Synth Site |  PAIA |  Proteus

The instructions were clear and precise and though they were easy to use, this kit was a little more difficult to construct than the others. I remember it having one main circuit board and there were a lot of jumpers to deal with.

I finished the unit in a reasonable time but could not get it to work correctly so I had to send it to John and Scott at PAIA for troubleshooting. The problem was an insulated jumper that shorted to the circuit foil side (too wild with the soldering iron), the filter chip was bad, and the backplane connector did not seat properly. This was not a kit for a first time builder! With all the experience I had, I still screwed it up.

The synth was a two-oscillator unit built on the Curtis synth chips so valued by kit builders. I can't really complain about them for their simplicity and stability.

The unit had the ability to program either 8 or 16 sounds, I can't remember how many. Programming was setting the control knobs, hitting the memory button, and that was it. To recall a patch, you had to punch a button to scroll through the numbers until you got to the patch number you wanted. Kind of labor intensive and not for a quick switch, but it worked.

The unit was stable and stayed in tune nicely. The envelope generator worked well and the filter was a nice 24db low pass. But I'll have to admit the filter sounded a little weak. It just did not have the pizzazz of a Moog or ARP. The most annoying thing though, was the lack of a second envelope generator. Filter sweeps were dependent on the volume sweep (with the VCA). If there was a trick to get it to work better, I never figured it out.

The backplane contained numerous inputs and outputs so the unit could interface with other gear. A great thing but it was not compatible with my PAIA 2700 and 4700 series modular. Well... it was, sort of.

Despite the shortcomings, I enjoyed playing with it and it was great for solos and effects. It is another synth I wish I still had. I saw one on e-bay recently and the price is insane! I would not have paid that much for it new!

Anyway, once again, my thanks to John Simonton for making it possible for me to afford to get into synthesis. Makes me wish he still offered the unit (with a 2nd EG) so I could build it again!