Jan 23rd, 2010
by TheGeek.

Well this Saturday we have the return of an old feature here at The Geek Review, Synth Saturday. One of the way too many things that I am interested in is the old style analog synths. One sub set of synths is the drum machine, which is really not made know a days as it [...]
Aug 8th, 2009
by TheGeek.

The Korg MS-20 at first looks like a module synth with all the jacks for patching, but in fact the the jacks simply allowed Korg to cram a lot more flexibility in to such a small synth. The MS-20 is a monophonic synth with two 2 VCO’s + noise, a LFO w/ multiple waveforms, both [...]
Aug 1st, 2009
by TheGeek.

This week we have the Korg Monopoly analog synth. The Monopoly is another of those strange beasts. It’s not a Monophonic synth it’s not a four voice Polyphonic synth it’s both. The Monopoly has four VCO each of which can be tuned to it own level, key, and waveform. Waveforms include sine, sawtooth, Pulse Width, [...]
Jul 18th, 2009
by TheGeek.

The Korg PS-3100 is one of those weird beasts of the late 70s, not quite a module synth, not quite a integrated synth. The PS-3100 is a fully Polyphonic analog synth. How did they get a full polyphonic sound in a analog synth, easy there is a VCO for every key. It has three resonant [...]
Jul 15th, 2009
by TheGeek.

Second to last post about the Weird Sound Generator. The build of the working components is complete and it is making sounds. And, yes they are weird. So there is truth in advertising, well not really advertising as I’ve never seen an ad for the Weird Sound Generator, so we’ll call it truth in naming. [...]
Jul 13th, 2009
by TheGeek.

Well I have gotten the front panel all wired up and am now working on getting it all connected to the PCB. I hit the local rat shack (yes Radio Shack it the top google hit for “rat shack”) and picked up a pair of helping hands. I dumped the magnifier off of them as [...]
Jul 11th, 2009
by TheGeek.

The SH-3A is a strange little single Oscillator that Roland came out with in the mid 70s. It has one VCO plus a Pink/White Noise generator and Portamento. It does however have two LFOs, LFO1 is a sawtooth, and LFO2 is either sine or square and has delay slider. The LFOs can be assigned to [...]