1)
- Sub oscillators and Subsub oscillators for room-shaking bass
- Unique British design 12dB VCF with Low pass, High pass, Band pass and wide Notch
- Fast and punchy envelope
- Supersensitive 3-octave TOUCH keyboard
- Glide and Modulation keys for expressive performance control
- 8 waveform LFO with S&H and One-shot feature
- 19 CV/Gate patch points for advanced modular patching
- Grungy analog style Delay with modulation CV
- Drive knob for extra boost and fatness
- 16-step sequencer with 8 banks and on-the-fly switching
- MIDI in/out
Pricing and Availability
The Gen R-8 is available now for £299.99.
It’s super cool they keep building Stylophones. I have one, though honestly I never use it except to pull it out from time to time as a curiosity.
This latest model’s price point I think fans will find challenging, despite the awesome 3 octave keyboard. Maybe add velocity and release velocity sensitivity and polyphonic aftertouch to their keyboard. If they don’t know how to do so with their capacitive technology at NO additional hardware manufacturing cost, they could hire me as a consultant as I’ve done it and would be more than happy to license my innovative proven solutions to them for an extremely reasonable price which no one reasonable would ever dispute. I’ve got a multi-decade history of designing the most advanced products, add on boards, and integrated systems, all with stupendous reliability, usability, and joy. And these designs are in the gear you use today.
Yeah, no one will contact me. No one likes those of us who do good shit. We threaten the corporate hegemony and globalism with our facility in talking shit to management MBA turds. Fair enough.
Anyway tldr is it’s too expensive.
Honestly I don’t think it os super overpriced and it sounds really good but I do think it suffers from being not portable enough for stylophone enthusiasts and not as full sized or functioned for synth enthusiasts
Personally though I would love to have one because from what I have heard I really like the filters and drive and would love to pair it with something like a crave
Let’s make something, Bat.
http://linkedin.com/in/jameshicks
interesting comments ; appart from the “fans”, i think this machine is very much aimed at musicians who are interested in the Stylophone, BUT find it too limited, and therefore would like to have more of the synths features. So I think it is meant to expand the market from “fans” only to “interested” as well by overcoming the features limitations.
If they just would have given it the keyboard of the Microfreak with a corresponding CV out…..
Minus the sound strip, so no ribbon controller pitch control.
Not buying without the sound strip as on the Gen -X1. Otherwise I would. Thereminists need more pitches than on a keyboard. It would have been swell.
It looks like ergonomics was not in the BOM.
It looks like this fits between the Arturia Minibrute and the Korg Volca series. But if you have either, then the Gen R-8 might be redundant.
A lot of competition, but still seems like a cool synth. If money was no issue I would pick one up. Not having a job ATM makes it worse. I would take one for free though or may pick one up when finances allow. I still want to try out the Gen-X1 as well.
Its getting to be like a mini EDP Wasp