Instruments and Builds

This synthesiser (the Baxter 100) is my most ambitious build so far and, for now at least, it’s an open-ended project. I started with a few core modules just to get it making some noise, but since then I’ve been following whatever ideas pop up from the DIY synth community on YouTube and elsewhere (Look Mum No Computer, Modular in a Week, Tom Whitwell, and others), as well as from the MEMS project (reverse-engineering and documenting Buchla synths) and established manufacturers like Make Noise. I often find myself thinking: how would I make a René-style sequencer, with what I have?

My big mistake – or maybe my USP, depending on how you look at it – and definitely the thing that keeps me hooked, is that I’m not just soldering up PCBs to make a Buchla, Moog, or Make Noise clone (nothing wrong with that, by the way). The core of this synth is built around the idea of using simple CMOS logic chips to make sound – the so-called “Lunetta” approach – which really embodies Nicolas Collins’ notion of hacking (repurposing existing technology). In fact, it was Collins’ book Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking that first got me bleeping away with 40106 chips.

Much is made of the Buchla vs. Moog, West Coast vs. East Coast debate, which (somewhat inaccurately) tends to focus on whether there’s an organ-style keyboard involved. But this machine definitely leans toward the Buchla tradition – creating an electronic sound-producing system rather than a “synthesiser keyboard.” It’s synth-building from the ground up, in the spirit of those early electronic music studios.

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