One Man Show: An Interview with York Modular

The largest synth companies concern themselves with market trends; balancing creativity and innovation with commercial viability - products that will sell in big numbers. But for smaller, niche makers, innovation takes precedence, as does the attitude of making the instruments that they themselves would like to use. Often, the results can be startling!

Simon Ward creates modules that span a wide range of both size and function. Oscillators, filters, utilities, logic, you name it, he'll have a cool design up his sleeve. We spoke to him about his design ethos and how he got started:

What started your journey of tinkering with electronics and sound?

The 'sound' bit is easy - I grew up in the 8-bit era and my first computer was a Commodore 64. I don't think I need to explain how awesome the SID chip was (and still is) - later on I wrote myself a bunch of MIDI software on the Atari ST, teaching myself M68k assembler in the process, because I couldn't afford the commercial stuff (Cubase etc.)

The electronic side is a bit trickier - I have two degrees in theoretical physics and was a bit of a liability in the lab, but did some post-doc work with the Electronics department at the University of York where I actually had to design and build stuff. Turns out that I actually enjoyed that, and seeing the finished PCB was always gratifying - even moreso if the design actually worked :-)

How and when did York Modular come into being as a business?

September 2018, basically as a way to get the DWP off my back.
I'd been made redundant, and being a 40-something techie (at the time) meant that getting another job was nigh impossible. Since PCB fabs often have a minimum run I found myself with a lot of 'spare' boards and I wondered if people would actually buy them. Turns out that they would ...

What's your design philosophy, how do you choose what to build next?

'Do one thing and do it well'
Don't get me wrong: there are some awesome multi-function modules out there but it seems to me that in a lot of cases you're paying for a bunch of  functionality that you may never use. Simplicity also implies repair-ability - generally speaking, short of a catastrophic failure, if one of my modules fails then it can be repaired if you know which end of the soldering iron to hold.

Unless I have a custom order on the go (yes, I'll do custom modules), what I build next depends entirely on what I happen to need at the time - currently it's rack-able MIDI controllers. A couple of months down the line I may find I need some more VCOs, in which case I'll work on those for a bit.

I don't mind people pitching ideas either - if someone's suggestion makes it into production then I send them a completed module free of charge by way of thanks.

So far, I've tended to buy from York Modular when I want something small, inexpensive but quirky (ie actually useful!) to finish a row in my system - but you have a wide range of modules; oscillators, filters and unusual effects - is there a highlight, one module that you would recommend people check out?

That's a tricky one.
I'd probably say the bandpass filter - I've sold a ton of them over the years and for such a simple circuit (an op-amp and a bunch of passives) you can use it to produce some seriously twisted sounds, especially if you use a bunch of them in parallel. Better yet, it's a 2HP module so you can use it to fill up an annoying gap in your case. One day I'll do a voltage-controlled version ...

Your modules are usually very reasonably priced - was this an important motivation for you?

Absolutely.
The barrier of entry can feel impossibly high for some so I'm doing my bit to lower it. Again, sticking to simple but hopefully useful designs helps with this, although there are other ways to keep costs down too. I like to keep my margins sensible, and if circumstances allow me to reduce the price of a module then I will do that.

Any future plans? World domination?

Future plans .... loads of ideas, although whether they get beyond the idea stage remains to be seen.
Desktop modules, maybe some VSTs and definitely some a reworking of some of my older modules. I'd like to pursue international distribution too but the current EU situation has soured me on that for now.

World domination sounds far too much like hard work, I'll stick to melting metal over things with a hot pencil ;-)

Thanks to Simon for answering our questions - I'm going to use this outro to highlight a couple of other modules: There's a £44.99(!) 6HP hackable digital VCO called VCO'84, and the source code is freely available to tinker with. Another forthcoming design is called XO106r5; 4 square oscillators with PWM, filtering & onboard logic. Check out some wild prototype sounds here:

Posted by MagicalSynthAdventure an expert in synthesis technology from last Century and Amiga enthusiast.