hi folks-
i'm posting as a favor for my friend peter b. he is a young but very
talented synth designer here in baltimore, md usa. he has just put
two synth kits up on his webpage. i bought one myself and soldered
it together.

what they are are very strange experimental synths that are small,
can run off battery (or wallwart 9VDC) and have even a built in
speaker for very remote wilderness freakage.

the two varieties of kits operate on the same idea. the
user "interface" on each is over a hundred brass pegs, which are
androgynous....meaning they can be inputs or outputs....there are
no "signal" connections or "control" connection so to speak. one
gets sounds by patching all the pegs together with alligator clips,
or any conductor you wish. also using the ground share inputs you
can interface many different external devices with them, provided
they are between 0 and 9 volts. i understand that it may be possible
to export control voltages to the outside world as well, but these
must be buffered by a preamp, which is an easy circuit which peter
can show you howto do.

again, these kits are for the experimenter, but i think for folks who
use their modulars to get crazy sounds for sampling, you can have
here something quite small that can make the wildest voices patterns
and analog farts imaginable which will make your sampler hate you,
but make you happy. the overall sound and approach resembles crazy
circuit bending, but way more flexible and intuitive than most
homemade "bent" contraptions.

the kit i did was the "fourses in the zihai". it combines four
oscillators, which are constantly crashing into each other and going
nuts. i took me about 25 hours of labor, cause i'm a careful
solderer.
they are reasonably priced and cool as shit. please check them ut
and pete's website at
www.ciat-lonbarde.net

tell him mr borax sent you.
---tom